Show notes for Episode 150
Clay Croft on the new Expedition Overland Africa expedition, and lessons from the Nordic series.
Summary:
Matt Scott and Scott Brady interview Clay Croft of Expedition Overland, diving deep into their lessons learned from traveling Europe, the Faroe Islands, and Iceland. Clay also announces the newest XO expedition- Africa!
Guest Bio:
Clay Croft has been an innovator and thought-leader in the Overlanding space for over a decade. He is co-founder of the hit television series, Expedition Overland.
In addition to his vast Overlanding experience, which includes the completion of the Pan-American Highway, a crossing of the Simpson Desert in Australia, and driving the “Road of Bones” in Russia, Clay has also served as an expedition team member for Expeditions 7’s historic crossing of the Greenland Ice Cap.
As C.E.O. of Expedition Overland, Clay is focused on continuing to grow his and Rachelle’s business ventures while personally pursuing his passion for award-winning cinema, adventure travel, and innovative truck building. A dedicated husband and father, Clay is also committed to supporting Rachelle and raising his boys to a life of adventure and success. @croftclay
For more information on upcoming trips and builds, visit XOverland
Host Bios:
Matthew Scott
Matthew is a leading expert in automotive adventure. He has extensively explored the world’s most remote places by 4WD and is considered an industry authority on overland travel. He is the only American to ever become an editor of a major Australian 4WD publication and has over 15 years of competitive auto racing experience. @mattexplore
Scott Brady
Scott is the publisher and co-founder of Expedition Portal and Overland Journal and is often credited with popularizing overlanding in North America. His travels by 4WD and adventure motorcycle span all seven continents and includes three circumnavigations of the globe. His polar expeditions include two vehicle crossings of Antarctica and the first long-axis crossing of Greenland. @scott.a.brady
Transcript
Clay Croft Expo 23 Podcast
Brody Tubbs
Scott Brady: Hello and welcome to the Overland Journal podcast. I am your host Scott Brady and my co-host Matt Scott, is also with me today at the Overland Expo in Flagstaff. And we spend time interviewing Clay Croft. Clay’s been on the podcast several times, and he’s always a joy to have because he has so many insights on these incredible expeditions that he’s conducted around the world. We go into a deep dive on his trip, the Nordic series that has taken him through Norway and many parts of Scandinavia, the Faroe Islands, and ultimately into Iceland. That series is just wrapping up. We learned about the things that worked well and didn’t work so well. Some of his lessons that he took away from the expedition. And then we also do a big discussion around his next trip. So we kind of announce his Africa expedition that’s coming up where he is gonna be taking a Sequoia and a couple other vehicles and they’re gonna be traveling around Southern Africa. We have a great conversation [00:01:00] with Clay. He always has tons of insights on vehicle preparation, expeditions, and just traveling as a family. So please enjoy our conversation with Clay Croft. And a special thanks to Rocky Talkies for their support of this week’s podcast. Rocky Talkies are back country radios designed by a small team in Denver. The radios are extremely rugged, easy to use, and compact, weighing in at just under eight ounces. They have a range of one to five miles in the mountains and up to 25 miles line of sight. The batteries will last from three to five days, and you can recharge them easily via U S B C right in the vehicle. Our team uses Rocky Talkies and we also used them recently at the Overland Expo. The next Overland Expo stop into our booth and say hello and check out the radios for yourself. And as a listener of the Overland Journal Podcast, you can get 10% off a pair by going to [00:02:00] rocky talkie.com/overland Journal. Thanks again, Rocky talkie.
Matt Scott: So guys, we’re here with Clay Croft from Expedition Overland, and we’re gonna talk about the Nordic series that is now completely out on the Overlander network. And, and we’re also gonna dive into what’s next.
Scott Brady: That’s right.
Matt Scott: The expedition overland crew.
Scott Brady: Clay, thanks so much as always for being on the podcast, man.
Clay Croft: Thank you.
Scott Brady: You’re, you’re such a great guest and such a wonderful friend. It’s been so good for us to all experience this together. And you guys are at close to 15 years, aren’t you?
Clay Croft: Yeah. Let’s see. This is 14 years. Yeah. Right now.
Scott Brady: Yeah. And we, we just celebrated 20 years in February, man.
Clay Croft: Congratulations.
Scott Brady: It’s just unbelievable. Well, just now it just makes me feel old.
Clay Croft: Ah, and it makes you realize how short life is. Like it is just going by fast. Yeah.
Scott Brady: So yeah, to think that, you know, expeditions West started 20 years ago.
Clay Croft: A major inspiration of mine.
Scott Brady: Oh, thank you.
Matt Scott: Mine too.
Scott Brady: My, my overloaded Tacoma.
Clay Croft: Yeah. Which is okay.
Scott Brady: I know. It worked out. It [00:03:00] the thing didn’t care.
Clay Croft: Yeah. And here we are.
Scott Brady: Yeah, exactly.
Clay Croft: Here you are.
Scott Brady: Yeah, exactly. We would love to talk to you about your Nordic series, but more about, what were the highlights? What were the places that you went that you would recommend those that are listening consider going to?
Clay Croft: Yeah, so we did, I’ll just give you an overview of what, what the trip was like. So we left, let’s see. We got there in late July and worked all the way through almost October 1st. So we were gone for, I think the total time was 59 days and 12 hours. Something like that, of traveling and we shipped into Belgium. And then we drove north to Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, back to Denmark onto Faroe Islands, and then Iceland.
Scott Brady: Yeah I’m so glad I’ve got a chance to do the Faroe Island.
Clay Croft: Man that was very special.
Matt Scott: Yeah, I’m super excited for the Faroe Island. That’s the episode I haven’t seen.
Scott Brady: So it’s gonna be the next Iceland for a lot of people I think.
Clay Croft: Oh yeah, yeah.
Matt Scott: But it’s not that big. Right?
Clay Croft: It’s super small.
Matt Scott: I’ve had so many friends that, that have watched the series [00:04:00] and they’re like, Hey Matt, let’s go to the Faroe Islands. I want to go, when are we going? Like, okay, let’s go.
Clay Croft: Yeah, I ran into one guy who had been there two and a half weeks, and he’s like, yeah, I’m ready to leave. Yeah. You know, but.
Scott Brady: And there are people that live there full-time. Oh yeah, what an amazing place to go to. Because their government’s been in place for a thousand years. So, and it’s divided up by the villages over the hill. They would have to back in the day, like have to have. People go to the next village over to to get married. You know, and that was like, a big deal.
Matt Scott: Cause it’s such a small population.
Clay Croft: Amazing place. And the people are fantastic.
Matt Scott: Otherwise you would have kids with three eyes and stuff if they’re not careful.
Clay Croft: Yeah, exactly. And I mean they’ve had kings and all kinds of stuff. It is an amazing place.
Matt Scott: So, and now it’s a territory of Denmark, right? Or are they.
Clay Croft: That’s a good question. Yes, you’re right. I should know that I’ve been there, but we’ll put.
Scott Brady: I think it’s another one of their autonomous. Kinda of like what Greenland is where it’s. They get help.
Clay Croft: That is correct.
Scott Brady: They’re a large country [00:05:00] but they’re, but they’re a little more autonomous.
Clay Croft: Yeah. And they’ve, they’ve been autonomous, they’re, I guess, I mean for centuries. So there is a bit of the, a contesting to all of that. You know, due to the, you know, freedoms and stuff. It’s very interesting to hear all of the, political, I guess, ideologies that were going on with how it all works, cuz there’s great blessings from it. And then there’s struggles too. In a very, very small place. Like you can drive anywhere within two hours. Like you cross the island back and forth, back and forth, back and forth all the time. It’s no big deal.
Scott Brady: And what was the primary language spoken there?
Clay Croft: Faroese.
Matt Scott: Yeah. I did not know that is thing.
Scott Brady: I did not.
Clay Croft: It’s a, a dialect of the Vikings. And Faroese can understand Icelandics. And they can also understand a bit of Danish. With their language. But Icelands cannot understand Danish.
So they’re right in the middle of this. So as, as the adventurers, the Explorers, the Vikings were moved their way across the ocean there. They hit the Faroes [00:06:00] first. Shetland Islands, Faroe then onto the Iceland, and it just developed this amazing language. It’s really fun to listen to.
Matt Scott: Do they also speak annoyingly good English?
Clay Croft: Yeah, it’s. Amazing.
Scott Brady: Yeah. Like there is a, there’s a saying in Iceland that says the trash truck driver speaks English. I mean it’s, and they do.
Clay Croft: It’s true.
Scott Brady: The other thing that I find totally fascinating about ice, there’s many things to be fascinated about the Icelandic people, but that they have like a 97% literacy rate. Which is the highest in the world. Like they have, like, it would have to be developmentally disabled individual that was not literate. Literate. So everyone is literate. That can be.
Clay Croft: Iceland is an amazing place. It’s the first time. Well, I, I was there for like two days on our way to Greenland that one time. But, I stayed in a hotel and I slept and I made sure that I was ready to go for the Greenland expedition. You know, I wasn’t doing anything else. I didn’t travel. So this was really my first time. To go there and experience it and I’m blown away. I can’t wait to go back to Iceland. You could spend a lot of time.
Scott Brady: Yeah. And it, Iceland, it looks on a map, it looks very [00:07:00] small, but if you wanna go into the interior, you’re not going anyplace quickly. Yeah, you’re pretty much other than some, there are a few roads that go into the interior, like into in those areas. But if you want to go into the interior. You’re on dirt.
Clay Croft: You’re on dirt the whole time. And you do need a proper four wheel drive to get in there. I mean, the Jimny is like the bottom baseline car that you could use. And even then, there’s several places that Jimnys were having to turn around and not be able.
Scott Brady: And it’s mostly the water crossings. Yeah, it’s the Jimnys are just, they’re, even though they’re very.
Scott Brady: They’re very capable. But they’re, they would get swept away easily.
Clay Croft: Yeah. And there’s some deep stuff there.
Scott Brady: And a lot of people don’t know this, but when you sign your rental agreement in Iceland, if you Ford a river and you lose the car, you are not covered.
Clay Croft: It’s on you.
Scott Brady: It’s on you. And it’s only specific to the, like you can try to climb up a glacier, you do all the other stuff. But if you try to cross a river in Iceland and you lose the car in the river, it’s on you.
Matt Scott: Wow. Always walk [00:08:00] over water crossings.
Clay Croft: Yeah. We helped turn a couple people around like, you should not do this. You know, like, here, here comes a hilux, you know, like, to. Johanson. And then he was with us for a time on 44 inch tires, six inch lift. He’d drive across that and you see this big truck come across the river crossing, and then the guy across the way was like, maybe I could do that too. No, no, no, no, no.
Scott Brady: That was a totally different thing.
Clay Croft: Yeah. That the door handle is at your shoulder on that truck. Don’t drive your Jimny in there.
Scott Brady: Yeah, totally. Yeah. I guess since, since we’re on Iceland, what was the your couple kind of most favorite moments in Iceland?
Clay Croft: Let’s see. I loved learning how to travel Iceland, so you don’t just pick your, you could, you could just pick the destinations that you want to go to and just systematically hit ’em.
But there’s a game you play in Iceland and it’s, it’s all based around the weather. So, the weather is in its own microclimate, very different from one side of the island to the other and to the north and to the south. And so you’re constantly monitoring what’s happening and you’re racing towards the [00:09:00] good weather. Because you can be a nice sunny spot in this little canyon, in this little nook of Iceland and the rest of it is rained out. So you’re just chasing the good weather. And that’s what we did. That’s what Toffee taught us to do. And we had all, like, we were there for three weeks and I think we maybe had five days of rain. I mean, that’s unheard of. Also, back to the Faroes real quick. We, we were there for six and a half days.
Scott Brady: Because you waited for the next ferry?
Clay Croft: Yeah. It only got off once.
Scott Brady: Yeah, that’s right. Once a week.
Clay Croft: And they have like 340 days of rain a year. Oh yeah. So the, what we got there was like unreal. Yeah, it was.
Matt Scott: So you got sunshine.
Clay Croft: It was divine. That we were there for six days and only had one night of rain. It was spectacular.
Matt Scott: And what month were you there?
Clay Croft: That was September.
Matt Scott: September. And is that typical for September? Like because like that’s your best chance?
Clay Croft: I don’t know. That’s a good, it’s.
Matt Scott: If it’s 300 and what you said 340?
Clay Croft: Yeah, it’s like crazy high. And there was rain throughout, you know, but it would like come and go. It’d be gone. We had sun. [00:10:00] Yeah.
Matt Scott: So I mean, while we’re on the Faroes, I mean, it is an accomplishment to get a vehicle there. You have to get. If you’re, if you’re gonna ship your vehicle from America or wherever it has to go, to go to mainland Europe. And then does it, do you leave out of the Netherlands or do you leave out at Denmark?
Clay Croft: Leave out at her, Charles Denmark. And then it, it’s a ferry that. Takes you to Iceland.
Matt Scott: But do you think it’s, you think it’s worth, like, for Americans that wanna see the Faroe Islands? Like would you, I mean, can you just rent cars there?
Clay Croft: Yeah. So, I mean, if you, if you really wanna just go see the Faroe Islands, the way to get there would be to fly into ’em, rent a car. Once you have a car in the Pharaohs, they’re not really built for. Eco travel with vehicle based travel. Yeah, there’s like, we were camping on soccer fields and stuff. Yeah. There’s just, and there is a camper van presence there, but they were also parked on the soccer field. You know, so there’s just, they’re very new to. Tourism 10 years really is all they’ve been open for this. So rent a house, rent a car, and.
Matt Scott: I guess it, since it’s so small.
Clay Croft: Just travel around and go see it.
Matt Scott: Yeah. But [00:11:00] if you already have your vehicle there, it sounds like it’s definitely doable.
Clay Croft: It’s totally doable.
Scott Brady: It’s a stop along along the ferry route.
Clay Croft: It is worth it. It’s worth it.
Matt Scott:And then how long did that ferry take from Denmark to the Faroes?
Clay Croft: That was two nights.
Matt Scott: Two nights. Okay. So minutes. And you’re primarily going what? Northwest north. Northwest north.
Clay Croft: It’s more like West Northwest. The seas were good. It wasn’t anything to shake a stick at, as you’d say.
Scott Brady: Was it pretty full? Was the ferry pretty full?
Clay Croft: It was, yeah.
Scott Brady: Oh, that’s good to hear. Yeah, I’m glad.
Clay Croft: And they’re only running one and they used to run it more so, but it, I think it’s ramping up now. You know, post covid things are still turning back on. A lot of people will stop there for just the afternoon while the boat’s there. It’s called the Neurona.
Scott Brady: Neuro, yeah. MV Neuro.
Clay Croft: Yep. Great ship to travel on. It’s the nicest ferry I’ve ever been on. Like it beats the Alaska Maritime Highway. It’s like twice as nice as that. It was awesome.
Scott Brady: So you have your little own little state room and.
Clay Croft: And I don’t think you can camp on the, it’s not like the Alaska Highway where you can camp on the deck or [00:12:00] anything like that. Yeah, no, this is just, this is huge open water and you’re inside.
Matt Scott: Interesting. So, you know, I think one of the things I’ve learned from my travels and, not necessarily Faroe islands and Icelander or whatever, you know, Nordic countries are very, very expensive. So what was it like when you were on the Faroe Islands? Obviously it’s so remote, everything has to come in by boat or by plane. Was fuel available? Insanely expensive.
Clay Croft: It didn’t seem, I don’t remember the exact prices, but it didn’t seem to be any more than like what it was in Iceland or, cause they’re using all the same, it’s just shipping stop lumber shipping. And the faroes run off of diesel. That’s how they power their islands.
Matt Scott: So, I mean, guess with that much.
Clay Croft: There’s diesel coming in like crazy. Still coming in that place.
Matt Scott: There’s no, there’s no real. Reality of solar or anything like that.
Clay Croft: And wind, they’re in a, you know, it’s a very micro climate, climate classification they have to run on. And they do have like hydro power systems, but it’s mostly, yeah, like [00:13:00] 80% of their electricity comes from generators.
Scott Brady: Whereas Iceland is able to generate so much power from all the thermo, thermo effects.
Matt Scott: Really fascinating.
Scott Brady: And then how many days was the ferry from the Faroes to Iceland?
Clay Croft: So that’s just an overnight, so you get on. In the morning, then you’re on it throughout the day, then overnight, and then by morning about 8:00 AM you were arriving in Iceland.
Scott Brady: Yeah. And where did it, in, where did it come into?
Clay Croft: Enson Field. You know, the words are hard.
Scott Brady: But it comes in, does it come in on the eastern side of the country or.
Clay Croft: It comes in on the Northeastern side.
Matt Scott: Oh, got it. Okay. All right.
Clay Croft: So we had, Ashley fly in. And our guy, Tanner. And they flew into Reykjavík and then took us a puddle jumper over the top of the island to meet us up there.. So we started up there.
Scott Brady: And in Iceland did you kind of do the, the whole ring road around or.
Clay Croft: So yeah, in Iceland there’s a road called, is it the one? I think they call it the one, but it’s the Ring Road, and it was built in the nineties. It, [00:14:00] it hasn’t been around. It’s that long.
Matt Scott: It’s pretty recent.
Clay Croft: And it, and it circumnavigates kind of goes all the way around the island and you can. You can drive it in like, what, 12 hours? 18 hours maybe.
Scott Brady: Maybe. I mean, I took almost a week to go around it.
Clay Croft: Yeah. If you’re, if you’re, if you’re just a motor, it, it’s yeah. It’s two lane. It’s all the way around the island. And then, So you can, you can picture it. There’s this pavement road that goes all the way around the island, and then that’s kinda your access point. From there, you can go in to the F roads, which ultimately is shorthand for mountain roads, and, and then you go travel the inland, and that’s where all of like the amazing, really amazing stuff. Away from all the people, everyone stays on the ring road. But if you wanna like go have your experience in Iceland by yourself, you gotta get into the, the interior.
Scott Brady: On the glaciers, if you can. Did you guys get a chance to do any glacial, glacial travel?
Clay Croft: We didn’t. We didn’t. I vowed to come back and do some of that.
Scott Brady: Yeah. I think it’d be worth.
Matt Scott: I’ll go.
Clay Croft: So it would be amazing. So what’s really cool about Iceland is in the summer, they’re [00:15:00] very, they have very strict travel restrictions on their F roads. Like if you travel off the F road, It’s like a two or three, $5,000 fine. It’s, it’s rightly so cuz the amount of rental cars and people that are just driving around this place, it has to be very strict. And it’s kept it pristine and you can tell where back in the day when other people were just allowed to drive anywhere through, cuz it’s just all lava, gravel fields. There’s road tracks that are 20 years old that are still seen in the, in the landscape. So you can see why they did it. But then come winter, as soon as you can turn a tire without disturbing the surface, pretty much the whole interior of Iceland becomes free. Free game.
Scott Brady: That’s right. Yeah. That’s great.
Clay Croft: Which is awesome, hence why everybody’s got the big tires. That’s where it comes from. It’s not during the summer. It’s for the winter. For the flotation so they can explore the whole island, and then that’s when we should get up into the glaciers.
Scott Brady: Yeah, it’s pretty fun. And spring is a great time because you start to get light, but there’s so much snow still on the [00:16:00] interior that you can travel anywhere you want.
And then it still gets just dark enough at night that you can still see the Aurora. So it’s, I find that, I mean, in fact, I’ve only traveled in Iceland in the spring once in January, and then two other times in early spring. And that’s when you can cross the glaciers. The glaciers are still firm enough. The nights are cold enough where you’re not getting the really slushy snow. And you can go across va Yoko, which take day. It takes days to cross that. It’s the biggest glacier in all of Europe.
Clay Croft: It’s 3000 square miles. It’s huge. Yeah. And we learned that from our trips in Greenland that, that time of year, the, the snow has been the deepest. It’s been allowed to accumulate throughout the whole Yeah. Winter and then, yeah. It’s cold enough that it’s all. Firm. It’s the safest time to be there. We should make a plan to get out there sometime.
Scott Brady: Yeah. No, Iceland’s very special. And even, even the cities are great. Like did you guys spend some time in Acure in the north and.
Clay Croft: We, we didn’t, we were, you know, we had limited time shooting the best [00:17:00] movie we possibly could. We were, we were really out there as much as possible.
Scott Brady: Out remote.
Clay Croft: So, out remote, which is where we wanted to be. Cuz we had just been in mainland Europe. In Scandinavia there and the, in the Nordic countries. And so it was a juxtaposing location because you went from a very, very populated, very tame place of Europe. And then you, we were like all itching to be out in the middle of nowhere with nobody around. By the time, you know, five weeks in. You know, that’s not too. Say that the first half of, of the trip in mainland, Scandinavia wasn’t awesome. It was fantastic. Like I would go back and travel there any day, any, anytime. My favorite place was probably Norway. Just being able to travel Norway.
Scott Brady: Just beautiful.
Clay Croft: Is unreal.
Scott Brady: Yeah, it is just beautiful. And even though you can’t really off-road there, in fact they have very strict rules around it. Yeah, you almost don’t need to cuz it’s so beautiful.
Clay Croft: I felt the same way. Everything [00:18:00] is spectacular. Sweden, we didn’t spend a lot more time in Sweden. I kind of rode off Sweden a little bit when I was, we were traveling, trans European trail, which is really, I’ve had discussions with that organization since, by the way. And we just need to specify that that’s really for two wheel track. We utilized, you know, the roads that we used are. The roads that everyone uses to get to their houses and their log cabins and stuff. Cuz it’s all full of, everybody has their cabin on the lake. There’s 10,000 lakes in Sure. Sweden and Finland. So we, we utilize that place. But it wasn’t until we got into lower Southern Sweden that I was like, oh, okay. I feel like I missed out on something here. We need to go back and check this out. There’s, there’s more to it here.
Scott Brady: And there is definitely off highway travel available in Finland. And did you guys get a chance to do some road driving there?
Clay Croft: We did, yeah. We did some, we traveled along the Russian border for a while of Finland. Which is really fun and exciting and just interesting, especially due to current political scenarios [00:19:00] going on around the world and. Just to hear all kinds of different perspectives and be along the Russian border at the same time all this stuff was happening. It was very interesting.
Scott Brady: One of the things that I remember is I was middle of nowhere in Finland and I’m driving along this two-lane road, and then all of a sudden it became like an eight lane highway for, for like 10 miles. Maybe, maybe five miles and then it went back to a two-lane road and I’m like, I researched it Cause it was the weirdest thing. And I researched it and that those are like improvised runways. So they just used the road and then they turned it, they just create this huge concrete runway.
Matt Scott: I’ve seen that in Australia and, and in Africa before in.
Scott Brady: So it, but it’s there for, for. Defense. Because it was fairly close to the Russian border.
Clay Croft: Yeah. I didn’t come across.
Matt Scott: that now fly over the holes, if that’s also part of an emergency room.
Scott Brady: Oh, it could be, could be.
Matt Scott: It could. It could be defense first.
Clay Croft: We traveled all the way up to the north. I’m fascinated by the Arctic regions. You know, so anytime you can get above the Arctic [00:20:00] circle, I just, I love it up there. There’s just some magic to it. The feeling of it.
Matt Scott: It’s just so different. Like kind of. The, the sun doesn’t, the light doesn’t look the same.
Clay Croft: Yeah, it doesn’t, yeah, I was gonna say it’s the same thing, like there’s something about the light. We’re all photographers, so you’re always studying the light, like what’s it doing? Like even here, like the light is thick here in Flagstaff, you’re like, But up there is almost like this thin, wispy, wispy feeling to the light.
Matt Scott: Highly ethereal.
Clay Croft: So it’s just, it’s kind of magical.
Matt Scott: I wanna go to the Arctic when it’s cold. It was over 90 degrees every day that I was in the Arctic.
Clay Croft: That’s weird. Well, but it, I’ve never experienced that.
Scott Brady: It could be. It could happen though. I mean, if you think about it, it’s just the sun never shuts off. So it’s just gonna, yeah. Keep heat.
Matt Scott: Then everything heat soaks, it does get, yeah. Anyways, if you wanna hear me complain about that, listen to the Alaska episode.
Scott Brady: And a special thanks to OnX Offroad for helping to support this week’s podcast.
Going further on your adventures is about having the right tools, the OnX [00:21:00] offroad apps, intuitive maps, make it. Easy to find trails and disperse camping and their offline maps give you full GPS navigation capability without cell coverage. I’m also really excited about their new route builder for planning and sharing custom trips. It’s got a snap to trail tool where you can just drop. Points where you want to go and a route automatically connects to the closest road or trail you can build, save, and add routes to folders and share your entire trip with your buddies. You can find out more information on OnX maps.com. You can also find their apps in the Apple Store or whatever other device that you use. Thanks again, OnX. So then you made it up to Nord Cap?
Clay Croft: Yep. Nord Cap. And I wasn’t sure. So Nord Cap is the very top of.
Matt Scott: It’s the far as furthest north you can go in the world on road. On the Northern hemisphere.
Scott Brady: On the road, yeah.
Clay Croft: Yeah. There’s certainly places above it. But yeah, it’s by boat or plane or helicopter that you would [00:22:00] get there.
Scott Brady: Or like we did in Greenland, we drove Hiluxes up to it. So we were, we were almost 10 degrees further north Latitude.
Clay Croft: Yeah. So technically we’ve been the furthest, but that wasn’t on a road.
Scott Brady: It was not on a road. But that’s, so that’s what Nord Cap is the furthest point north that you can drive on a road.
Clay Croft: Yeah. And I had no idea, you know, you kind. It’s just this dot on the map and you get there. You wonder if, what will it will be like when you actually get there? Will it be as cool as you think it is? And of course, it’s touristy and has some stuff. It’s very remote. It’s not, not really near anything. You gotta drive up there. But, there are, there’s just is something about. These far places, these far dots that have magic to them as well.
Matt Scott: I think people that go there, it’s, it’s real. They, they, they have to have a, a reason, you know, they’re, it’s purposeful travel.
Clay Croft: Agreed. And historically it says that that’s true too. Cuz when we got up there, I had no idea that there, there’s like kings that have traveled there, there are deities of all kinds of, like from all over the world have made their way to this point. I didn’t know. And they used to have to, it [00:23:00] is right on this cliff edge. Very, very steep cliff. And in the olden days before the road was ever there, they would take a ship out to it. And then they would dock it. Then they’d row the people to the cliffs and they had fixed ropes and you had to climb the, the ropes, you know, wasn’t anything like Everest or anything like that, but you know, you had to use the ropes to get to the top, to stand where you can stand today. The kings would do that. This place has significance in history.
Scott Brady: And it feels that way. It feels wild. I mean, you do park in a parking lot and you go to the visitor’s center and all that, but then when you walk out from there, To the point, they’ve done a pretty good job of making it feel wild. You just have that one, you know, art installation with the globe. There, you know, it looks like Atlas is holding it up or something like that, isn’t it?
Clay Croft: Yeah. It’s like tripod or something like that with the metal globe on it. Yeah. And yeah, when we were there it was nasty. You know, we were like, oh man, it’s too bad. It’s just terrible weather. But it kind of actually made it very.
Matt Scott: That kind makes it cool in a [00:24:00] way. It’s, it’s an extreme place. And to experience it in extreme weather, trying to find the little positives and like, oh, for sure wind.
Scott Brady: It was the same way when we were there. It was totally socked in, nasty.
Matt Scott: See, I’m really interested in Norway and Scandinavia. That’s, you know, kind of where, I guess where my family came from. Part of the world. And yeah, I wanna do that as a grand touring trip though. That’s kind of, I think from, from what I understand, it’s, I mean, it’s very first world Norway, high human, perfect road, like perfect roads, that kind of thing.
Scott Brady: But like the bridges are amazing. And the tunnels are amazing.
Clay Croft: Yeah. And we counted 86 tunnels. We went through 86 tunnels.
Scott Brady: And you think about the kind of money that Norway has to just be like, we’re going to build a tunnel like 12 miles across the ocean.
Matt Scott: Oh, they have that. They have that fund from.
Scott Brady: From all the oil. Exactly.
Matt Scott: And it’s their sovereign wealth fund, I think is like per capita.
Scott Brady: Like it’s gigantic. Yeah. They’re one of the few countries with no debt. No debt.
Clay Croft: Norway is an amazing place.
Scott Brady: Yeah, it’s an unbelievable place.
Matt Scott: How was the camping? So wild. Any, any wild camping or are you more [00:25:00] cool?
Clay Croft: Some, yeah. I mean, it is all kind of tucked away, just right off the main road here, but there’s, there’s so much, geography to the place that you kind of just. Go around here and tuck in and, and you feel you’re good. Kind of, you’re, you’re good. You’re by yourself.
Matt Scott: I mean, like some, some nights were, were you in campsites that you kind of had to arrange like.
Clay Croft: Yeah, often.
Matt Scott: Yeah. I mean, it’s Europe. I mean, it’s kinda just to be expected.
Scott Brady: And the further south you are in Norway, the more you have to do that. Yeah, because, and a lot of times you want to, because these campsites are at the end of the fjord on the water. And you go down and it’s perfectly man of cured grass. But you have this view of like one of the most beautiful things in the workplace.
Matt Scott: I’ve really, I’ve really started to change my opinion on. I’m gonna call them campgrounds or you know, even the occasional RV park. Sometimes it’s just nice to know when you’re going or where you’re going, where you’re sleeping. When you’re gone for so long, you know that that is a stressor. So it’s interesting that there are, there are wild places that you can camp, but.
Scott Brady: I’m the same. It’s just part of that [00:26:00] experience. Yeah. It’s just they don’t have off-road routes with remote camping really.
Matt Scott: Yeah. We’re really, we’re, we’re like really, really blessed that we get to do that in America.
Scott Brady: We’re fortunate.
Matt Scott: See that in, I mean there’s obviously a lot of places in the world that you can do that.
Scott Brady: But I like the fact that it, you don’t have to do that. It’s like overlanding and, and I think that’s interesting is that a lot of times people think that you have to be off-road and camping to be overlanding. You can actually completely remove both of those components. And still overland around the world. You could stay in hostels, stay in lodges. Stay in people’s homes and drive around the world without camping, and you could also drive around the world very easily without ever going onto a dirt road. So, and it wouldn’t mean that you were any less of an overlander.
Matt Scott: So that’s what I’ve, and in my, you know, comparatively limited experience in Africa to you, that’s what I found there as well. Yeah. Maybe that’s the segue.
Scott Brady: We should, well found it. I do like the idea of segueing, but we should, we should go through what were your takeaways from the trip? Yeah. [00:27:00] What were the things that worked great? What were the things that didn’t work so well that you would do different?
Clay Croft: The things that worked great. Three truck team, eight man team was good. Our camera work worked really good. The, on the technical side, everything seemed to work really well. Being able to live in camper systems, is definitely how you will thrive in those countries because, you can do it all everybody is living out of rooftop tents or ground tents or whatever, but the weather is so wild, you know, it’s hot and cold and rainy, windy, all that. So having the ability to live in the trucks was really nice.
Scott Brady: Get a good night’s sleep, because otherwise it compounds.
Clay Croft: Yeah. So we, we were gone for the eight weeks and we were. Thriving to the very end. We weren’t exhausted when we went home. We were like, man, I feel like we keep going forever you know? So I think the truck choices and how they were built, It was really good. We were eating well, sleeping well, felt great. The travel there is extremely easy. You know, it’s all open borders. You drive through them, like you go to Norway, to Sweden, to Finland, like you [00:28:00] go through Montana, to Wyoming, to Colorado, right? . There’s nothing to it.
Scott Brady: It’s all shagan agreement, all open. Just move through it.
Clay Croft: Easy. It’s super easy.
Scott Brady: See a bunch of closed up border posts, you know?
Clay Croft: Yep. That’s, hopefully they never need ’em again.
Scott Brady: Yes. Let’s hope so.
Clay Croft: You know, I went in when the, I went into the Norway, Finland, Sweden section. Knowing that. It wasn’t gonna be a lot of offroad travel. Yeah. It wasn’t gonna be very.
Matt Scott: It doesn’t mean that it’s not incredibly beautiful.
Clay Croft: We had been warned about it, you know, by all kinds of people that traveled there. And so we, we set the expectation that we’re going here to really experience culture history and see the beauty of for what it is and just love being there in that part of the world. And that was the best cuz we weren’t like, oh man, there’s just not. Enough dirt roads out here. We weren’t. We never had that.
Matt Scott: Set the expectation.
Clay Croft: And we were, we just loved it the whole time. And we knew that by the time we got to Iceland, we’d have that. It’s coming. You know? Yeah. And so our trucks were definitely overbuilt for being in Norway and Europe there, but they were perfectly built by the time that we got to [00:29:00] Iceland. We could do anything we wanted. They weren’t overbuilt for Iceland either. They were, I think that 35 inch tire was just right. The suspension was rad. The live-in systems, cuz it was September when we’re in Iceland. It was getting cold. The heaters were nice, you know? I think overall it was one of our best run expeditions yet.
Scott Brady: Nice. What changes will you make for future trips that you learned from that one?
Clay Croft: The only thing that we’ve done, internally is we’ve gone back down to a seven man team going into the Africa trip. Which will leave room for a guide. Having coffee in Iceland was remarkable.
Scott Brady: Yeah. It makes a huge difference.
Clay Croft: I definitely want to have more local people travel with us more often. Probably missing out by not having someone local. And I remember when we went through Russia with E seven. We had, Andre with us, and that was the first time that I traveled anywhere that had, you know, a fixer or a guide with us and Russia required him to be with us right?
Scott Brady: It did not require.
Clay Croft: Oh, it did not.
Scott Brady: Oh, no. But I, that was a requirement that I had. It was like I told, I told the rest of [00:30:00] the team. I’m like, we’re not going across Russia with, because it, they just don’t have a lot of English speakers. Makes it totally the right move and it makes it very, very challenging. It doesn’t mean you can’t do it. But. It, it made a lot more enjoyable cuz we could communicate with people. We had a translator. We had a translator that we can communicate with the locals and he could fix things with the police and everything else like that.
Clay Croft: So and so That’s the first time I saw that. And I was like, that when I look back, that enriched our, it’s a lot. Because, you know, it’s about the travel and the experiences that you’re coming out with. And they, they compound that. You know, you’re gonna learn so much more like just riding around with a guy like that and being able to tell you everything.
Matt Scott: And, and in the same way people think overlanding is this, you have to be wild camping. You have to be off road. There’s also this kind of element of it, I feel, where people think that they have to be leading it. They have to be in control, they have to be discovering. We found in our travels some of the best trips, some of the best food we’ve found. Some of the, the best places we found, you know, they come from local knowledge and, it’s important.
Clay Croft: There’s a [00:31:00] mindset shift that I see between what we call domestic over landing and international overland. Domestic over landing. We’re really focused on our own journey. Getting out, being our own little self-contained unit to escape. As soon as for me, you cross a border and now you are guest. In another country, the perspective of you having to do everything really does kind of go away. It’s, it’s fun to be self reliant. But it’s even more fun to have someone there to take you through things.
Scott Brady: And to experience the culture.
Clay Croft: To experience it. Yeah.
Scott Brady: Kind of. That’s a great way to look at it in the, the desert, Southwest we, or in Baja, probably even. You’re kind of escaping to the wild places, whereas when I’m in some new country, I want to try the food. I wanna see the museums. I want to meet the families. That’s what I want to do.
Matt Scott: Yeah. So like first time I did Southern Africa, we were, you know, we were, hellbent. We’re not gonna have a guide. We’re gonna do this ourselves. We’re gonna go find the animals. Well, love it. Turns out, it turns out if you don’t speak Swahili and you can’t be on that radio and. Listen to [00:32:00] 12 other guys speaking Swahili. You’re not gonna see the animals.
Scott Brady: Yeah. It, it’s pretty tough.
Matt Scott: Like it’s important.
Clay Croft: I’ll take note of that. I’m not gonna learn Swahili in time.
Scott Brady: Yeah. Maybe these local trips are to escape and the international trips are to connect. And that’s what we can do when we, when we go to a new place, we could be the guest of that country and connect with those people.
Matt Scott: I like that. I like all of that.
Clay Croft: I learned that lesson also in Russia, cuz Russia was the first time that Scott had invited me to come film on the e seven section of, of Russia. And so this was like my first big international travel trip. We’re gone for three weeks crossing. Wow. You know, this is amazing. We stayed in people’s houses. And I remember the two. The two Andres, and the pole of cold where that.
Scott Brady: Yeah, that’s right. Tom tore
Clay Croft: Tom to, we were in this house and these two Russians were just at the dinner table where I’m sleeping on the floor like a little kid, you know, listening to grandpa and grandpa dad talk in the kitchen kind of. You know, and they’re over, you know, I don’t know what they’re saying. And they’re sharing [00:33:00] vodka together. Yeah. And then they went and they got knives and they traded knives at the table. And I’m just sitting there like watching this whole cultural experience happen. And I was like, this is fantastic.
Scott Brady: Yeah. You’d have like a tank in his, in his, in his yard.
Clay Croft: There was a tank in his yard.
Scott Brady: Yeah. He was so proud of his tank. Yeah. Just like the dude just had a tank. It was amazing.
Clay Croft: Yeah. Attract tank.
Scott Brady: Yeah, exactly.
Clay Croft: I want more of that stuff. Yeah. You know, so yeah, there’s the remote things and there’s the camping and all that stuff. Those things that I look back and I’m very fond of in my memories.
Scott Brady: I think my favorite, one of my favorite things from that trip was you just seeing how. Insane. The driving was like, you happen to recalibrate to like we have a good chance of dying. Like you’re in Russia, you’re not gonna, it’s not gonna be some bandido or whatever else. It is gonna be that you are going to die on the highway. Like that’s what the only thing in Russia that’s gonna kill you is some dude in a seven series going 160 kilometers an hour.
Clay Croft: It was insane. Yeah, it was insane. And I don’t think I’ve been [00:34:00] anywhere since that is that insane.
Scott Brady: Of the top five times in all of my travels that I nearly died, three of them were in Russia.
Clay Croft: That’s true. That’s amazing.
Scott Brady: Yeah. And Clay was in the car with me for several of those. Well, well remember the bridge? Where the guy was passing on the bridge. Like I don’t know how I didn’t run into the guardrail or when we were coming around the corner, I’m drifting sideways and then here comes a Audi drifting sideways the other way. And I did like this momentary Scandinavian flick that like. Brought me around. And Clay was like looking over at me like what just happened.
Clay Croft: You, you’re just in the wrong side of the road, in the wrong seat, you know? Yeah. You are right hand drive and you’re just like, ah.
Scott Brady: You were staring at that, at that car coming at you.
Matt Scott: Sounds fun. But I might take the train.
Scott Brady: Yeah. Well, let’s, let’s talk about what’s next, Clay. We’re super excited to hear about what’s coming up.
Clay Croft: We just announced, for season six we’re heading to Southern Africa. So we’ll be South Africa, LA, Soto, Botswana, Namibia right now. We, we might travel to other places. We’ll just see. We kind of [00:35:00] gotta get boots on the ground there and just see how it all feels.
Scott Brady: Yeah. Swaziland will be another one.
Clay Croft: Swaziland. I would love to get there.
Scott Brady: I’ll send you some tracks on that.
Clay Croft: Love. No, knock out more countries if you can. Just to even be there for a day or experience something for a little while.
Scott Brady: And they’re different. They really are different. Namibia is so different from Swaziland in both in super cool ways.
Clay Croft: Yeah, it’s, it’s cool. I’ve only been to Uganda. Shelly has, my wife has been around Botswana and Zimbabwe and stuff, but, she was there with like Land Rover team and five years ago or something, but.
Matt Scott: Oh, we don’t, with Hollands or something, right?
Clay Croft: So we haven’t really been here. And this year we’re taking my whole family. All my boys are going.
Matt Scott: That’s awesome.
Clay Croft: Cyrus, my oldest will be with me at least the entire time. But the other two boys, I don’t know, haven’t decided. I kind at this point, I’m like, let’s all go for the whole time. You know, it’s only two months. Let’s do it.
Scott Brady: Look what, where they’re gonna be learning.
Clay Croft: Oh, can’t imagine.
Scott Brady: Like, it’s one thing to look at an elephant in a textbook. It’s another thing to actually sit there and.
Matt Scott: To come across an elephant.
Clay Croft: And I’ve never had these experiences yet, and I know you guys [00:36:00] have, and I, I can see it in your eyes.
Matt Scott: Only a little bit.
Clay Croft: Come, come across an elephant. Here’s like, oh, like I’m intimidated already.
Scott Brady: It’s amazing. They are so big. They’re so, it’s wonderful. It’s wonderful.
Clay Croft: I can’t wait. So yeah, we, we will be traveling. We wanna see animals of course, but we want to. Get remote. We want to try to see far off places. I wanna be off the grid as much as I can, cuz that, that to me is the big adventure of it all.
Scott Brady: And there’s plenty of opportunity for that.
Clay Croft: I’ve been reading, or listening to the River of Doubt.
Scott Brady: I’ve heard of that book.
Clay Croft: Teddy Roosevelt’s epic voyage down the river of doubt and it’s got me Jones in for a big adventure. So we’ll see. Not too big.
Scott Brady: Yeah. He almost, he almost died on that one.
Clay Croft: Oh, very close. Yeah. I don’t wanna.
Scott Brady: His son was with it.
Clay Croft: He wanted epic.
Scott Brady: He basically was telling his son, you know, like, this is how I want you to handle my body and everything else.
Matt Scott: It was like, cool, thanks dad.
Clay Croft: Yeah. And he wasn’t in great shape either. He was in super tough shape.
Scott Brady: Older, yeah. Older in life, huh?
Clay Croft: So anyway, I’m kind of south.
Matt Scott: So you’re start in South Africa, South Africa.
Clay Croft: Feel, I want to go hit up.
Matt Scott: You’re gonna start in South Africa. Africa, yeah. [00:37:00] Or what time of year do you think you’re gonna be there?
Clay Croft: So we’ll be there in a month and a half. So July through.
Matt Scott: Oh, so you’re leaving like.
Clay Croft: Oh, trucks have already shipped.
Scott Brady: Talked about there’s a good chance we might have another podcast together in South Africa.
Clay Croft: That would be amazing. Yeah. So, so the, the Fleet is our 2021 Tacoma. It’s not the new Tacoma. Couldn’t get it in time just due to manufacturing. And then our. Tundra that we took to Norway and the new Sequoia. So we, we’ve got a hybrid on this trip.
Matt Scott: I’m really interested.
Clay Croft: Throw it in the deep.
Matt Scott: I keep looking at ’em when I drive by the Toyota dealer on my way home and I’m like, oh, I kind of like that.
Scott Brady: Yeah. The Sequoia has a lot of potential.
Matt Scott: It, it has, it has a bit of baggage. Kind of with like.
Scott Brady: Well, the previous generation just wasn’t a great car, but the new one is.
Matt Scott: The new one looks fantastic. I mean, it, I mean, I don’t really know what the difference is between that, a Land Cruiser is anymore.
Scott Brady: I mean, you’re talking same chassis.
Matt Scott: Same chassis.
Clay Croft: Just a little longer, same componentry.
Matt Scott: So you could, you could almost argue that the only way like let’s say a 200 series got better would be [00:38:00] maybe a little bit more room inside. Cuz they’re not that long actually. They’re wide.
Scott Brady: Only a hundred and twenty inch wheel base on the.
Matt Scott: So that’ll be interesting.
Clay Croft: Yeah, these are pretty long. When you sit in a Sequoia and you look in the rear view mirror, it’s like whoa. The back glass is quite a ways back there.
Matt Scott: They’re seven seaters.
Clay Croft: It feels like a suburban, like you’re a look in the back of a suburban. It’s pretty big. The turning radius and stuff is. Reduced. I think that’s probably, it’s one of its weaker area areas now that we’ve lifted it and it’s on 35 inch tires stuff, the ground clearance and all that fine.
Matt Scott: Oh, it’s gonna be so good.
Scott Brady: It’s gonna be so good for, it’ll be great for.
Clay Croft: So we, the smaller tank is what we’re considering is probably our biggest weakness right now. Because, as we’ve done. Short distance trips. As soon as you hit the interstate, you’re not really in the hybrid. You’re not utilizing hybrid. So now you’re down to a 21 gallon tank and you’re just burning up fuel. So we’re carrying a fuel trailer due to recommendations. So we, we had to figure out a way.
Scott Brady: You put the trailer behind the Sequoia? Well, so there’s an interesting upside to that. And this is where you can take advantage of that hybrid powertrain, is [00:39:00] that anytime you’re descending, you’re regenning power back into the battery system for you to be then able to use it when you climb. So hybrids or electric vehicles actually do very well off road when there’s. If you’re on level round with sand bad news, right? Because you’re not getting any of the benefit. But if you’re climbing and descending and climbing and descending. You’re constantly regenning power back into the vehicle that you can then use to make the next climb with. So you’ll find that it actually does pretty well in those scenarios.
Clay Croft: Yeah. I’m really excited to figure out the fuel formula. Like how is this work? You know, where are the advantages and disadvantages of this? It’s a massive experiment. You know, and it, which is fun.
Scott Brady: And you’re just, other than the skeleton coast, you’re just not gonna have an infrastructure problem. There just isn’t that much.
Matt Scott: And I think there’s fuel in Moy Bay now there’s fuel.
Scott Brady: Yeah. Unless you’re just doing the really remote stuff, which you know that you probably need. Four or 500 kilometer range, 600 kilometer range maybe.
Matt Scott: How big is the tank?
Scott Brady: 21 gallons.
Matt Scott: Oh, that’s, that’s. Paquito. [00:40:00]
Scott Brady: Yeah. It’s paquito for a big truck.
Clay Croft: Yeah. So we built, an AT trailer. Had a trailer from Mario, one of the last chasers.
Matt Scott: Oh man. Chasers are so classic.
Scott Brady: That’s perfect. Nice and light.
Clay Croft: We put, we ordered a, I think it was, yeah, from one of the truck surplus sites. We. Ordered a hundred gallon toolbox fuel tank.
Matt Scott: Oh, that’s smart. Cuz then you don’t have to carry all of these jerry cans and, and think of all the mounts for all of those things.
Clay Croft: Yeah. And we, we learned these things in Greenland, you know, like, oh, just pull up and fuel up. You know, and instead of having to put all that weight across all the different trucks.
And figure out those systems, we put one big tank, which your eggs are in one basket, so to speak.
Scott Brady: No, it should be fine.
Clay Croft: We should be fine. We beefed up the axles and we got extra hubs. We’ve got extra shocks.
Scott Brady: Did you remove the lid then?
Clay Croft: So the lid has, in the top of the lid is a toolbox, so it doesn’t look like a fuel tank.
Scott Brady: No. I mean the, I’m sorry. The lid of the trailer, the chaser. Does it have its.
Clay Croft: Yeah. No, so this is just a flatbed version of it.
Matt Scott: Oh, okay. Oh, oh, it’s the flatbed.
Clay Croft: Yeah. That’s the one [00:41:00] I called Mario.
Matt Scott: I want one so bad.
Scott Brady: That’s what everybody wants.
Clay Croft: I call Mario.
Scott Brady: The, AT flatbed.
Clay Croft: Yeah. In the chaser. Yeah. I, I don’t know if there’s that many out there.
Scott Brady: There’s not, there’s not.
Matt Scott: I have like two friends that have ’em, and I’m like, you better let me know when you, when you wanna sell.
Clay Croft: Yeah. It’s one of my favorite things.
Scott Brady: Yeah. Cause you haul your motorcycles, haul whatever you want. Go to Home Depot works for all that stuff.
Clay Croft: It does it all and it weighs nothing.
Scott Brady: They’re really lightweight, so. Oh, that’s awesome. That’s a great choice.
Clay Croft: We kept it super light. It’s under G V W for it’s weight ratings.
Scott Brady: And put with all it, put it at the back of the, of the convoy because the one thing in Africa that gets you in trouble with the trailer charging elephants.
Clay Croft: Gotcha. So you can’t back up.
Scott Brady: That’s right. You cannot back up fast enough. So when they start trumpeting and charging, you know, keep some space and then allow those first two vehicles to give that animal the space that it needs.
Clay Croft: Yeah. That’s your buffer.
Scott Brady: That’s right. So if you’ve got your trailer in the front, and here comes the elephant out of the, out of the tall grass staring you [00:42:00] down on the road. You’re just not gonna be able to back up quickly enough.
Clay Croft: Yeah, and that’s such a short wheel based trailer. That you don’t back that thing up fast.
Scott Brady: It’s not fast.
Matt Scott: You just don’t back it up. You just make a U-turn.
Clay Croft: So you’d have to just, you really would just have to turn and burn.
Scott Brady: Which hopefully you’d be able to. So yeah, just stick that, stick that trailer at the back.
Clay Croft: Yeah. Well, we wanted an adventure. It sounds like we’re gonna get it.
Scott Brady: You’re Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, Africa is the place. Yeah. It is the place. It’s, it’s in my experience, everybody.
Matt Scott: It’s become kind of my new happy place.
Scott Brady: Everybody’s got their own.
Matt Scott: You can camp, you can stay in a five star hotel anywhere.
Scott Brady: I mean, they have Rosé.
Matt Scott: And they just have so many options.
Scott Brady: They make Rosé there.
Matt Scott: Well, and it’s South African and it’s so cheap. On my honeymoon, they’re handing me bottles of it. Drinking Rosé in the back of a safari car while looking at like leopards.
Scott Brady: Yeah. It’s kind of amazing.
Matt Scott: Straight outta the bottle. That was a great honeymoon.
Clay Croft: I hope to be drinking a Rosé looking outta the back of my car, in Africa. So we’re excited.
Scott Brady: Well, that sounds fantastic. So you’ve got three vehicles going. You’ve got a trailer going, you got a seven person crew with the opportunity [00:43:00] to, to add some local guides along to support which I think will make a big difference. The one thing that I noticed with locals is that their, their vision is attuned to the animals. So like when we would go with Jess from Ezion out on a safari, I would not, I would not be seeing anything. And he’d be like, oh, there’s the leopard right underneath the, the bush over there. And then he’d point, and I’d be looking and look and I have really good eyesight and I’m looking and looking. And then finally he would whip a tail or something and then I would see it. But he saw it just driving down the road. You know, the locals that get into the bush a lot are, well, are well tuned to seeing the animals. Like you see a deer or an elk because you’re used to your environment. Like, you know, when the animal stands out, you’ve become attune to it. So the, the locals really helped for that.
Clay Croft: It’s gonna be good.
Scott Brady: Sounds good. Sounds amazing. Sounds amazing. Well, what else is going on, clay? You’ve got the, the overlander network up and running?
Clay Croft: Yeah. So this year yeah. We’ve kind of done some business restructuring with x overland. So we, we’ve had the [00:44:00] overlander network, we’ve had the overlander. Clothing line. We’ve had all kinds of different things that we were trying to do. And this year we just said, you know what, we’re gonna pull it all under one house, all one brand, manage one thing. So we pulled the network, it’s now the, the x overland network now, and X overlands website, X overland film fest, all that’s all under one house. Which when we did that, it was like a breath fresher, like, ah, okay. Yeah. We were focusing on one thing. We got it. Dialed. So that’s kind of the big news. We’re working hard on the network.
Matt Scott: I just saw that you just added a another series trial.
Clay Croft: Yeah, we got 4. 4 new series, that we’re working on right now. So we got, dust of Glory. Richard Nally are out, shoot right now. They shoot, they produce an episode about once a month or so as they travel and do their thing. Yeah. And then we’ve got a eight part cooking show coming out with, gone. Gone Dirt and called Gone Cooking. We’re having fun. Yeah. And it’s just trying to build the best high-end content that we possibly can on the network, because that’s the place where it can get rewarded. Yeah. Like building really high end content for YouTube. Ugh. [00:45:00] It’s, it’s, it’s painful, painful.
Matt Scott: YouTube just seems exhausting these days. It’s, it’s pretty.
Clay Croft: It is exhausting. It’s, we call it the hamster wheel. Yeah. You know, and you’re, you’re always.
Scott Brady: The Hamster wheel of death.
Clay Croft: Yeah, yeah. Just chasing everything and, and so really high end quality stuff isn’t rewarded, so we’re trying to. Be that place and produce really good online content, but it’s behind a paywall. But that’s how it gets done, you know?
Scott Brady: Yeah. Well it’s, yeah, you can’t, it’s not fair for people to expect you to do it for free cuz it costs a lot of money to produce high.
Matt Scott: Well I know I need to get my subscription.
Clay Croft: So we got all kinds of stuff going. We’re, yeah. You know.
Scott Brady: You guys have a great podcast. You guys are doing great on that.
Clay Croft: Oh, thank you. Yeah, check out the podcast too. X Overland.
Scott Brady: Podcast as well. So you guys are doing awesome work. It’s always just such a pleasure to see ya, Clay, and see your family and see how well you guys are doing.
Clay Croft: Thank you. Yeah, you too. You too. And I haven’t seen you in a while, man.
Matt Scott: It’s been too long.
Clay Croft: We’ve been chatting back and forth. But it’s good to sit down together.
Scott Brady: Clay, anything else you wanna share with the audience? Any, any, updates you want to wanna give us?
Clay Croft: No. We’re just kind of cranking on working hard to build a, the best brand we possibly can, [00:46:00] thanks to everybody who watches our stuff. Listens to our things. And encourages us and. Gives us good feedback on stuff. I really appreciate that. Thanks for letting us do what we do, you know, and yeah, just very thankful for everybody out there listening.
Scott Brady: Yeah. Well, we’re thankful for you, Clay, and we’re thankful for all of you for listening, and we’ll talk to you next time.
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