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Wabi-sabi Overland

Cozy, outdoor experiences in an ever changing world.

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Posted on November 16, 2019November 16, 2019 by Yvonne @Quilting Jetgirl

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← Truck Update 11/17/19
Heading South on the Dempster Highway
Heading South on the Dempster Highway
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Throwback to the LMTV (M1078) that Yvonne and I purchased surplus from the military in the spring of 2016 and spent a year of hard work refurbishing ourselves. We had previously restored/refurbished other vehicles before, and the LMTV turned out great, but in the end, we decided to sell the LMTV and start all over again with a Unimog U1300L. We got our Unimog in 2017, worked on it like mad, and we were on the road full time in the spring of 2019. It was all a ton of work, but we sure learned a lot. When we got the LMTV, we only knew of two other LMTV/FMTV overland truck builds happening in the US. Now there must be a hundred of them out there. It’s amazing how popular they are now. LMTV are a lot of truck for the price, but we really preferred the smaller size and mechanical simplicity of our Unimog as a base vehicle for extended overland travel.
My wife and I were just going through some of our old photos from right at 20 years ago. It’s crazy how fast time goes by. In some ways it feels just like yesterday, and at the same time, it's amazing how much the world has changed. We would hit the road with no plan, no GPS, and cell phones weren’t much of a thing. I guess these days people would call those week-long trips “overlanding”, but we used to call it going on a road trip, going camping, or going out exploring. Regardless of the name, we have always enjoyed it.
This is a travel rig concept that I've been working on in the background for the last few years. It would be a vehicle for the 2 of us to travel in for long overland trips. The habitat has a 4' by 6'2" bed (convertible to a dinette), a small kitchen, and a composting toilet. I've played around with 23 configurations, and I kind of like this one. This is a pop top with standing height.
It’s hard to believe that we reached the Arctic Ocean in Tuktoyaktuk over 2 years ago. After spending over a year and a half building the truck, it was fun to be one of the first vehicles to reach the Arctic Ocean in 2019 when the Arctic river crossings first opened along the Dempster Highway. It sure has been a crazy 2 years since then. We are thankful we were able to have this experience.
We added the finishing touches to the custom cab hardtop this week. The outside got a nice, glossy coat of white paint and we put speckled texture paint on the inside surface. It looks really sharp.
Well, you might not be hearing from us for a little while as we regroup a bit. We sold the truck to a great experienced overland couple and they came and picked it up. You can follow along on their adventures @searchandrec.
These are a few video clips as we drove along the Dempster Highway and crossed the Arctic circle. We saw a lot of wildlife along the way. This particular grizzly ran ahead of us and then circled around behind us to check us out again. It ended up coming extremely close to the truck, so we decided to leave the area.
I find the Mog easy to work on. It's nice to work on a vehicle with maintenance ease designed into it.
Now that we are back, we are starting to go through little video clips that we shot during the trip. It’s kind of fun because we can relive little bits of the trip as we go through the files.
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