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FOURWHEELER OVERLAND ADVENTURE 2022 - NEW WILDPEAK R/T TIRES

Some people might be wondering like what some of the differences are between Overland Adventure and Ultimate Adventure. Overland is much more about exploring the backcountry and taking the road less traveled, but not necessarily the most difficult road less traveled. Seeing the beautiful vistas this year, it's been a ton of history - which I am a huge World War II history buff. I've always wanted to explore the Desert Training Center, and I never had the opportunity to do it until this week. So that's been amazing to me. You know, we're really not far from the major interstate and we've traversed some incredible terrain that 99% of the people that are on that interstate will never see. There's some incredible beauty out here. And no matter where you are, some people think, you know, this desert is just kitty litter. No, it's the exact opposite. And that's why we're all here: to explore the road less traveled.

I've always been a huge fan of Four-Wheeler Magazine. I've been four-wheeling for twenty-plus years, and I’ve always been a huge fan of Ultimate Adventure. Knowing full well that my Isuzu was never going to make Ultimate Adventure, I saw Overland Adventure pop up and I was like, what is this? And so then, you know, I got Motor Trend TV, so we were watching it on TV and on YouTube and I'm going, well that's kind of cool. And it's not quite Ultimate Adventure, but we could have a lot of fun and it looks like an adventure. And we're always about the adventure.

We've been married for 28 years and that's been our whole life together; it’s been let's have adventures. In kind of a post-COVID world, it was kind of fun to be able to get out with good people. So we applied and actually got a notification that said, “thanks, but you were selected this year.” And then like three days later we got another email that said, “hey, we had someone back out. Do you want to come?” And we said, “oh yeah, we’re in.” Let me back up. I said, “oh, absolutely, we're in.” And then I went to Molly and said, “hey, um, we got selected for this thing and we need to go in like a few weeks. And she said, “okay.” And here we are. A lot of fun. Next adventure, here we go. That's right.

I'm Tim, and my partner Kelsey is here. And she's the reason we're here. Previous to Jeeps, my off-roading was in military vehicles. And I met Kelsey in 2016, and she is into off-roading in Jeeps. She bought a Wrangler and I wanted a Wrangler. And then when I was done with the Wrangler, I bought this beautiful Gladiator. If you want to do this to the extreme, then you have to have a Jeep - as far as I'm concerned. The trail's been amazing so far, and typically I have to drive all the time. Kelsey has been driving this entire trip. And not only has the Jeep been doing amazing, she's been doing amazing. I mean, we've been on some trails in our other Jeeps where she's like, “oh, I'd rather get out because the off-camber.” She's sucked it up and driven right through them. And it's been amazing. The camaraderie, all the people here. It's incredible. We love it. We love this kind of thing.

I grew up four-wheeling with my dad. From the time I bought a 1969 Toyota Land Cruiser FJ 40 as my first vehicle when I was 16 years old and fixed that up, I've been four-wheeling ever since. In fact, I've still got a couple of FJ 40s. And Megan has always been pretty into it all growing up. All my kids grew up four-wheeling, but out of the three, Megan really took to it the most. So now we've got her a 2004 TJ that's all set up. So we can go out together and do some rock crawling. I take one of my FJ 40s or take my FJ 40 and she'll take her TJ and we'll go out.

So here on day three and kind of looking back: highlights, definitely going up the dunes. I didn't air down, I didn't think anything about it, I just sort of went for it with 40 psi and got stuck. Backed down, got stuck again. Like, okay, I'm rethinking this one, you know, with 12,000 pounds of bread box trying to go up the dune. But that was super fun, watching everybody go up the dunes. Just seeing what 37 inch tires will do is really cool. So that was definitely a highlight.

I loved rock crawling and going through the spine of that Red Canyon Jeep Trail was super killer. A little death-defying. The shelf road stuff was really cool.

This is great because it's such a huge community, and there's so many people out here that we haven't even had a chance to talk to everybody yet. But the whole goal is to meet them and explore everything with them. Learn about the culture and the history of this place and just see everything. What is there not to love? Everything we see out here is something we only see in images or we see in books, or we see in movies. And so now we're actually out here living it, and it's a dream come true.

Overland Adventure 22 has been about two years in the making, at least from the original ideation of it. This is one of my favorite places of the desert, and I knew I wanted to bring people out here to expose them. Because when you think of California you don't always think of what we did. I wanted to have a through line and a story to tell. And this year's story was the General George S. Patton Desert Training Center. A lot of people don't realize that Patton came and trained our troops for invasion of North Africa for World War II, right here in the California Mojave Desert. And where we're standing right now in Goffs, California was actually one of the logistic camps called Camp Goffs. Here is the Mojave Desert Heritage and Cultural Association. I knew this would be the absolute perfect spot to intertwine history, military, and the Mojave Desert into one awesome trip. We ended up visiting four or five of the camps. We did over 350 miles of off-roading, all types of vehicles. And it was just an unbelievable trip. I narrated the entire time and let people know what they were looking at; what the geology was, the botany, the history, what you were looking at over there, what those lines in the desert meant. All the things that you typically drive by on the freeway and would never give a second thought to.

Overland Adventure overall was an amazing success. We owe it to the sponsors and partners who stepped up to join us, like Falken Tires. And again, 350 miles of off-road in the desert, especially the Mojave Desert, it's everything. It's sand, it's rock, it's gravel, it's mud. We really saw everything on this trip, and you have to have a tire that you can count on that's going to be reliable to get you there and get you back. And we had the right tire for the trip and we were so happy and really fortunate that Falken has decided to be a partner again. I think it was a great mix, and what an amazing trip. Can't wait to do it again next year.