A few years back, I wrote You (Probably) Don’t Need That Shit, a bunch of pontificating on how Keeping Up With the Joneses can lead us astray. In that time, I’ve dinked around with galley slides in another Jeep JKU, a full Decked drawer/slide system for a 5th gen Ram, and various other overland window dressing including, but not limited to: Jackery battery bank with solar panel, 1500W inverter, Roofnest and CVT roof top tents, hitchgates, auxillary controllers, and so on and so forth. Call me a hypocrite; I’ll pretend I’m being a sacrificial lamb.
Earlier tonight, Dan and I were talking on Slack about why I was abandoning my inverter. I originally installed it in the 5th gen Ram because FCA decided that their trucks were already at enough risk of burning to the ground randomly, so leaving 12V ports hot with no ignition was no good. I, of course, wouldn’t stand for such hand-holding. I recruited Dan for a solution that would let me charge the Stihl electric saw, Dometic fridge overnight, and endless camera batteries/phones/drones/what-have-you. After shenanigans that I’ll have to address elsewhere, I sold that Ram and found myself back at square one. Square one in this instance being finding a set of bolt-in tons from a ‘95 Ram 3500 for my ‘99 half ton and ordering up 4.88s, chromoly shafts, a pair of Tru Tracs, 38” Falkens, and more…more on that later.
In any event, I find myself having come back full circle. I recently bought a Coleman blackout instant tent for a fraction of what I spent on either my used Roofnest or new CVT RTTs. I’ve got Bi Mart cots in the garage to go inside it, and my Mr Buddy heater is waiting in the wings for snow season. Once the 2nd gen is drivable under its own power with the new parts, all of the whizbang Gucci gear will be abandoned in favor of dropping a basecamp and going romping around on most runs. Funny to think that 22 year old me would be giving the head nod to grey hair me in this instance. There’s something to be said for returning to your roots and going with what you know. Which is the point of revisiting this topic a few years later.
If you asked me why I’ve poured my time, money, and perhaps my sanity down the drain in this sphere over the years, I’d tell you that simply seeing the peaks and deserts of the western US is the only why I need. Driving along Colorado exposure above timberline, staring out across the green groves of Cascadia pine underneath their snow-capped peaks, or listening to the wind assail the sandstone bluffs of Utah are all equal parts of my appeal to heaven. For all of my machinations and “streamlining”, some of the most important and memorable times being in those heavens have been absent of any sort of fanfare. In fact, in many instances, the gear that the internet pushes on us as efficient (if not mandatory) has gotten directly in the way.
Roof tents rattle and groan in heavy wind, and they fill with condensation in spring/winter. Fold-down expedition tables lack a serious amount of real estate for cookware and coffee making. In-bed or in-cab drawer systems necessitate opening the tailgate or hatch every. Single. Time. you need to quickly grab an odd item; the fancier versions with top access hatches are comically expensive. Homebrew solutions with plywood weigh as much as a freighter anchor. DC to DC chargers, inverters, and all of their various electrical safety solutions are expensive, technically-demanding to install properly, and can still arc past their failsafes and turn your truck into a five figure brush pile. And if all goes well, you have to button it all up for a run to town for some nightcrawlers to fish the lake with or town beers with the boys.
The last two trips I took at the time of this publication went as such:
-I took my 2nd gen Ram out to a favorite shooting/camping spot in western OR with a couple of the boys. We all set up paper & steel targets, ran some SUT/CQB stuff under the NODs, and then lit a giant fire to wind down at before retiring to our trucks and ground tents. I slept on my cot in my Gazelle T4 like a baby, then used my EZ up to cook under and hide from the sun in the middle of the 80-something day. Food and beers were pulled outta my cheap roto-molded cooler, and all was well.
-I took the ol’ GMT800 Burb up to an area we’ll be hunting for 3rd rifle this year in CO with the squad. We fished and caught multiple rainbows, brookies, and tiger trout up at the lake, then cooked over our giant fire among a grove of deadfall and standing dead tailor-made for wood processing. I slept in the back of the truck in my Teton hunting bag, and once again cooked under a cheap EZ up while pulling food and drink from my discounted, 7 year old Pelican cooler.
In neither instance did I need anything but some decent AT tires, food and drink, and good company to do cool stuff away from the trucks with. Do demands change on week-long runs? Month-long? Absolutely. But for better or worse, those runs constitute less of my total time out than local runs and weekenders.
So, I implore this upon you, Dear Reader: re-examine your why, then clean up your how. Are you an overnight MT camper that’s out to toss a fly rod into a stream when life permits? If so, do you really need/want to stress about building that RV style off grid power system? Are you a UT weekend warrior who’s all about blasting drops and pushing pedals on the inclines? If so, doesn’t it make more sense to drop a grounder at your spot than pack/unpack RTT and awning every morning? If you’re gonna go try your hand at pretzeling driveshafts or spitting out stubs on world-class NorCal trails, do you really want half a ton of B.S. interfering with your center of gravity and weighing you down on climbs?
Don’t get me wrong: Sportsmobiles are awesome for crushing the Pan American highway or doing Nat Park tours. RTTs absolutely slay the BDRs and Ultimate Adventure. Full timers will certainly want power solutions. Just remember the old adage: form follows function. And there are many badass functions that will never necessitate the stress and financial burden of Instagram’s forms. Discern where you fall on the spectrum accordingly.
-JOSH