Overlanding vs Car Camping:Does Your Weekend Count?
If you go back to the same campsite every night, Anthony calls it camping. Overlanding is a planned 100 to 150 mile route over two or three days, camping wherever you land. Neither is better, and he admits he camps a lot more than he overlands.
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A short trip, a reserved campsite, and the vehicle you already own. Where does camping become overlanding—and when does the distinction stop being useful?
Transcript
This week's discussion: camping and overlanding. What's the difference, and is there a difference?
When people say "let's go camping," we take that as setting up camp at one location. Our vehicles are alongside us the whole time, and we have a dedicated campsite. Even if we leave in the vehicles during the day, we come back to that same campsite at night. That's what we call camping.
Overlanding is a little more detailed, a little more off-road dedicated. Our understanding of overlanding here at Asphalt & Dirt is that you sit down and pre-plan a route, let's say 100 to 150 miles, that takes you about two or three days to complete. Every day you progress through the route. Day one, you get through maybe 30 miles. Wherever you end up, you set up camp and pop up your rooftop tent.
This is where the rooftop tent comes in. You pop it open, hop up in your tent and sleep for the night. In the morning you close it up and keep going, instead of breaking down and setting up a ground tent.
So that's overlanding to us: make it 30 or 40 miles through the day, set up camp, pop the rooftop tent, and in the morning close it up, have a cup of coffee, make something quick on a little grill and keep it rolling. Another 30 or 40 miles, set up camp wherever you land, and keep it going with a plan.
Overlanding isn't going to a dedicated campsite. Like I keep saying, that is camping. There's nothing wrong with camping and nothing wrong with overlanding. One isn't better than the other. They're both great, they're just different experiences.
Something more family oriented would be camping. You go into town, see some things with your family, your wife, your kids, come back to camp, have a campfire, hang out, maybe go see a couple of trails. Overlanding is dedicated: we're going to be off-roading 10 hours a day, moving forward, obstacles, just keeping it going.
Again, nothing wrong with either one. I actually like both. I do a lot more camping than overlanding, although we do intend to get into more overlanding moving forward. Catch us on the next one.
