Get Out There Podcast

Lockdown

Photography during lockdown...

I am Billy Newman, a photographer and creative director that has served clients in the Pacific Northwest and Hawaii for 10 years. I am an author, digital publisher, and Oregon travel guide. I have worked with businesses and individuals to create a portfolio of commercial photography. The images have been placed within billboard, print, and digital campaigns including Travel Oregon, Airbnb, Chevrolet and Guaranty RV.

My photographs often incorporate outdoor landscape environments with strong elements of light, weather, and sky. Through my work, I have published several books of photographs that further explore my connection to natural places.

If you’re looking to discuss photography assignment work, or  a podcast interview, please drop me an email.  Drop Billy Newman an email here.

If you want to book a wedding photography package, or a family portrait session,  please visit  GoldenHourWedding.com or you can email the Golden Hour Wedding booking manager here.

If you want to look at my photography, my current portfolio is here.

If you want to purchase stock images by Billy Newman, my current Stock photo library is here.

If you want to learn more about the work Billy is doing as an Oregon outdoor travel guide, you can find resources on GoldenHourExperience.com.

If you want to listen to the Archeoastronomy research podcast created by Billy Newman, you can listen to the Night Sky Podcast here.

If you want to read a free PDF eBook written by Billy Newman about film photography: you can download Working With Film here. Yours free.

Want to hear from me more often?Subscribe to the Billy Newman Photo Podcast on Apple Podcasts here.

If you get value out of the photography content I produce, consider making a sustaining value for value financial contribution, Visit the Support Page here.

You can find my latest photo books all on Amazon here.

143-Billy-Newman-Photo-podcast_mixdown

Hey, what's going on? Thanks a lot for listening to this episode of The Billy Newman photo podcast recorded. I think, What is it now? May 1, 2020. Wow, the way we went through the year, I hope everybody's doing good through the coronavirus pandemic that's been going on and going over the whole world now; it's pretty crazy. Here in Oregon, fortunately, it's maybe a little lighter, though, there's kind of the social dynamics that have changed pretty recently, or, you know, over the last 45 days has been a lot of businesses that are closed, you know, with the lockdowns and stuff and a lot of people not really getting out or moving around and really been the same for me. So I figured I

should be

doing some podcasting, which sounds like a good time. But yeah, I wanted to talk a little bit about some public land stuff that I've been doing, which has always been kind of fun. And there's still a little bit of stuff that you can do even with during a time like, like right now. Where there's the state lockdowns, I'm not sure which state you're in or how it is. There's different regulations in each of the states. And really, some of them are actually more flexible than they had been prior to this. But there's really still a lot of land access on public lands through the western states. And I think through a lot of the states through the the east to hear a lot about the beach closures and some of these populated city areas. But that's not really the same across the United States in every capacity. Now there's parks that are closed parks are a different type of land management. Then your your public lands like BLM, or national forest land, national parks are closed. State Parks are closed state forests are closed. But really in a lot of places, there's public access to a lot of waterways, and a lot of land and forest areas that would be out in the western United States. I'm not sure quite what it is in California, they might have they might have gone through and done more specific closures here. In Oregon, as I looked up the US, fish and wildlife, I, their site, they had some COVID related information and they were instructing that bear season is still in fact starting April 15. turkey season is in effect, General hunting is in effect. fishing season is in effect fishing was close to out of state fishers. So I guess you couldn't come in from another state. Maybe Washington is what they're thinking about. They also closed the Columbia River to all fishing, I think because Washington is closed, all fishing shoot. So I don't know what Washington's rules are, they might have more more strict land access than what we've got here. But as it goes, you can go out in Oregon to public lands and walk around or hike or camp as long as you're kind of doing the social distancing stuff. Now there is an issue with I think the governor here in Oregon had instructed that people are not to use trailheads. That had been I suppose mistaken for not to use trails, but apparently by instruction of one of the directors of I think it's the Fremont Wynnum a national forest down in the Lake County area of Oregon had, I think posted a news article to like the Lake County local paper, but I was reading it, it instructed that rain, which is sort of a funny way to follow this up. But it didn't instructed that the governor's rules would be followed, so the trailhead would remain closed. But if you were to park off the side of the road in a way that didn't interfere with traffic, you could hike in to the trail from the side, but while avoiding the trailhead and this therefore would follow the governor's instruction, abide by social distancing regulations, and allow for access of the land in a continued fashion. So I guess that's how you're supposed to do it. I've done it a couple times. I've gotten out to a few public land locations and tried to do some traveling around and getting out and stuff I was trying to do some some some 360 degree photo work over the last couple of weeks, which has been really cool and I've enjoyed it a lot. I really liked doing the 360 stuff I think back in June of 2018 we had done a bunch of podcasts about some of the 360 photography stuff that we were trying to do some of the video stuff we were doing with the GoPro fusion at the time and that was all really cool and I liked that video a lot this time I was working with a Ricoh Theta zone and I was going around to a few locations to try and get some photographs. Specifically I think photographs a lot in this circumstance not so many videos. But but yeah really interested in the in the 360 photography stuff that I was able to, to edit together and to capture during that time. So that was cool, but I went out to an area in in Central Oregon. That was pretty cool and went up on like a hillside to do some 360 Working is cool out there because you can really see the topography of how the Great Basin was formed at the well, I guess like during the whole era of the Pleistocene as it was for a long-standing period of time, like a lake, it was just a big lake out there. And then as things started changing at the end of the Pleistocene, I think there were huge changes that ended the Great Basin stuff that ended a lot of the megafauna that was in the area. And that kind of changed the topography of the landscape over the last 10,000 years to be something that's much more of the high desert, sagebrush Juniper tree exposed rock landscape that we see today and a lot less of the forested, temperate kind of mountain climate that we have through the Cascades. And though part of Oregon, I'm sure it was always more dry,

given the range out of the Cascade Mountains there. But I think for a long period of time, as according to science signs posted on my drives, in areas where I go hiking sometimes, but you know, like when you get up to someplace and it says, you know, this area so such and such time ago had these animals in it? Well, you see, like giant beavers, or you see, like camels, or giant sloths, I guess, out of the area, too. There's all sorts of stuff that they had. That ended up being wiped out 100,000 years ago, 60,000 years ago, to, what 1020 10,000 years ago, something like that. There's a lot of changes that happened over the period of the Pleistocene, I guess, during what they call the quarternary period, a period of glaciations that the Earth has been involved in for the last 100,000 or 200, maybe million years. I'm not sure it's its last couple 100,000 years we've been going in these cycles of glaciations, or you know, we're in an ice age period. So we go into an ice age like we have ice on the Earth right now. It'll be more ice at a point and then less ice at a point. More ice at a pointless ice at a point. I guess it's been going on for what they say somewhere around like 200,000 years, these 30,000 year periods of glaciation to non glaciation. were like, I think we're coming. We're like on the far end of the Glacial Maximum now. So we had the with the Glacial Maximum about like, what, 11,000 12,000 years ago? Or is that right? No, I must have been, like 15 20,000 years ago that we are the maximum, then it started receding. I suppose. That's when we were able to No, that doesn't make sense. We had like the land bridge, like the Beringia stuff where people got over that was probably 15 to 20,000. sea levels were low, or they say, like, 400 feet, they squared along the coastlines.

They came over through the land. So that was all pretty long ago. Why anyway, at some point, like I was there, like, I'm

gonna figure out Wait, let me remember. Let me think back to 15,000 years ago, where was I? Yeah, I wasn't here. So I don't know what happened. But apparently, there's been some recorded evidence that I was learning about. And I think it's like Montverde, down in Chile. And that's a location where I think they carbon-dated something to 15,000 years old, like human remains, human element, remains, there's, there's like a few locations here in Oregon, where they, I guess, have evidence of the Clovis people that sort of around like the 1112 13,000 year mark. And then there's other evidence of things that are I don't know within like the it's time it's like anything from like 7500 years to 15,000 years ago seems to all kind of be in flux have a date, because there's really not many, not many perfect ways to date that. And if it's a cultural artifact, like a, an arrowhead, or a pot chart, or a scraper, there's there's some indication of how those things are going to be created, or how those artifacts are going to be created and how there's going to remain like Folsom points, or Clovis points are pretty distinct from each other, but they're not really culturally distinct from each other. So it could be like a variation of many different tribes and languages and peoples. All well unrelated to each other, but related with a similar vein of technology for a few 1000 years of you know, their tool use shape was kind of similar because they're all kind of from a similar descendency. But I think when you get like

more than 100 miles away, your language is separate over like a couple generations. You just got to speak different languages.

But man wild stuff anyway, so I don't remember where we started with this, but I was out in Eastern Oregon, exploring the Great Basin. I went up on a hillside and public land and I was doing some 360 photography work with the Ricoh zeta Oh, Ricoh Theta zone. That's what it is. And yeah, it was capturing some stuff on a hillside. Really beautiful areas up there where those ridges kind of drop in and out. And so it's cool when you get Like up to a higher elevation, you can kind of see the pockets of where these lakes and pools of water and kind of sat and rested for what seems like I think I was saying something about recording some 360 photographs up on some public land in the high desert, in the Lake County in Great Basin area of Eastern Oregon, beautiful spot over there. I really enjoy it. And yeah, it was awesome to use the Ricoh Theta zone to be capturing some images up in that area, it's cool when you're at a higher elevation. And with a 360 camera, you can kind of you can kind of it provides a little bit of a different perspective, it seems silly to see like wider, but when you re when you kind of replay those images, and you're able to sort of look around in context of what's the left and to the right, if you can't able to put together the context of the landscape a little better, a little faster than you could if you just had a series of individual photographs that had segments of the wider landscape captured and it was cool at that higher elevation, you can you can kind of look down to areas that we had been hiking around earlier in the day through some of the ridges and troughs, that would be over in that area.

And you can look down, you know, it's like 500 feet down in elevation to what we thought was kind of the mountain top pass and then pass that as another maybe 1000 foot or a couple of 100 foot drop in elevation as it goes down toward the lake basin area. So all that was pretty cool. And what was also cool about it is just sort of visualizing how popular that area had been in the past, I think, you know, prior to the Western expansion of the United States. And as 1000s of years passed by in this region of land in the northwest, it had been populated and that region specifically been populated by nomadic tribes that had been able to travel and subsist off of the wild game that was there, I think a lot of like antelope and deer, and it looks like bighorn sheep by some of their wedding or some kind of sheep, but it looks like that from from some of their their pictographs and petroglyphs information that they left there. And the dynamics of some of those populations of animals have changed in the time. Now given like modern data, no, I don't know if we're gonna see a lot of sheep out there in Lake County. But there's one drawn on a rock out there. So they must have been trying to look for it. There's a lot of them in the southwest as he moved into the I think the Mohawk tribes. for them. That's why I have a 3000 to 25 2000. I don't know, it's probably about 3600 years ago, so everything but or 100 years ago, really, I think it was like Captain jack over there Captain jack stronghold for the Murdoch Indian Reservation area. And that was like in the Indian Wars, the 1850s. So they'll ask to tell them, but yeah, there's some information about some of the piute, the pirate Indians, I think the Northern piute that were in that area of Southern southeastern Oregon, Nevada, then into Utah, Arizona and New Mexico if I kind of understood right, but I know there's some fluctuations in there. And differences and timing and stuff. But yeah, pretty cool stuff. It was really, it was awesome to get out there. It's getting, it's cool to get out and kind of walk around in some areas of some public land, where we still have some access and still get out to try and do some photography stuff. Even in this period where you're supposed to stay home and there's a lockdown it was, it was cool to kind of get out and try and do some exploring, and some social distance conscious. I mean, it's fine with me, I don't, I don't really have to be around a lot of people, it's better to do landscape wildlife photography worked while you're sort of in some type of isolation, I'm sure like a lot of hunters are kind of considering something like that too. You know, hunters, fishermen, people like hiking or, you know, a lot of those solo activities. It's cool that, you know, this kind of this time, sort of is provided a little bit of a reset for probably a lot of people out there to have a bit more time to invest in some of the things that they'd want to, I suppose a lot of folks are probably stuck more in their local area but

but it's a great time to, to get to invest in some things that seemed more important to you. So that's what I've been trying to do. I hope you guys are doing well. Thanks a lot for listening to this episode of The Billy Newman photo podcast. You can check out more at Billy Newman photo calm. I'll be doing a ton of updates over there. Airplane taking off. Sounds like prop plans about to fly over my head. It's like that scene in North by Northwest where Cary Grant starts getting run down by that biplane. That'd be scary. So that's not In the future. Anyway, check out more AbilityOne photo comm and doing a ton of updates over there. A lot of blog posts updated. New portfolio. New about page new homepage, new links to stuff. It's looking sharp guy, check it out. Thanks a lot.

Smith Rock Camping

by Billy Newman

Billy Newman Photo Podcast | 142 Smith Rock Camping

If you’re looking to discuss photography assignment work, or  a podcast interview, please drop me an email.  Drop Billy Newman an email here.

If you want to book a wedding photography package, or a family portrait session,  please visit  GoldenHourWedding.com or you can email the Golden Hour Wedding booking manager here.

If you want to look at my photography, my current portfolio is here.

If you want to purchase stock images by Billy Newman, my current Stock photo library is here.

If you want to learn more about the work Billy is doing as an Oregon outdoor travel guide, you can find resources on GoldenHourExperience.com.

If you want to listen to the Archeoastronomy research podcast created by Billy Newman, you can listen to the Night Sky Podcast here.

If you want to read a free PDF eBook written by Billy Newman about film photography: you can download Working With Film here. Yours free.

Want to hear from me more often?Subscribe to the Billy Newman Photo Podcast on Apple Podcasts here.

If you get value out of the photography content I produce, consider making a sustaining value for value financial contribution, Visit the Support Page here.

You can find my latest photo books all on Amazon here.

Produced by Billy Newman and Marina Hansen

Link

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142

Hey, what's going on? This is Billy Newman and you're listening to the Billy Newman photo podcast. Appreciate you guys checking it out again. I wanted to touch into the day and talk about a trip that I just just finished up going on out to have to Central Oregon over to the high desert area in Eastern Oregon, I guess it's Eastern Oregon kind of over near the bend area. We went up to Smith rock this last week and did some camping out over there. Had a great time is it's pretty nice but we did the the hike over there at Smith rock and I guess I wanted to do just to kind of show podcast about the area over by blacksmith rock some of the hiking that you can do and some of the the trip and photo stuff that we were working on over there. But yeah, I had a great time and over to Smith rock took off for a pretty quick, easy weekend trip. You know what's great about living here in Oregon on like the I five corridor is you can just kind of jump over to Eastern Oregon over over the cascade pass, which is definitely tracking a drive. It's different than just being on the freeway. But it's pretty cool. Yeah, jumping over the highways and getting over kind of into the backcountry in the Cascades and then heading over over the past and then down into the high desert area of Eastern Oregon over there. So yeah, with three sisters headed over to Tara bond, and then went into the Smith rock State Park area. Really, man. The thing I guess I should say is Yeah, Smith rock is just world-class camping or hiking area. You really can't camp there. I guess you can kind of camp out in an attempt you can kind of bivouac there. I guess some of the rock climbers do that. But there's also like another spot the area we can to is this campground called skull hollow, which is about maybe five miles away or so it's really not too far of a drive but yeah, hop in the car, go around the mountain. And then on the backside of that you can you can hang out and set up a camp I think it's there we were at was probably, I guess, I guess it's BLM maybe it's like state forest or something stuff. But it was dispersed camping areas. So you can kind of drive up this road, pull out on the side and kind of walk your tent over and you know just a couple of feet and set it up, hang out there is all free. And you know, you're just sitting out there in the, in the scrub of the sagebrush and on some lumpy ground. And I think there's like open-range cattle that walk through there to other times we can't there in the past. I think Marina and I had been there maybe years ago, and we had camped just a couple spots from the place that we were this weekend. We put up the tent, hung out there had the car park there and then that morning, we woke up in the tent, we could hear like a bunch of big footsteps around and sounds and animals and we were thinking, oh man, that's weird. And we hands up the screen on the tent looked outside and we were surrounded by cows. So yeah, the cows the cows just kind of walkthrough in their little group during the night or during the morning and ended up in the acreage around where we were. Yeah, kind of cool about open range cattle and stuff but it's fun hanging out over there. Yeah, check it out. The skull hollow campground was cool. Get our camp set up over there was cool. Had a couple tenths going and yeah, took off, went over to Smith rock did the hiking trip over that that was pretty cool. That's where we did some of our photo staff. Most of the hike was like kind of a cool afternoon hike. It's really a great one because it's, it's a couple miles. It's definitely challenging. If you're not super used to hiking, you could do it, but you could try it and try out for a little bit. We're not trained for Urbino Get ready. I got busted up my feet, I got some hotspots and stuff. So it's like maybe there's three miles four miles, I'm not sure it takes about four hours or so. Okay, taking like an average sort of mellow pace to it, but it's cool, you'll be the lower part Yeah, it goes around like the crooked River. Maybe it's only two hours. I don't know. We went around the lower part around the crooked River, which is really cool how the way that the area was formed is really like if you kind of look at it from the outside me the ranch land it's all surrounding is this pretty high or it's higher in elevation, it's just kind of this this flatter area and then it comes up to the crooked river where it drops off into this rim Rock Canyon and then Smith rock is is the volcanic remnant that's been left there as the erosion of the river is kind of wrapped by and pulled away all the sediment that was there that would just kind of make it look like a average boring hillside. And so now you have these these really exposed like vivid kind of crisp volcanic rocks that are just alien to the activity that we see in erosion commonly across the earth here so smooth rock yeah pretty cool pretty unique kind of spot to go hike around at but yeah really fun to kind of jump in there really interesting kind of spot to be yeah did the hike around the crooked riverside up to the backside where like monkey faces I was really cool with with a couple people that hadn't been there before. So we got to catch on that that area for the first time and yeah, monkey faces such as Cool phenomenon because really when you come around that corner it does. anthem is the anthropomorphic I guess it's animal. Yeah, anthropomorphic look like and

like that's when you make an animal a person, right? When is it when you make a rock an animal? Hmm, I don't know that word, but it looks like a monkey. It just looks like a monkey's face. It's what's called monkey face. No way. So, so yeah, we hiked around that spire of monkey face and started going up the Misery Ridge trail. It's just a bunch of switchbacks. It kind of gets you up in elevation to get you to the top of the the Smith rock rock there and yeah walked around the top here for a bit and then hiked down the backside of it. Yeah Really cool spot to check out over on this with rock side there's a bunch of other camping and hiking and stuff you can kind of do there other than just the the top over loop of the trail but there's there's other trails that kind of go around the east side of the park that's got some really cool stuff and then we're just talking about hiking and taking pictures and stuff a little bit so far but really the cool thing there is all the rock climbing stuff that you do all the the sport climbing that goes on. And and I think that's really cool. There's there's a there's really a lot more hikers that today that there were there were sport climbers. There's there's definitely like a handful of people that were out there, but I didn't see. And it's probably because the conditions were I think scheduled to be pretty bad. Like I think it was raining a lot of the day so I don't think a lot of people probably set up their their rock climbing rigs for a day in the rain but but I've definitely seen people there and really odd times of the year like super early March, middle of the winter, early April and stuff, maybe there's a better time of the year to to do some of the types of climbs and stuff. But yeah, I was hoping to find some people do like a multi pitch climb. I remember seeing that a couple years ago on one of the surfaces where you're just thinking like, Wow, those people are hundreds of feet up. That means they like to bring the rope up once and then pull it all up and then lead climbing again. And then like Malaysia is just like wow, how do you do that? That's so so yeah, really scary, kind of interesting stuff, how they do all the all the rock climbing stuff. But man, I wish I wish I knew a little bit more about how I got into it, kind of what I don't know as I guess it'd be like gym sport climbing for weeks, not not months even. And it's fun, it's fun to check out and learn about, but man like being on the rock over it's with rock is a lot different I got to go climb over there one time years ago. And just like getting on the rock and trying to like fill out the routes and stuff is so much different than kind of going for that hole on the wall and the rock gym and stuff is just really interesting kind of get the experience of being hot and cold. And having all your like outdoor gear on stuff and you know, just kind of exposed to the wind and the elements and stuff. And then you're also trying to like pull up this pull up this mountainside to at the same time. So it's kind of fun. It's it's cool getting used to data no trying to rock climb stuff, but but man, yeah, interesting, doing the climb and being delayed and doing all that stuff. But as far as stuff goes, we did a couple a couple 360 things that was kind of cool. Going over to Smith rock in June, we're trying to get into some 360 photo work where last year, we did like a lot of a lot of video clips, which is really cool. I really liked those stock video clips we produced in a lot of places. And we shot a ton of photos too, which is awesome. But But now I'm also trying to get into a bunch of a bunch of pieces where we can, well, I want to try and get the I want to try and get like collections of photos. And then I'm sort of starting to learn about where you can put these in like virtual tours. So you can put maybe four or five or whatever would take you know, you kind of go to the specific spots in a location or something and then you you get the 360 photograph and then you can kind of pieces together as a tourist, you can go from one 360 to the next 360 is sort of this immersion. Well, so I'm trying to check that out, trying to learn about it, if that'll work for me very well. But But yeah, I've tried to do some 360 photo stuff where you take the photo, then you pull it into Affinity Photo, that's another program. I'm using it on the Mac right now, I think it's available on PC as well. It's sort of a Photoshop competitor, you can buy outright, I think for maybe $79 or something like that. It's it's really not as expensive as the Creative Cloud purchases for a continuation. But the reason I guess I bring up affinity photos, it's kind of noted as one of the better tools right now to project your stitch to 360 photo as an actual equo rectilinear projection in the program. And then you can still use the editing programs in the program. So um, so like, I guess like the new Final Cut Pro has an ability to project the 360 photograph while you're editing it. So you could add in new materials to it like, I don't know, like just plates of information that'll stay up in the 360 space that you're at as you move through it. It's interesting how it is you can kind of stitch things into the fabric of the scene within Final Cut in the video and you can heal

your Nadir point. So the base view is your Nadir at the top of you as your Zenith point. So the Either point in a 360 photograph is where that tripod is going to be or where you are going to be in the photographer is going to be below it sort of thing. So. So that's kind of a, I don't know, an interesting part of it, where you got to kind of go through and I guess this is what affinities for is you open up the photo, after it's stitched, you open it in affinity, and then you can go down and he'll put the base there where your tripod was or where the person was that was taking the picture. And then you can have this kind of full 360 photograph without kind of a block at the bottom that says it's just a couple people. So yeah, it's kind of cool. So I'm trying to open it up in affinity and do a couple color adjustments to it, which is cool, that you can go through and do do kind of like post color correction stuff to some of the photographs, you can kind of do that with the 360 video, but you also kind of can't do it with the 360 video as well. You kind of had some Oh, yeah, color correction. Like you can't have been Final Cut. But it's it's really not the same as photo editing, I guess, you know, obviously. But it's kind of cool. We've been having a good time trying to edit together those the 360 photos. I'm trying to go through a bunch of the photos I'd taken last year as well. And put those together and hope to well, no is it? What is that 361? I skipped in my mind right now. There's like this 360 view year. I think it's V or VR. And it's sort of like a YouTube channel for 360 videos and stuff. YouTube also takes 360s as well as many other places. But it's again, it's kind of a cool little photo and video sharing site for 360 content and and social network and app and all that kind of stuff. But But yeah, I put some stuff up there. And that's kind of people that are specifically interested in looking at 360 images and content would go But yeah, it's it's kind of fun. So yeah, 360 staff, some photo stuff had the Canon equipment out there. I was trying to take some landscape photos was cool. The weekend weather was, I think I had mentioned there was kind of a forecast to rain. Really, that was like some thunderstorms that were blowing across the Cascades. I think they're just a bigger weather system overall this weekend. Not to mention the Perseids, which is you get back to on another podcast that was probably this but they got kind of clouded out for me. Shoot, I want to see some meteor showers. So not talking about the Perseus but I guess kind of going back just the campus stuff, it was cool. We were really happy that we got to go out and do the camping stuff. Sorry that we didn't get to see the Parisians. But I don't know, I guess we're camping out and stuff. So that was pretty cool. It was thunderstorms that rolled over the Cascades. And then we have these big heads. We're really fortunate that I guess the big system, which I live a really active, I pulled up the weather map on on dark sky, the weather app that I have on my phone. And you can see just this big red hotspot, maybe 25 miles or 30 miles to the north east of us. And it was probably just you know, a ton of rain, hail ton of lightning. So I'm really glad we didn't get wiped over by that. That's pretty cool. But it really was a cool kind of textured night where there's just a lot of clouds. And like a lot of kind of thunderstorms and stuff. It's cool that the airplanes are kind of coming in real low, they had to go around around this huge thunderstorm system. So they were coming in real low. And kind of making these sort of strange routes was just kind of fun to see that I remember seeing that a couple of times in the past when thunderstorms have come in, and airlines would have to take just these kind of big alternate routes to get around this, this thunderstorm cells. So that was kind of cool. Check it out, we were taking pictures of it as the sun was going down, there's a rainbow kind of red as the evening was coming, coming to a close of our camps. That was pretty fun, get some cool pictures, that and that's what I love. I love that that time of day or you know, right at the end of the day, as a certain type of lighting effect that happens when there's really like mostly clouds over the sky. But right as the evening the western sky has a gap where it's clear, and the sun is able to shine through that pocket there. And you get a lot of light that bounces back between the cloud surface above you and the ground below you where you're kind of in this little pocket where it just sort of sort of reflects against itself, but you get this kind of warmer, sort of diffuse town around everything kind of changes the way the shadows are. It's different than overcast, you know where you get a diffusion of the shadows. But this one, you get a really crisp kind of saturated quality to the light. And it's a lot better than I think the softer sort of white light that you get in the diffuse circumstances of overcast days. But yeah, you get a lot of cool kind of rich contrast in those landscape photos with that kind of lighting condition. Sort of during that golden hour time with the right kind of cloud effect and stuff. Really beautiful, really soft kind of easy to expose for photography kind of lights up. Yeah beautiful spot to be really kind of surreal, colorful looking. location and evening and yeah, fun hanging out. Watch

the thunderstorms, camping out getting rained on, maybe getting one a little bit. All part of the experience of being outside being an Easterner Again, definitely got a little sunburn. sore. All the rest of it. But yeah, good going out and keep it out and stuff. Thanks a lot for listening to this episode of the building human photo podcast appreciate guys tuning in, checking it out again, and listen to me talk for a little while about what was it? photos in Eastern Oregon and Smith rock. Appreciate it.

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Billy Newman Marina Hansen

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Get Out There | 10 Rafting Equipment

Investing in a raft. The cost of frame, oars, and raft for professional and private whitewater outfitting.

How to spend 30K at Sotar and NRS.

Billy Newman Robert Biscarret

Get Out There | 10 Rafting Equipment

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Get-out-there-10-Outfitting-Raft-Equipment_otter.ai

Hello, and thank you very much for listening to this episode of The get out there podcast. My name is Billy Newman. And I'm here today with Robert Vickery. Robert, how are you doing? Hey, doing well, Billy, how you doing? Doing good, man. Thanks a lot for doing Episode 10 of the podcast. It's pretty cool. Yeah, no, I'm excited, man. What is it? What episode is it? Episode 10. Now, Episode 10. Yeah, moving into double-digit. So sets. That's a big. That's our first milestone. It's great, man. That's right. But But yeah, definitely. Daddy at the beginning, it'll be cool. I think it'd be cool to see like, what what we kind of build on or like how the show kind of grows or evolves over the next few months as we put it together a little bit more.

Yeah. Interesting. I like you know, the more we do it, the more it evolves. And I am kind of curious, these things. Like when you do stuff like this, whether it's any type of project, when you work with somebody, it always evolves in some different way that reflects personalities. And it's always fun.

Yeah, I want to grow it a bit. And I want to try and make it like a little bit unique or, you know, just so it's kind of kind of interesting to us at least. But I like it being honest. And being about like some of the cool stuff that we remember about. About our trips in the outdoor stuff that we've done. We need Intro music. Oh, yeah. No, I want to I want to work on our sound design.

Yeah. And again, just like Slayer.

Oh, yeah. That's, that's the the grand outdoors sound. It's exactly what nature sounds like. A babbling brook? Sounds like Yeah. I was thinking about it. This week, I wanted to talk to you about some of the raft experience that you'd had. Yeah, on the road river, and probably how to apply a lot of that rafting experience outside of that to just other rivers and other experiences more more in general about like the equipment use of rafting and of doing like, well probably do a multi-day trips, but I was also thinking about people who are interested in doing like smaller trips. And you you, you tell me, I was thinking about it in this way of sort of like three different categories of if you were going to be like a like a bigger trip, like what you would think about for like setting up a raft chip for for like a guide company or an outfitter, what you're looking at there as a guide, or maybe like what you did to rig a raft and have it set up and like what kind of equipment that was or probably what kind of expands to or what kind of investment it is to get into that level a raft and then maybe like what it's like for someone that was going to set up a private trip. And we're trying to figure out the difference between like the the public commercial side of rafting. Yeah, what it would be like for a hobbyist like for what you did, picking up your your first draft and trailer and frame. I want to think about that a little bit. And then there's also kind of the other end to have, we use what you and I used to be of people that would like pick up a day rental, or pick up, like, you know, whatever smaller thing that they had, and there's kind of that like day trips section of it, too. So we're going to talk about those three levels of kind of getting ready or, or what's involved equipment-wise. For doing.

Yeah, so that's, that's, those are good topics. I like that. Um, yeah, there's there's a few different levels of it. And I guess it all comes, like how serious you are about it, how much you love being on the water. And, you know, when it comes down to it, everybody, for the most part, enjoys being on the water when it's, you know, a hot summer day or something. But it's it's constantly it's like anything you do. Oh, yeah, everything's good. Any hobby? Yeah, hobbies, man.

It seems like the minimum cost for a hobby is about $1,000. So it seems like I remember them, but there's different tiers to it. Because there's $1,000 hobbies, there's $10,000 hobbies, there's like 50 that, like if you want to be a racecar driver?

Well, let's see. I think that's the difference between a hobby and a lifestyle, though, I think that's when your hobby becomes part of your lifestyle. I so, so perfect example is, is I'm in like that $10,000 obvious thing now, but when you're voting, but it's also a huge part of my life. And I you know, I use it for my work as well as my as well as my pleasure. So yeah,

I mean that I think that's where really a lot of adults end up taking their hobbies eventually, to a place where it's, it's pretty serious. It's like a pretty serious component of their lifestyle. Okay, interesting. That is, but yeah, I definitely believe that that your investments probably pushed up to the $10,000 range. Amanda said about like a lot of the photography stuff that I've gotten. We've pulled up a bunch of this stuff, and we've been laying it out. And yeah, investments like way up above that range of sound. But you imagine like early on when we were getting into guitars in high school. Yeah, like if you get the half stack and a guitar, you kind of look into like the 1000 dollar range. If you're looking at like a season pass, and like a new snowboard, that's like $1,000 or so like every every hobby was like 1000 like 1000 bucks. There's kind of like a market price point around that, that amount. That's funny. I've never really looked at it, though. Right is weird. Yeah, there's just yeah, there's invisible numbers out there that seem to be the, the limits of what will pay but I paid for it every time it seems like

so, ya know, so I guess I'll start with like, you know, your basic basic hobbyist that just want us

with the family or whatever, just get on the water for a day. Your best bet for something like that. Especially if you don't have any experience with the water, you're going to get on to his rentals. You can do like guided day tours, which you know, everything's provided you guys are just out on the water doing your thing. You can get into those for about 100 bucks. I've done a few of those at a good time. Yeah, they're they're pretty fun. Um, I mean, most of the time you're gonna get a high school kid that probably from the area on their summer vacation getting ready to go to college or whatever but they're usually from the area fairly knowledgeable about the about the river they're running and and for the most part you can have a good time everybody's safe and you know all the all the work and labor-intensive ends are taken care of. So if you're not a big time water enthusiast, I would say that would be the best way to go check it out. But kind of stepping up from there you know being from the area you get a lot of people that you know own boats in the area

yeah that's what I was thinking about was all those have their own boats set up so that they would go down and you know, they had hardly really any any professional setup but just I mean like well we took down hundreds or you know, dozens of times during the handful of summers was just real simple stuff that we pulled from biomart

Yeah, exactly. And that's that's the way you get involved in it and stuff and get a you find out that you when you go to price wraps and stuff you're looking at you know, four to $5,000 just for you know an intro introduction level wrap I was looking at that

RAM and ores it looked pretty excited I wanted to talk about like the big time RAF prices and if you guys but yeah, I was really I was interested in that. I was surprised but I remember like the cheap like seven or sevi war tahini kayak that we'd inflated and tacos on nine bucks, man. There we go. that got us through June. At least though. We're we're going down yeah, it was great. I love doing that was like after work or something and we cruise down to down to like the Hells Canyon, put in went to go lease I think one time. It was great. It was cool.

Yeah, no, a ton of fun. Get serious about doing that you really enjoy doing that in your area where you can access this all the time. That's when you start getting into that like, I don't know, I'm gonna just call it the middle ground and say that that $5,000 Yes, problem. floors and stuff. is, um, you know, you want to bring your friends and stuff feels good about getting in a kayak. ruins a ton of fun. And you just can't pack enough beer. So all these kind of accumulate into, you know, stepping up your your water game and getting a little bit more involved.

Yeah, I think I think having a raft having a good rap. Well, what would you recommend for the Rogue River? So there's like, Well, probably like above a 10 foot draft. I'm sorry, I lost connection. Oh, yes. you when you were on the road, maybe even on like the day trip section. Are you? Are you running like a 16 foot boat or an 18 foot boat?

Yeah, yeah. Typically, anything we do on the road is going to be 16 foot boats. We're running rubber rafts for rafting, obviously. For the little inflatable kayaks or I cases they're called right. So yeah, I mean, for that section, if it's just like you and your wife and the dog or something like for somebody that's not a serious multi day rafter, I would suggest getting into like a 14 foot boat. A 14 foot boat is perfect. You can put the cooler in there. Yeah, you can put two to three people in there and have a great day. The only problem with that is if you start getting into multi day trips, the amount of gear you start bringing adds up really, really quick, and a lot of times you can't accommodate your equipment. The people in the boat.

Yeah, okay. Yeah. Was that about the size of a town? There's dad's boat that we'd see go down on the river. Yeah, yeah. Did you say Tyler? Yeah, Tyler's dad. Yeah, I was wondering if that was about the size of his boat setup. I thinking about him and yeah, yeah, okay.

Okay. He's got like a late 80s. So tar wrap. That thing's awesome. It's like a second collectible man. That thing's one of the originals. Yeah, but he had a he had a self bailing floor put into it. Then all that stuff, but yeah, that's that's like the perfect size for like those weekend trips that you just want to do. Right? You know, on a Saturday, it's 100 degrees. I was good at the river. That's perfect.

That sounds really cool. Yeah, it seems to be the best setup for it. And so what was what was the size of raft that you got? Like, was it two years ago that you bought your own raft?

I got a 16 foot, just because the 14 ended up being too small for because that's typically what I do, or the multi day trips. And that's, that's the problem you end up with a lot of times as you just can't fit your gear in a 14 foot boat. Okay, and still put two people in there. And that's why you just was 16 Yeah, it's just a little more breathing room. I just think it's more comfortable. Far, far better experience. I had a great time. I had a good experience and you about I think, yeah, works really well. So funny. Oh, good.

Oh, I was gonna ask about, about like, the lifespan of boats are about like maintenance and about, like how old your boat is? How long you expect to keep a raft on the river.

Man, you can keep it okay. It's like any good equipment you buy for any form of outdoor recreation. It's all in how you take care of it. Um, I, you know, everybody wants to get a boat. And I really kind of downplay it for a lot of people unless they're serious about maintenance, and upkeep and storage and things like that. It's, there's a lot that goes into it. You know, if you're going to store it over the winter, try not to roll it keep it inflated. Those rolls become creases, and then become weak.

I've seen PVC. Yeah, I've seen where it becomes weak. I've had I've had a dry bag that I put in the closet, you know, six or seven years old. But when I pull it out, yeah, where it increased and it's sad. It got brittle and it cracked. They're just as bad as weird. Yeah, weird to see it. But. But it's interesting, though, like when it's deflated. That's when that's when you get creases. And that's when you get the extreme amount of weathering.

Yeah, well, that's not weathering. I mean, you got to figure these things out in the sun all the time. Another thing you got to do is they make a boat conditioner, and it's called like 303, I think, but it's like that terrible band. Hey, remember those guys? Of course. Yeah.

There's I get but you you put it on is a polypropylene or what was it? With Cheerio that those that the wraps are made out of

the older rafts, if it's a good raft is made out of Hypalon hype. Yeah, and then the newer rafts are PVC. Really? Okay. Yeah. So But anyway, they make this boat conditioner what it does. It's kind of like sunscreen for your boat, basically. Okay, and just prolongs the life by a lot of years. And, sure. It's kind of the, the end of the season gig before you before you break everything down.

Yeah. Okay. And the plan is that during the cold season, you keep it inflated, and you just have it stacked up in a dry area to store it.

That's That's the idea. If you're gonna be serious about having a boat, I suggest investing in kind of somewhere to keep it, I suppose. I don't know. If you're any serious boater? What was that?

Oh, I was just gonna say if you would invest in somebody to keep it.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You got to figure you're gonna have a frame you're gonna have probably two maybe three sets of oars. You know, life jackets, Cam straps. Just abundance of things. And yeah, okay, for for just anybody with a single car garage. That's

a lot of stuff to store. Oh, yeah, it's a ton of stuff to try and put together on the ones Yeah.

So then you're rolling your boat and things like that. So if you can, the best way to take care of plated over the winter.

That's kind of a good idea to try and keep it inflated during the cold season or like, wow, get brittle. You know, I had some neighbors that I think it had like a big rubber raft that they put up out in the field. And I just let it sit there for like winter and summer and then winter and summer deflated. And you know, like whatever happens with the earth and the grass of how you know do you know like when you pull up stuff and there's like all the like little running audience and

this like kind of yeah also theme yeah it's crazy yeah

and it was just crazy to see like this really nice Raph just go to like nothing and just kind of be just become compost over over 24 months or something. That's pretty crazy. I'm upset with those people I know. Well, okay, so I was wanting to ask you about this where do you go about sourcing all the other materials? So there's the raft itself that you can get, but then there's the frame and then like everything else like you would you go through it like a lot of the Outfitters they buy a lot of their stuff from like, NRS. Yeah. And then they, at least in Southern Oregon, right, everybody's pretty pretty well hooked on sotah rafs. Uh-huh. Now is that like, pretty common? West Coast wide or so? Tara? Like a smaller company? No, no. So Tara is known worldwide. That's what I thought and seen. And everybody likes some time deal. Yeah, hit set a time but they're in Maryland, right?

Yeah, they're right out of Merlin, Oregon. That's outrageous. That they say so tar stands for? Well, a bunch of different people argue that A stands for different things. But what so tar is an acronym for is a state of the art rafts. And okay, so they do they produce rafts, and they do a lot of dry boxes and camping cookware and there. And then they're also just kind of a retailer for for NRS stuff. Also, I've noticed that before in the past, yes. out of there stuff in there. Yeah, you can go on there and buy your life jacket and tacos, or tivos is the way to go. Man. But yeah. If you're like me, man, okay, so. So your like little $5,000 raft can easily turn into a $20,000 raft if you're buying everything new.

Oh, really? Yeah. You know, from NRS. Or so far? Well, yeah. This So type page earlier. And I saw it listed. I wrote it down. It was for an 18 foot RAF, one of those purple ones. Oh, 70 $800.

And that's just the raft. Just through after? Yep. That's not the friend. That's crazy. Nobody runs steel frames anymore. Unless you acquired it somehow or built it yourself. Oh, everything's aluminum now. Yeah. And that's all powder coated. For a frame, you're probably looking. Honestly. 2500 for a good frame. Really? Wow. Yeah. And then your oarlocks are, you know, 60 bucks apiece. Because they don't come as a pair. You buy him separate? Well, then you start getting into orders. You're probably looking at 400 bucks for a nice set of orders. Yeah, I'd say that. That's kind of on the low end to like, Yeah, I got mine. Yes, order makes great. Great orders. Is that Yeah, I

remember seeing those at a few of the places. And I remember like, just like the blade was just an insane amount of money.

Yeah, well, so a blade itself is like 120 550 bucks. Wow, retail. And then you start getting into your composite shafts and stuff like that. And yeah, man, it becomes really expensive. I got my set of nine and a half footers for I want to say 495. And I got like, because they had been used once on a river trip. So they kind of had some scratches on the blades. And because I was an outfitter, I got like, you know, 30% knocked off. So I mean that. Yeah, so I got a screaming deal. And,

and it's still, it's still fine. Yeah. Well, so I wanted to ask you that too. How do people kind of find their way into to doing rafting or doing stuff on the river. I mean, for us, like we kind of grew up in Southern Oregon. And even still, I wouldn't say I'm an avid rafter I'd gone like the times that we did, or I'd done like small-time rentals, but like, it's the people that like yourself, like worked as a guide for a while and then they do something else. And then they come back to the river. They want to do more outfitting or, you

know, it's it's a variety of different things that happens. You know, some people you know, they do the guiding thing for a little bit, they get involved somehow and then they, you know, come back to it or they grew up with somebody that had a boat, maybe their dad had a boat with their kid, they got you some time in on the sticks. It's like, it's like anything, though, that you pursue, you always find a way. You know, when I started playing guitar, you just start associating with the people that are doing what you want to do. And so you start as a guitar player, you start looking for other guitar players and you pick their brains and seek answers and help

Yeah, well, yeah, I was yes about that. Because I mean, I know I'd spent like, a couple summers down there on the Rogue River too. And you'd watch how those chips go by. But I was always wondering, like, Where are these people getting their expertise to do this, I mean, it's kind of like a technical level of skill to operate, especially like the lower road, or some of these, these private trips that would come through and they get the shuttle to, like, go to the other side, and they like rent out. They ran out all their equipment from from the outfitter that I worked at, and then they'd go down, but you just think like, what is this guy's past? Like, how did this guy jump into it? Was he like, 20? When he got into rafting was he 30 or something like is just something he did when he's a kid started a long time ago that was kind of passed down by generations, like what you're talking about? It seems like it almost has to be connected a little bit like that. Maybe like hunting, like what we talked about a few episodes back, but it seems like recreational activity seems like you have to be sort of brought into it a little bit when you're younger. at a stage like,

Ah, you know, I, I would argue I mean, oh, yeah. Well, yeah, I would I mean, those I mean, I would say majority of people probably do start that way. But I, I mean, I'm a perfect example of it. I had, I had never rode a boat until I started guiding. So it was just, it was something I wanted to do. Yeah, but you're 23. Right. or joy, you know, but but i i don't understand. Definitely. Yeah. But I mean, but it's, you know, you can also be 50 and just say, you know, make a friend with a boat and just say, hey, teach me the way. Yeah, yeah.

I bet there's a lot of rivers that you could grow, rub pretty well. But I was always surprised just like the magnet like the the number of people that would come through that were travellish mother as it comes through for their summer vacations. And they'd like set up and book a trip, like a private trip for themselves to go to the lower road or for themselves to spend a couple days on the on the river. That was kind of cool. It was interesting. It seems like it'd be fun to jump out like some other part of the country. Have you thought about that? Robert, like other rivers and other parts of the country, maybe up and down the West Coast? That'd be cool. I'd always wondered about that.

Yeah, so a lot of there's a variety of good rivers you could go to. There's the the Umpqua which is out of Roseburg. So still kind of Southern Oregon area. Yeah. Okay. That's, that's got a couple technical runs on it. And you know, you'd want a smaller boat for that. But you can also cruise up to the john day. There's the Hawaii there. And this is just an Oregon. Yeah.

Well, what are the sign after rivers? Alright, it seems like, Robert, you should correct me because you've had some experience some years down on the Rogue River when I was in the office. And when I was around, like the section doing support stuff for the river chips, like I was for a few years working as a photographer, you'd, you'd seen you talk to people, and they were kind of seeking out the Rogue River is like a destination outside of like, General tourism stuff. And it seemed like that was kind of the case without they're booking trips, with larger groups for the downriver trips, for a few days, or for the private ships that would go out to the lodges. And yeah, so I was wondering, like, well, like maybe in a list of priority, like where does a Rogue River rank? as like a destination number for people to go to?

surprisingly high? It seems like it would be Yeah, so it's, it's a world class River. It may not seem like it just because we brought up near it, but it really is. So it's I mean, it starts at the crater lake, you've got the gourd. You've got the lower road that everybody knows about. And then also it was one of the eight rivers instilled in the the national rivers act where they were the protected zone where they put it into Wild and Scenic. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So when they did the protection act on on, I forget what the other ones are. But is that was one of the eight. No, no, it was. Wow. So they did eight of them in the row was one of them. Oh, wow. So that was a part of it. It's got cinematic history. Sure. You know, john Wayne films, river wild, you know, few other TV shows and stuff. In a lot of those things, it's kind of made a name for itself over the years. And then also, it was I mean, historically, it's where the where the Indian Wars, the 1850s were going on. It has a rich mining history. I mean, so the history is rich.

Yeah. It's definitely there's a lot of mining history back there. A lot of Indian history back there that I'd heard about. Yeah. And it seems like over probably the last 1520 years, seems like the tourism part of sport rafting. And like sport tourism through that areas kind of increase a little bit. I don't know if the numbers reflected in the same way, but it seems like in general, the whole, like the national trend of people going to Rei seems up. Does that make sense? A little bit?

Yeah, no, I absolutely. I think a lot of that is just this, this younger generation. You know, are you look at our parents generation, the baby boomers, and they were, you know, really career-oriented and things like that. Sure. And to be fair, they set our generation up pretty decent, as far as having enough free time to go recreate a little more frequently than they were able to. Yeah. And I think that's, that's where I think a lot of that comes from, and as a result, we've just seen a lot more people recreating in different ways in shopping at places like Rei and things like that.

Yeah, I've seen it a lot to it seems like the promotion of the level lifestyle, the recreational lifestyles, has increased a lot in the last like five years in the last 10 years, it seems like it's up, you know, from from 2005 to 2010 to 2015 2017. Now, like what it is, stress? It seems like it's kind of ramping ramping up by quite a bit. Maybe that's just been me and my involvement. No, I think. Well, yeah, it definitely doesn't mean you see, like, like the last handful of years. So the the angle of marketing that Oregon is taken as being sort of this Pacific Northwest Wonderland. environment where I think really, that's just the marketing department of travel Oregon, really trying to push like tourism dates. In the Northwest. It's kind of interesting.

Absolutely. And a big, big component that was his wine culture kind of blowing up in this area as well. Oh, yeah. The wine culture. Yeah, that's been a that's created a huge spark as far as tourism goes, because now everybody's going Wait, I can go do a legitimate wine tour. And still go whitewater rafting. You know, I don't have to go to Napa to go do wine. Yeah. You know, I

watched a rash the Russian River down there, man. Yeah, I don't know what that one is. But Sacramento River? Yeah, but yeah, it's probably it's, I'm sure there's a lot of fun opportunities up here. You know, you should tell me, Robert, I remember cuz you probably interacted with more guests than I ever did. But when I was interacting with guests, it was kind of interesting to see the cycles throughout the summertime. Because you would see a lot of people coming in from just different areas, like from Illinois, and they'd be on a six week vacation where they started in Southern California. And they were on their way up north or some reverse of that, where this was just a stop, and a whole number of different things and places that they were going to go to so the day before they were in the red was the day before that they were in San Francisco, you know, and so forth, like a road trip would go. But it was interesting to hear about that. I was wondering if you had heard or had experienced the same kind of thing with the people that were kind of interacting with the river?

Yeah, no, I have a ton of experience with that. I'm sorry, I just said no, I just, I always say, ya know, when I started stuff, and I just catch it, sometimes it makes me laugh.

Anyway, anyway, people coming up, it kind of depends on the type of trip you're running. So if I'm running a day trip, I'm gonna get a lot of people that are a three week vacation, kids are on summer break, or they're retired and they got the RV or something like that. That's where I get a lot of that, you know, the redwoods, the morrow that type of deal. Running the multi day trips, you get people that are a little more serious, like they've been planning this for the last year and a half. They saved money, they got everybody together. And then this is their trip. So a lot of times we get those people are flying in for their trip. A lot

of those I've ever seen that where it was like for chiropractors and their wives or going on a rafting trip. And it was this it was very well planned out structured. Everybody's paid in advance, like back in March. It's interesting. And that was you know, I wanted to get into that with you to a little bit of like, the the shows that you went to, I think what did you say you went to one in Colorado? And then one in Las Vegas? Yeah. Yeah. I was interested in that because that was the that's like the other side of it. Like where they're trying to like book some of those chips. In the book. I'm like a year out. Or I remember like the book even like, two years out sometimes.

Oh, yeah. No, we were booking two years out when I was on these trips. Wow.

Yeah, I remember that a road wilderness when I was working with them, you know, they'd have they'd have weekends set up for people already. Yeah, I have a chips for guided chips and they just have that stuff already scheduled out.

Yeah, I mean, if you're if you're waiting until summertime to try to book a rafting trip. It's just it's probably not gonna happen unless there's a cancellation, but At that point, you're kind of at the mercy of the dates available. Absolutely. Yeah.

Yeah. It seems like everyone had had their their things already sorted out. And just everybody had their equipment set up. Everybody had their, their bookings, their flights. All that was well, well made in advance of that, especially for travelers, you know, especially for that. But first local people, it seems like it's a lot easier. Yeah, it's been cool. But so you were talking about? Well, I was just trying to figure out about, like, the NRS. equipment, the cost, you were saying that's what lives up to like, the $20,000 range pretty quickly, like when you're equipping about, and it was, yeah, interested in that, like, just different things you'd seen or different ideas you had when you were trying to price out and set up your own? Like you. you purchased us, right?

Yeah, so that's, that's the way to do it, in my opinion, is, is understand the equipment, make sure you're not getting hustled by somebody. Yeah. But, um, but yeah, just just scope around man. Craigslist is such a helpful tool, like it really has, you're serious about buying something. It's just look every single day, you know, when you get home from work, just scan, like, you know, every day, I would just type in rafts and I that page, phone all the time, and it's just, you know, on my lunch break, click through the rest, and eventually, something's gonna pop up. I got my whole I got my raft just from association of the company, there was a raft that they came came upon. And then we're getting rid of and I just happened to Yeah. And I spent $600 on it, rather than, you know, 6000 then but then I found I found my nice aluminum frame which is really a great frame. I found that on Craigslist for 100 I mean, it took it took like an hour of modifying and it's not like I'm I'm an experienced you know, I yeah. Run that by one more time. It was how much for the frame. Yeah, it was 150 bucks. I mean, super minimal customization, when I got home

to get it to fit the way I wanted it to and it's been a great frame, and I'll keep that frame forever. That's really cool. It seems like a great opportunity to get one for for a lower cost.

Yeah, and that's the thing too is it just it all depends on how serious you are if you have the money and you want the Ferrari of the water you want to just like be decked outlook good just scooped out and ditching that and you know go buy new and do all that stuff. But if you just want to get on the water and not break bank look used

Yeah, I think they used to have sounds great. So what would you say to set up for fishing a little bit more? like would you still go with a raft?

Yeah, it's funny you say that. It's kind of a point of debate between fishermen and rafters. Anybody that's been fishing for a long time and Roza drift boat will typically argue that you need to have a drift boat for fishing for practical reasons and just for tradition as well. There's kind of a pride factor that comes with growing the drift boat it that just kind of encompasses the culture of fishing

I absolutely see that I think that makes a lot of sense again Yeah. Yeah. from seeing the other drift boat like fisherman and drift boat guides that have moved through the river it's interesting to watch what they're able to do and I can see where it's a point of pride

it's it's in you know the practicality level of it is you can hold a drift boat in a spot while people fish a lot longer shoot in a raft a lot less surface area for drag

right a lot less work a lot less drag a lot less

but then also that the fishing and tends to be more Zen and kind of peaceful and one with the river nature. I was thinking it was a more intense experience. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. It kind of provides a more intimate experience if if you can understand that I guess. But yeah, and then also I mean it with a raft you got tissue hooks and knives and things like that going on. You start thinking about the logistics of that. Yeah, just not really a great idea.

Yeah, I understand that, but when you guys do, what do you guys do any fishing off the off the back of the raft in the summertime when you're fishing with trips or with groups? Or is that like just for the fishing trips?

Um, you know, we we typically will let people bring fishing rods and stuff, but we'll let them fish out at Camp rather than the boats. Typically, there's, you know, five other people in the boat with them. Right? So somebody getting hooked or

to drop them back to throw a cast and exactly Tommy right in the face. Yeah. Well, Trump Yeah, I run a rod off the back of my boat. Well,

I remember that when were Yeah, he had. He were kind of trolling for. Yeah, for some bites, which is a good time. It's fine.

I'm in the I'm in the gear boat. So I kind of make my own. Make your own rules back then. Exactly. Exactly. unless anybody that I work with isn't this and that I follow totally, by the rule, follow all the rules out there. That's what I do on

the high seas of the Rogue River. No, it's cool is a cool experience. You know, I really appreciate the time that I had done down on the river, like working on a river, if anybody else has had that type of that type of experience. And being a guide or being like support. I had a really cool time. Well, I think support like you were talking about like chucking rafts up onto a trailer, that job would suck. But my job was pretty cake. It was just like, it was just photos, I just drive down in the morning. And like, you'd watch everybody get in, you photograph them in one spot, then you drive down ahead of them, you wait. And then you kind of like timeout and you could you could run stuff by clockwork really like of when people were going to go by when you could get photographed. But yeah, I would use interesting you just get so used to that rhythm of what people are doing or like what the little time is for for people moving down the river. And is interesting getting used to that for ourselves too. Like when when you and I were like our bigger group would go on raft trips. And we just ran a raft and the days we weren't working, pick up and then put in from hogs Creek, take a lease as to how you can kind of get to that point, like what you did, I'm sure after what, like a week or something, you know, and probably to every other part of the lower road to where you get kind of well-paced on that day of work on the river. So that was a cool part of

Well, that's that's kind of like the art of it. So I mean, our job right is to to, to keep a pace and a schedule, but still make it feel like you're on vacation show. Yeah, the idea is like, we still need to be at these places at these times. But that's kind of the fun in difficult balance. And not everybody can do that. You know, of keeping people on schedule without rushing them or stressing them out and still giving them a good time. Yeah, yeah. Yeah,

I can see that a lot. I know it's a specific personality type that seems to be pulled in to work as a guide, or you know, work in that kind of a field I don't know if you've noticed that too. It's like the the personality types of people that self select to become guide Oh, or to work at downriver industry.

It's, it's so funny. Yeah, it's everybody's got pretty much the same. The same personality deep down, and it's not all it's not always as chipper and fun as we make you believe. Yeah, I've seen there's also the salty end.

Yeah, there's a salty end of that. Sometimes. I remember hanging out with a few of those guys after hours after work. And they get down with a thing and we'd go, you know, just burn down. Merlin. There's like one bar is that the Rome ours? Have you been down there? like yeah, I've never been in Rome. ours. Oh my gosh, I go to ball deenis Ah, but the highlight for Merlin out there. That's it, man. Yeah, yeah, those guys can be troublemakers though. It turns out, but it's fun to their their lively group is kind of cool.

Oh, man, I love hanging out with those guys. It's if anybody gets you the way you want to be understood. It's definitely river guides for me anyway.

I've had a good time with it, man. It's cool. Yeah, it's It was a fun time being down there. And I was I had a great time. I mean, it's just there's no cooler place to work, right? Or till I get to hang out for a while just being down on the river. It's what I appreciated the most. It was fun. I remember working like every single day of August and like almost every single day of July. It was just like super packed and then right up till Labor Day. And boom, it's done. It was weird at that part of the season work. At least my part of it right of doing photos doing it in that section. But yeah, as soon as school starts, remember, like, died off completely for that upper section.

Yeah. And it does that in the in the canyon, too. You're working. And it's crazy because you're working back to back to back to back trips all summer long from the springtime. And it seems like as soon as Memorial Day hits, you're just like out of a job. Yeah, you know, it was just like, everything just stopped. Go back to your life. No, no, it's it's so sudden that you don't even it takes you a while to adjust that of that.

It was really tough. Well, the first year it was great because I was a college student. I think the first two years I was a college student. So it was like the summer job. I'd come home from college. And then I'd work on the river. doing that, like every day of the summer break and then right you know, as soon as it would stop, that's right at the time I needed to move back up and started stuff for that next year. And so that worked out really well and then the last bit of it is when is when I did stuff to go on those trips, right? Like, when I finished up college, I worked like all the time that summer to save up money. And then as soon as that stopped, I took off. And and I went into work, or like I went into working on those long like 50 day road trips that I did wear like a went down river or not downriver, but I went out to like, well, Robin just dropped off the line there. I should just notice sorry for being a little distracted for a second. But to wrap up, I guess everything we were talking about. What I did is we finished up a ton of the photography that we're doing on the Rogue River, like supporting all those day trips those downriver chips. And then I took all that money that I saved up to do those long road trips of camping and traveling and backpacking and stuff in the fall. And that's after I finished up college, which was a super awesome ability to afford that, like during that year of your life when you're flexible, and you get to do that kind of stuff. It was super fun. I was really glad that I got to do it during that time. But shoot, it's too bad. Robert. Robert, wish he was here? I'm sure he does. He just dropped off the line a second ago. And he didn't, didn't pick up back when we tried to Skype him back. One of the things about doing little Skype things. Maybe I should call them or you know, try? You guys give me dial in. Robert, are you there? No, no pickup. I'm just kind of teasing them. But I guess I'll wrap up everything on the podcast. And I'm sure Robert wishes that he was here to announce that we have a Facebook page that I think we're putting together. That's what he talked about Episode 10. Right. So we had that figured out. But we have a little bit of a Facebook page going on. I think Robert is going to be working on that. I'll try and post a link to that sometime soon. But outside of that, we have everything at the Billy Newman photo calm. And I think it's at the podcast section of that page. And then you go to the get out there section. You can also search for get out there on iTunes, of course. And it seems to come up right away. It's pretty cool. Having a little podcast and I've been looking at the numbers going, it seems like that has grown a little bit. But if anybody has any questions or any interest that they'd want to listen to us talk about, or that we'd have any stories about. I mean, I guess it's a lot of what the podcast focuses on is just stories that Robert and I have about past experiences doing stuff out in the outdoors. It's kind of cool stuff. So I won't talk anymore without Robert I'm sure he wishes he was here. So what I will say is on behalf of Robert beskar at my name is Billy Newman and thank you all very much for listening to this episode. of the get out there podcast.

Overland Truck Travel

Overland truck travel. Vehicles for 4x4 off road #vanlife. Tools for backcountry overland driving. How to use a HiJack... or is it a come-along.

Billy Newman Robert Biscarret

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Get-out-there-09-overland-truck-travel

Hello, and thank you very much for listening to this episode of The get out there podcast. My name is Billy Newman. I'm here today with Robert Busker at Robert. How are you doing? Here? What's going on Billy, thanks for doing another podcast, man. It's great. episode eight. Here we are. Yeah, man. I think this is episode nine. isn't really we did that yeah, I think we're moving. Oh, you're right. You're right. Because you did that. Yeah, we got through that one last week too. Yeah, I can't really count that well, so yeah, it's hard to get the first 10 numbers and straight to man, but I but no, it's great. I'm really glad we got we got this one. Coming together again. today. It's gonna be cool. And yeah, man. What's your overtime? That's that's the first hurdle. That's it, man. so to speak. No, it's good. I'm glad that we've, we've got we've got through a handful of these. And yeah, it's fun, man. It's cool. Putting together a handful of them. But this week, I wanted to talk about some of the past truck travel stuff that we've done. And I think you're the guy who's inspired me to get a truck at first man, I got a truck gotta have a truck. Strangely, though, most most of my road trip travel has been a Camry and the old camera, man. But that camera was legendary. It was legit. It was absolutely legendary. But for today's episode, we're thinking about doing was kind of breaking down a couple of the stories in the past we had about doing some overland stuff. Some overland, like travel, if you can call it overland. I don't know. That's like a heavy word. I think that's a modern world. Right? Like this term. I've seen that around like overland where people get a lot of that. Yeah, it seems to be kind of the trendy sort of rich guy word to say for Whelan. Going but in Landrover Madden, or for four-wheel or something, you take that Overlanding overland excursion? Oh, yeah, it's always that but, but I think that's kind of a funny part of it. But I see like a ton of that stuff. I got into that, like, I got into that stuff back in 2011. Like the overland travel Have you ever seen like the magazine overland journal? Is that inactive? I think so. Yeah, I don't know. It's like sort of a niche. It's a niche category. Like this whole thing. So it's where it's like that thing. You'd never find it unless you looked for it. But it's kind of it's interesting. There's tons of stuff out there like that, but that's one of the first ones that I ran into. And that's like, that's when I had like the Camry and I was back in college and stuff and you know, that's when I first really wanted to get because I couldn't get a Landrover from the 70s I really wanted to get like a roof rack and a top box. I was I was like set on that because if I could get that that was like that was like my that was my version of making like a Camry into an overland vehicle you know cuz I'm going to get into this but I'm 20 and I've got 138 bucks so with that Yeah, but that was a part of it. So yeah, I remember setting up like like setting up the car that the roof the rooftop or the top box you know, man those are those are like super handy like and that was great on the on the camera when I had it. But that was all kind of what was yours you had like that that top box? Yeah, it was a I forget what it is now I think there's like the excursion that I had at a time and then there was like the summit model that you didn't have the overland model didn't I missed out on both of these were like oh man, they were like you know I don't know the early 90s maybe late early-mid 90s or something that's like when the plastic was produced that's when that thing was called New. And now it was just sitting on my my equally old aged car gonna go around and grab those things hold their value like crazy I picked mine up both of mine I think now three of them in total I picked three of those top boxes up oh on Craigslist was for different cars and stuff. I got a little fat one for the for the Camry I've had one for the truck and we got one from Marina CRV or what do you say the truck I mean the old Forerunner let's just get into that later too but that long one on the old foreigner so I bought like a few of them and I always bought them on us like on Craigslist or something right like yeah, and it was like new they're like five or 600 bucks to get into this cheap man yeah it's yeah super frustrating so even when they're used they're they're still floating in like for good ones or for like stuff from the 2000s that sort of the more modern clamping systems or you know when they actually made it they made it better you know where you can put it on take it on and off your car without putting together like a bunch of plates brackets made out to spend the whole afternoon doing yeah it's great cuz he would always like you know mess up you get stuck in some situation like that when you like I think one time we had to move we'd like it was you and I Robert and Scott and we had to like move that that that top box we're talking about to the Oh yeah, to the raft right and we were going on that snowboard trip so we had to like pack we had to put it on and like put like a bunch of snowboards on or something. And it was just like it was just like snow and slash and it's kind of raining you got like

you don't even have a headlamp you just got like a light kind crimped on your shoulder and neck. As you're kind of trying to twist this wing that back and forth to make sure that this thing's tight in the right spot. It was such a pain, man; it was so awful. So after that they made like more simple clamp systems that work better. But man, those are like still like 300 250. Like the low end range, like this. Yeah, the stuff broken. I just sold one for like, 85 that was that like a big chunk missing out of it? Oh, geez. Yeah, it's nuts. Yeah, it's like it's a gold. At least I don't know. It seems like in Eugene May. In Southern Oregon, it was a lot harder. I think I had one and never sold. But it seems like in Eugene and in Corvallis and Portland, are like, you know, where that that string of Hebrews and topsoccer? Yeah, right. exists all those, all those overlanders out there. Mm-hmm. But that was my foray into into understanding what Overlanding was because I was interested in like that overland journal. And so I'd like watch or watch the stuff that was coming out in that and it was just really all stuff, all equipment that was unattainable. But you look like the sweet trucks. And there's so many cool, like land or the land that the Toyota Land Cruisers, but they never said that they never built in America. Have you seen those? Oh, yeah, they're awesome. They're so cool. Yeah, like all the other ones that Australia got. And like South Africa, God, those are like the coolest cars ever like that you see out there. Yeah, they're so great. I would love to have Yeah, just this sweet diesel. Left hand drive. Right hand drive. Like, yeah, Land Cruiser track. Like there's the the Toyota trooper, if anybody's listening and they Google that it's like this, this crazy track that they made for the military that Toyota made for the military. That's like a troop carrier. But it's a Land Cruiser, but it's just got like a long back end. And it's kind of squared off. So you can you can fit two benches in there to load 12 guys, or whatever, whatever. psyllium is in the back. But it just looks like Oh, man, that'd be the coolest like camper. Yeah, you take that thing. It's like, so like the fJ. 40 see, like the old ones that look like the the Willys Jeep, have you seen that? Oh, yeah. That and that was kind of like the, one of the Jeep models that they look Yeah, Toyota's Japanese right. Yeah, of course they are. But I don't know where else they they sold like their equipment to for like military use. But it seemed like the F j and the Land Cruiser line is used like with them as a military vehicle all over the world. Have you seen that? Like, it's the I'm not really familiar with that? No, or not like a military vehicle, but like, like, we have a jeep. And then we have a tank, but we have the Jeep? Like they have they have the Toyota they have a Land Cruiser? Or like a Ilex, right, like your old truck. Your old pickup truck.

Yeah. Okay. I know what you're talking about. Yeah, the old pickup truck. Yes. Our 1980 it was the best part about my old one. Yeah. And so but it won't get rid of it. I still have

the coolest track, but I remember learning about like, Oh, it was just weird when I found out like about American nations. Where in America that's called a pickup. Like that's, that's a pickup truck. But out of the country. The truck is called a Hi Alex. I need to see that. Yeah, yeah, the international version. The International name for the pickup was the Toyota Hilux. And it's like, it's got that like emblem in it. Yeah. So they'd sell these Toyota pickup trucks like Saudi Arabia or like ISIS, man, like, okay, so yeah, like all the ice like the footage from ISIS. That's like, why are they all in these like us? Toyota's best known across the section in Syria, it's because the military had bought Toyota's as helixes like new ones they're like it's just like sweet Tacoma or something you know, it's just like rigged up to ride around out in the desert it's probably a great truck for it but that's why we should be is is to get all we need all those sweet Toyota's back now it was a big land that was like a gag in the news for a while because like all the footage from from whatever was going on which show these people but they were like next to these like old like old pickups like yours with with a with like a gun mounted mounted in the back like the war a lot of that Yeah. But yeah, you think about like all that all that crazy stuff that I think that was like the highlight stuff that Toyota was like for runners out of the country they're called serfs. Really? Yeah, way cooler name to kind of call a foreigner a serve I'm not gonna run it it's kind of redundant like I mean, no matter what you have, it's like well, I mean, we expected it would it would have four wheels or big truck I guess it should have four-wheel drive or whatever whatever. It's insinuating. But, but yeah, out of the country was called the surf. I've seen a few of them pass by like you'd see him out there. You'd be driving around and people are real proud of it, especially in the overland scene or that like not backward See, man. People get real proud of their Their rigs that they have set up but but we saw one that was like this diesel surf that this guy had imported I don't know what the rules are on that either.

Yeah

if it's I think if the if the guy's a US citizen I think it couldn't happen but I think if you're in Canada, you can you can have you can have one registered and then drive it into the united states i think is where we see a lot of those vehicles. Well, we need to make some buddies in Canada if we need that, man I need I need a diesel 90s foreigner I don't know like I knew commuting Well, have you seen like the Mitsubishi Delica that's another that's another sought after it. Yeah, it's low in my mind here. Yeah, that Miss it's a it's another kind of wasn't that wasn't built in the United States. Right. But it's for Well, it's become really popular and like that van life. Van life culture where people you know, like I pretty much like what we were doing the Camry six years ago. But But finding it relatively decently and they get like a van. And like it's become really popular to get this Mitsubishi Delica. They made it through the 80s. It was sort of a competitor to the to the Volkswagen line of vans that were out at that time that were kind of camping focused. But this was cool. The Delica was cool because it was a diesel van. But it was four wheel drive. It was like this. It was timing. Like Mitsubishi was just making a bunch of four wheel drive stuff probably like the Colt Vista.

That's exactly what was just you don't know what a call list is. And you're listening to this podcast. Go. Go look it up. And that was that was your first car, Billy.

Oh, man, it was the best car. It was the best. It was the best car. It was the worst guy but it was really though it was the worst car.

I bet if you had that now and just put a little bit of money into it somebody? Yeah, somebody would pick that up. Yeah, in the Portland area.

I put some studded tires on that and a roof rack. Oh, yeah. an LED bar. You want to talk about rig? led bar? CV? Yeah, man. You remember that hatchback. If you could fit 10 people in that car. I think eight people I think I did. I don't think that's what they approved it for. No, I just where it was. I think it was seven people. It was what it was like rated for seven. Yeah, it was it was three roses seats. Robert, in a compact soccer balls are driving around in 1983. Yeah, it was. It's not Yeah, there was the front two seats. The back two seats that were like bucket seats. Two. And then behind that, there was another bench seat for three. So you had 1234567 man? Yeah, yeah, it was crazy. What a silly.

Hey, it wasn't aesthetically great, but it was uh, you know, economy friendly. That's, that's for sure.

The worst guy? So not not an overland vehicle there. I guess you could say and even still like, man, it was had like 14 inch tires. So yeah, no clearance to get over anything. What have you. You made it You made it happen with the camera though? I yeah, I did, man. And I was gonna mention that too. Because that I had a couple experiences in the Camry. You've always had a truck. I guess outside of like the short time you had you had a sedan for to commute and stuff. But you had like had a rig that could get some places, which I always appreciated. And I really noticed running into a few limitations when I was in the Camry. I wanted to talk about those. It was great with the camera because you really benefit from the gas mileage. Which man I would say yeah, because I mean the most of a road trip, in some ways, like is highway miles. You know, you're out. You got to drive from here. Oh, yeah. Wyoming. So yeah, put a lot of distance in between you and where you're going? Yeah, and it man. It's great. Having kind of a light, easy car to like, just bomb out to somewhere that works really well. So I appreciated some of those parts. But man, we ran into a few spots where we just couldn't get through. And the one of the most upsetting ones to me was the sailing stones. Have you heard of those before? Is that in Utah? It's in. It's in the southwest. It's it's Near-Death Valley in California. And the sailing stones is a really cool spy was in Death Valley. It's like it's in the park area. But the park area is just so immense, but it's it's all desolate, almost nothing out there, you know, but you take this road, it cuts back for a really long way. And then we were on that gravel road for ever going back there. You have to go it's it's the kind of deep wilderness you would almost call it but it's like deep in desolate country out there. It's sort of well-traveled because there's there's people kind of moving in and out of the park system. But we were traveling there in December, I think, you know, when we were moving move in that direction. Like early December of 2012, I think is when we were there. And when we were we were driving up just just on the gravel road as it was it said it was a it was a gravel road the whole way there. And this part of it, it just kind of went up a little bit of a grade, you know, just the hill, the slope of the road just kind of went up maybe 1215 feet or so and then kind of rounded off, leveled off and then kept going. It seemed like almost nothing at all. But my car was nearly as high centering on it basically like you can feel like did you feel like the body like start scraping because the roll off of it was like, it was just, it was deeper than than my cart like the angle the car and the clearance I could handle it. And I like I couldn't get there and I'd wanted to go there all my life. Oh, so frustrated. We were like two miles or so it was like two-three miles or something like, well, we didn't know that cuz you're like in backwoods stuff. And it's like, like, I'm not gonna park there and hike it or something. Yeah, and then somebody else rolls up in a vehicle that can handle it. This Camry parked in the middle of the road. There was a there was like a group of kids are like teenagers on little dirt bikes like little to hundreds and they were just like bouncing they just zoomed right past us. Like a little, a little bike. And they cruise. Right. It was nothing but yeah, it's it was not it was you would it would be totally. Everything could get over that except for my cars. Except the camera. So yeah, no overland that day is what is what it was. But that story really is what ended up inspiring me to sell that Camry that winter. And then like come back in and get a foreigner like when I got that that 89 four render that. That was good. That was a good truck. I liked that is a good track. I bet it was a better truck earlier. But man, it was a great truck for me. And I really had a great time doing stuff with it was super fun. Like, yeah, I do more candy seven that was really cool. But that that was the first time that I had like that truck clearance. You know?

Yeah, it means just like a whole new world of opportunities opened up to you, when you when you have that clearance. It's like okay, and you got four wheel drive, so you can get a little more daring with where you're going. And even with that, though, I found that now with my current truck, I don't have the winch on it yet. And and even that kind of dictates to what I will and will not do up in the hills. Especially if there's not another rig with me. Sure. Yeah. I really enjoyed having that. That kind of that lifeline. And then security. I guess I'm having that winch that I can get out of trouble if I really got myself into it.

I think that's pretty interesting. Yeah, I've never had I have had a rig with a winch on it. But I really liked the the you always did. It was cool. I don't think we've ever used it together when we were out. I've used it on Tyler. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Pulling out of that sandbank. Is that what it was?

Yeah. I've used it a couple times. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. You just get into a rough spot got a tree or something you can tether off of, and get yourself out of it. But

I think that's pretty cool. I remember you telling me a little bit about that in the past. And it seems like it'd be pretty necessary if you wanted to do something more serious or more long term, if you're doing like an overland trip or if you're doing some, some trucks four by four stuff.

Oh, that's not a big like, you know, off-road or it's, you know, yeah. But it's Well, I mean, off-road in the sense of like, let's go mud and rock climbing. Yeah, not I'm not that, but I do like trying to get into places where typically the you know, the road kind of ends or, you know, somebody hasn't been back then 30 years and there's still roadway going.

I think it's really explore it. Yeah, I really like that part of it. I really like getting to those different areas and any you really get to get through so much more land. You know, that way, it's I found it to be really cool.

You do especially Oregon in the wintertime, you know, this area gets so much rain and stuff. It's hard to like, you know, when you after the winner, you get to the end of the route. Back Back. This is I don't want to beg begging. I want to stay in the rig as long as I can.

Yeah, yeah, it's it's definitely that's a huge part of it for me too. And that's Yeah, think about. Well, yeah, you should tell me about Tell me about your pickup. Chuck. Your first one that you got in high school, did you that was like an ad with a straight axle, right.

It was a 1980 straight axle Toyota four by four long. And that was a great truck. It still is a great truck. It's currently sitting under a canopy right now. It hasn't run in three or four years. But no, I love that truck. Man. I drove that from the time I was 15 years. So four years ago. Yeah, I mean, that was that was a blast. That was that was the coolest job. Yeah, no, I have always loved that truck and that truck would go anywhere. I mean, the really the only reason I got out of it was just I needed something more reliable. Yeah, fact it's last trip was the trip that amber and I took down to Joshua Tree I put like, you know, 4000 miles on it. No way. I remember that trip. That was Yeah, that was pretty cool, man. Yeah. And so that was a great trip, take it out on the harsh reality was, you know, at the time, gas in California was around $5 a gallon is Yeah, insane. I was getting about 12 miles to the gallon. And, you know, that was rough. You know, it didn't have AC. You know, that's just little stuff. Like, people didn't get along with that forever. But

now it makes me different. So I've learned a little bit too. I mean, like, like, what we both learned a little bit in this last year, like having a newer truck. It just solves a lot of those stresses about transportation, man.

Well, it does. And that's the thing is when you're committing to a trip like that, you need to know that rigs got to be reliable. It's been a huge part. You need to know it's gonna start back up when you're ready to go. Yeah, 2000 miles away from home. Kill the battery. I gotta tell my truck or so. Yeah. And the battery is not the proper Oh, no. Yeah. Like, it's just like, Oh, you know? Yeah, my transmission went out or like, that probably just, you know, blew a head gasket or something. You know, I mean, that truck when I took it, it had over 400,000 miles on it. And, and so you're just going, Wow, this is fun, but really, I just need to make sure I get it home. Yeah, you know that. That's what it came down to.

Yeah, I feel like sometimes it's like driving a classic car around. Just doesn't run as well. It's maybe basil.

Yeah, yeah. So yeah. And then I got out from that, and I bought myself a little 93 I guess it was that's our five Toyota v six. Pick up a little extended cab. I liked having the extra room. That was a great little pickup to have that nice canopy with the roof racks on it. I really enjoyed that. Yeah, I like that canopy sad to see it go.

Yeah, it was too bad. It's too soon, you know, but too soon. But I understand to think that Daddy's gonna move on. Or you know, it's good. He use it. You can

see it around town every now and then. Nice. Yeah. But yeah, and so since I've gotten into a full size truck, which I I just wonder why I didn't do so much earlier. Oh, yeah. You know, it's just just having the room. The reliability you know, just all the difference in the world.

Yeah, I think so. too. I was in your track like we were on when we were on that last chip and yeah, get out of it. Yeah, super clean. Like I dig been in there as cool.

Yeah, it's a it's far more comfortable than it used to be, you know, cramming into the little single cab and yeah, manual transmission and trying to get around.

I remember that first trip we did in your and your old try your your, your Yeah, cap. When we were What 16? Are we are going to camp up at Union Creek. Yeah. What is like, what is that? I've been I guess it's Central Oregon. I don't know. What do you call that? I don't know what you would call that. It's like Crater Lake area. Yeah, it's not really central National Forest. Almost. Right. Yeah, it's ro River National Forest. Because it's the rogue that it is. Yeah. Yeah. I think yeah, it's that that area up there. Man. That was such a cool trip. And I had a great time. But man, like you're saying that we just there was like the three of us, right? Yeah, just packed in tight. Yeah. And I was the one that had a ride, bitch in the center. Throw in the third gear, then what was it? Four years? Three years? Yeah, it was four. I ended up putting a five speed transmission. I remember that at the end.

Yeah, yeah. But yeah, it was just that for speed. You know, you get it out. It was great in town stuff. Then he goes on to the freeway, and you're just tapped out like 65. Just, you know, semis are trying to pass you is not built to go that fast, I guess. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Yeah, that was a sweet track though. Man. I really had a good time in that, but I remember that back in high school, it was fun, like making that road trip up to go camping thrown everything in the back. And everybody's just crammed, crammed into the bench seat. Now used to work I guess it's a little more luxurious now with the with the space, I suppose. But it's been cool, man. I like to have like, Well, you've always known more about like, how to use your four-wheel drive. And like, yeah, I started it.

I learned how to drive and kind of like, you know, just kind of remote is using four-wheel drive and, and all that stuff. You know, my dad when we go hunting, he drive when I was like eight, you know, nice and I drive us to wherever we're going out there because it's all just, you know, old logging roads and traffic and all that stuff in there. And so as a result, yeah, I learned to use four-wheel drive, especially working on a running on a manual transmission four-wheel drive, you know gives you a little more leniency on your clutch when you're eight years old and you can barely reach the pedals and you're trying to figure out how to handle a vehicle.

Yeah, a ton more. I wish someone had shown that to be the first time, my goodness, but yeah, yeah. But But how does that work? explain that a little bit of like, for low.

Your gearing is way lower. I mean, essentially, like you really don't even know how to have to know how to use the clutch, you can just basically let it out. And you're good, so low that the rig is gonna take off on its own, basically, I mean, you got to give it just a little bit of gas, and it's gonna do its thing. But I mean, it's great for a beginner when you've never never driven a manual transmission before. because it lets you lets you get a feel for that clutch before you're actually in a in a higher gear trying to do it. Yeah, that stopper. Yeah, something like that. So that was Yeah, super beneficial to learning how to drive. But then, yeah, I guess you know, we're always in a lot of like tight places that required four wheel drive. And that's the other thing is you learn how to drive on those back roads and what it takes to get turned around when you're when you know, I mean, you get up in those tight spots and you

have to stop gotta turn Yeah, here it's a cliff on one side. It's just weird. Ditch and rocks on this other side. I'm just going to back my truck into exactly tight little spy backing down a hill. Oh, yeah, I've done that. Well, we're not doing anything right here. It says yeah, I think I got I got stuck like nose to nose on like with another vehicle on this one-lane section that just like dropped off. He was out in Eastern Oregon when we were there and it just like, Oh, yeah, what like so I probably like what we'd read into it the Iliad, but it's a thing where I think

person

the person going uphill has to back down. Is that the rule? Yeah, right.

I don't I don't really know what the rule is. If there is a rule, it's definitely unwritten. But I think it just kind of seems like the person that has the most leeway should probably grant it. Oh,

yeah. Yeah. You know, which seems to not happen as much as I would want. When I've been seems like people just like blow-by center the thing and they just expect I'll get out of the way seems like a crazy choice to me. They've very rude people out there sometimes. Give me a berth stretched out a little bit, man. Don't run into me. But I guess I haven't been running into yet. It's weird. I remember. Like, what what I was talking about? Yeah, we got like, there was six inches on either or a foot or something I said, but it was like tight. There's no go around me sort of a thing. So I just had to back down, like 500 600 feet to the spot where there's there's a wide enough pull out where I could kind of tuck in and he could get around me. Man Oh, that doesn't happen a few more times. person I run into Yeah, gotta get through this section. At least. I'm gonna be I'm just gonna have to go down here to miles and back out there. So that'd be awful. Yeah. But I remember that years back of like people at the Illinois River, they'd run into that same thing on that. That tight little paved one lane road. God knows how sober they were driving back out toward cave junction again. At the end of the day, I'm just, you know, sitting in the river river all day. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. World's Best people out there.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, just a really stand up Susan's I mean, anywhere that you have to like, Ban alcohol. Did they ban it? Yeah, it's no alcohol allowed at the Illinois River anymore. What? What is the Yeah, then? I don't know. sobriety and self development. Yeah, that's crazy. No, yeah. They, they actually end up doing that. And you know what, I really am glad now. Me too. Really? Yeah. Much of the boozehound is I am I you know, I know. It's glass everywhere. Well, and that's the thing too, and so much of that just became like your personal responsibility to pack out the things that you bring? Oh, no, I never understood that. You know, you pack into 30 rack of beer that was you know, 2530 pounds on your back. You hike it into miles, you drink all the beer, and then you just leave the cans that now way essentially nothing packed into something that you can put in a gallon ziplock bag. Right, crushing. Just gonna leave it there. Yeah. And so that was kind of this verb what was going on? And then just too many fights, I think. Yeah, yeah. Get all God if anyone's familiar with Southern Oregon, you know the story, but it's, you know, it is. Yeah, it just became kind of a mess. I think the people that were out there Dealing with it just had enough and they they instated that little that rule now, man,

the future is gonna be no fun, Robert, we're gonna tell you it's Sunday. Yeah, you used to go out to the river and just drink and throw glass. Yeah. The good old days. Well, I heard this same it to the token he falls hotsprings they close that whole camping area down. Yeah, because it was just too much trash, too much drinking, too much fighting. Nobody to regulate it. No money to regulate it. I mean, God knows what. Douglas County, Josephine Jackson County, curry County. That's like the poorest. You look at like income. It's like the poorest part. Are some of the poorest levels of county income across the United States.

Yeah, no, it really is. Well, yeah. Yeah. I mean, so many of those places were all timber industry and that no longer produce. And so I mean, a lot of the economy went down with that. But, I mean, it's just, it's a shame that it ruins it. For all the people that like to go recreate these areas. Yeah. No, it's like, unfortunately, these places of beauty also draw people of lesser beauty, I guess.

It's what it's curious. I like the tone of places seems to change a little bit. I remember I was at, I think it was out in like Lone Pine, California. Really cool spots used to become super popular over the last six, seven years or so I see so much more from now. But it was it was this area where back in the 50s they shot like people like Burbank Hollywood would come up. And they would shoot like Gunsmoke. And like the westerns and stuff they would shoot like a bunch of Yeah, cuz, you know, it's like, I think there was a couple scenes in Django Unchained from a few years back that was shot in that same area. And there's like, parts of Iron Man were shot there when they had to pretend they were in Afghanistan, like, anytime they need, like the sort of desolate, but mountain area. Yeah, they go out here to this area and drive around and pretend pretend they're in Humvees and Afghanistan or something, you know, or, or old west stuff but but out in this area, like it seemed like it had kind of turned into like a rougher area for a while there's like tons of broken glass in the past and then like now, it's like an outdoors like rock climbers area, like the market for it kind of changed, I guess. Or like it just kind of got pushed out a little bit. Maybe over time. I don't think it I don't think they were they were crazy, but it seems like it's way different. Now. Interest is way different. But maybe it's the same maybe it's like, you know, I don't know, in 10 years or something. It's like, super a super big deal to go to go camp or you know, go to go look at waterfalls or something down on the Illinois. Yeah, but no, never, never down there. It's just gonna be cave junction people. I guess. That's what it's gonna always be. is is it's a chip, that stuff happens, but but I was gonna ask you about. So you're talking about truck stuff. I wanted to ask you. Have you ever used the hijack before? Let's say that again, a hijack. Have you heard of that? or seeing that? It's like that tool. I think Dave has one our buddy Dave. I think he wanted to show me Show me how to use it one time, but like, you probably wouldn't because you have a winch. But I think it was supposed to do some of that. But it's like a jack tool like like a manual thing. Like so you can use it as a as a lever to like ratchet stuff down or if that's like if you had a webbing chain. Okay. Okay, so what hasn't changed in the strap? And it looks like it's like a it's like a four foot piece of like steel, right? It's like a big steel bar. And it's got like a hook in it. And yeah, and then like one of the kind of moves through but you can you can jack something like fourth or two feet or three feet or something like that.

Yeah. Okay. So I've always known that to be called a come along. Come along, huh? Yeah, that's what I've always done knows are super handy to have great tool. How do you use? Yeah, fantastic. Yeah, basically, you find a point of anchor. You would hook by, for example, let's say a tree. Okay, you're stuck in a ditch. You can take this come along. And essentially, yeah, it's like a it's a lever on a section of chain with a hook on it. You can wrap it around said tree. Okay. Now from there, you tie off to, let's say your truck. It's stuck in a ditch. And then it has this ratcheting. Yeah, this this ratcheting mechanism on it that gives you like a huge pull ratio. And you're using that lever as well. And basically, you can pull a lot of stuff out. I mean, before, before tow trucks were super manual, and everything was hydraulic. They always use those on them. Really. Yeah. I've used it to straighten out bumpers on vehicles before. I mean, they have a huge cooling capacity. So Oh, wow, really? Yeah, great tool, great investment. That's just one of those things. I mean, I don't have one of my truck right now. But that's definitely something I would love to keep in there. Just for the sake of let's say, you know your vehicle into a spot that you can't get out of. And now your winches are unusable because it's on the front of your truck, right? It's something you could hook on to the tow hooks of your rear bumper or something like that, and still pull yourself out.

Yeah, wow. Oh, that makes sense. A bit. Yeah. Like, why you'd want to have one there. I've seen how they've been used a couple of times, and it seemed like it'd be really useful. Yeah, some of the stuff that it was that they do, but yeah,

so that's something also I kind of want to talk about, like, you know, outfitting your rig for these overland excursions, if

you will, yeah.

Just, you know, being prepared, you know, kind of just being ready for that unseen circumstance that could potentially ruin a trip. It's like, I like having I like having tow chain, or tow strap or something like that. Something that I can pull somebody or have somebody pull me out of with, right, because you never really know where you're going. A lot of times you're looking at old BLM maps or Forest Service maps, and you're just kind of going on a whim gonna

fall down many times. Road. Yeah. Or like, what if a tree fell down? You know, it's like, yeah, it's just blah, or whatever it is. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, I saw that on on somebody else's chip. They did like five days in British Columbia, they're traveling through and they they took photos and they posted it later. Because all the all the trees that were falling over that they had to like, sit and like cut-through for an hour, you know, yeah. And then kick out of the way and then and then keep going because they like couldn't there like hundreds of miles out and they got to go through again. So you know, they're set up to they're this big, like Firemen's Polanski that they're just, you know, chopping away at these big trees that have come down.

God, I would love to have a class game. I trucked it is expensive, man. Oh, yeah. Look, I should have taken one when I worked fire, but But no, um, yeah, having something to cut with. I usually do carry an axe. Yes, usually in my toolbox. I mean, if you can take a chainsaw, especially if you're going to be doing a lot of backcountry stuff like that where you're going, right? people haven't been for years, especially if it's the springtime, you just had a heavy winter, anything like that all things that take into account just kind of be ready for or you get up there in a windstorm and you find you're in an area and retirees have root rot and stuff. And, you know, you get to where you're going. You're driving back out. Now you've got, you know, a 24 inch tree lane in the middle of the

road. Now you're stuck. You're stuck there. Yeah. If you were ready. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, Oh, well. I figured it out until until some Forest Service truck gets back in here in a month. You're ever Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that'd be bad news. Or Yeah, something like that happen. But that makes a lot of sense. What other stuff? What other stuff do you carry around your truck for things, for instance? Like when you're gone?

I always I always err on the side of just like, what if I got stuck, you know, I always have I have a first aid kit. You know, I keep I keep probably like six to 10 bottles of water in my truck at all times. generally have food as some of it I wouldn't want to eat because it's been floating around between my vehicles for like seven years now. That's good. But But you know, if it came down to it, I

did it. Yeah, I've got a few a few things set up like that. So yeah, dude, I'd be happy is around.

Yeah, I know. I've got I've got plenty of rope rope is like one of the handiest things you can ever have. You know, I've got lighters, couple knives, just things, things of that nature. Where you could really work yourself out. And if I'm, if I'm planning for a trip or something, then I'm obviously going to step it up a little bit more, but those are the things I keep in there daily. You know, like a, like a jump station is super great. We talked about that. other episodes.

I've saved myself a couple of times by having a jump station around. That's really yeah. Yeah, yeah, man. You get out to those places. Nobody jumped you. Yeah, you know, I need a better one. I need a more robust. Well, it seems like you have to update them every few years. Well, okay.

There's this new one. Yeah. I just saw and it's made by gold zero. It's called the Yeti. Oh, yeah. Yeah, if you have an extra grand laying around.

is a grant. Just an easy easy 1000 bucks. But it's like a full on generator man. Oh, yeah. Ron's for like 12 hours. You can like power. Your house

I've I've seen people go for setup. I've heard people that get that as a kind of a core and then they they get a few of the bigger solar panels that connect to it and so they do solar and they charge that and then they've got the power bank to draw like heavy power items off of that it seems really cool. Yeah, it seems like I've seen people take that it's kind of like their their like RV power system or their camp power system like what we're talking about where they run like yeah, just just everything everything that they need to I remember being at at the gorge for the concert I think with you guys. Today Matthew's been in and like yeah, the one of the one of the party camps You know, I'm talking about like where they have like yeah, going all the time. I think one of those was was just running one of them you know, the bro camps from from University of Washington. And they're in their mom's minivan, but they've got this this like $1,000 this like, I remember seeing a Yeti, one of those Yeti power packs and they'd have it plugged in to run the stereo until the battery was like that whole weekend and they were just pumping out pumping out the beats.

No, you know what, one thing I really do want to do is take a little bit of fabrication but not much I mean for 100 bucks you can you can fabricate this. I want to clear a little bit of room on the passenger side of my truck in the engine compartment. Yeah, I want to mount another battery in there. Oh yeah. And then have an isolation switch to it so I can isolate it cut all power from it so it'll just sit charge and then anytime I need that I have a spare battery that I can either jump my current battery off of or you know worst case scenario I could swap it with my other battery man that's

a sweet idea but well yeah cuz you probably want on both as car batteries but I had heard of in the past I think Scott talked about it our buddy Scott talked about it when they were doing that music trip the music tour thing but but I'd also heard a bit from this other guy from from one of these overland places or you in one of these trips that we're doing Overlanding were in the back yet an SUV but he took a marine battery like one from above one of those deep cycle yeah a deep cycle one or like what you'd haven't seen in the RV is to when I'm working out with those they have the deep cycle marine batteries in there that run the house you know when the power to the engines off but it's yeah where they have like the car battery charge like trickle charge the deep cycle marine battery during the time that it's running and then they draw you know like the law yeah your your alternator is still charging that battery all the time. Yeah, it looked like it was a really cool solution for like they ran they just ran all their all their stuff like they would when they were traveling or you know like had stuff charged or whatever it is that they would they would want to do. I think that you know work on your laptop at night when your car's off. They can do all that sort of stuff. Just run it run it right off the power from the car, but you don't have to worry about killing the battery. Man. Yeah, same thing.

Yeah, same same principle, basically. Yeah, but yeah, that's something I want to do. I think I can get by cheaper with just doing another car battery. But regardless, you know, it's I think it's a great setup to have. And that's something I'd like to do. I'm getting this. I'm getting a commuter track just for work, I think is a sweet idea, man. Yeah, so I'm going to be spending a lot of time just really turn it might crack into just you know, full time read trip, camping hunting angling rig that's just ready to go for any time any situation. Jump in it and go That's so cool. Yeah, go job, man. Forget about it. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I just have, man. I don't know if I told you but I was. So I did a couple of these outdoor shows this year. Right. And I did one in Denver and then one in Las Vegas. And both of them man, they have all these different you know, Outfitters and sponsors and stuff that show up so they had like, in Denver they had Ford and Chevy and all these different all these different car manufacturers there with like, you know, like the 2017 you know, 2500 Silverado just fully loaded just just so rigged out for you know, just anything. And they had a you know, the Toyota the Tacoma just fully loaded so so yeah, just like the dream vehicle for for the stuff we do, you know, totally Yeah, it's just such envy I have for Oh, I know, but you're looking at it to go this is probably like $100,000 rig.

Oh, yeah. For new track. And then like the like, yeah, the whole like,

oh, all the custom modifications and everything to it. But But Man spectacular. I mean, somebody owns one somewhere.

Now it looks like it'd be a blast. It'd be so fun. It would suck to scratch it though. Oh, yeah. Oregon pinstriping right. Yeah. Just blackberries scraping the sides as you go down the driveway. Yeah, that's exactly. That's sweet, man. You know, I want to get a canopy for my truck. I think you were talking about getting a canopy for your truck. I was looking into it. I was looking about what how much of a tax return does a man need to get to own his own new canopy. I was looking at new canopies. Well, because I know that there's I know that there's other canopies out there. I know that there's a lot of canopies out there. Really, I should look into the reseller market more for it I know like I would Oh yeah.

And a lot of places that just specialize in selling nothing but refurbished canopies Yeah, I can have a painted to match your vehicle and whatever else

which yeah is what I want to go forward to and I mean it's gonna be super basic it's gonna go black it's gonna kind of to town with the truck is what I figured to go with the the other stuff but so that should be easy enough but I want to get one that that does match that truck. Have you looked into that a little bit? I was looking into a little bit of between like a RV and Lear and snug top lamb snug top are the two that I'm really familiar with. I've had one of each Yeah, and I found out the other day that they're the same brand or like or yeah or it's snug top Oh definitely make the same product are they actually know it? Yeah, snug top owns leered now and I think AR is different. Okay, that's what the that's what the like I went to some some hokey dealership down here. And they're like, it's like this, and then this is weird. I've heard that in the in the RV side, too. We're saying like GM, you know, it's like a GM and a Pontiac and Saturn and the Chevy. It's all it's all like the same master company. But it seems like the same guy. Same kind of game in the, in the truck canopy racket. Yeah, so I was looking at that. It seemed like it's 1600 bucks to get like the new like, brand new. Nice. Well, yeah, bill for my year of a truck, which is pretty it's pretty expensive. It's kind of what I figured for for like brand new stuff, though. But I want to drop down and and look at the US market and get some sub 1000 bucks, which I'm sure is out there. Oh, man, you can you can get in over 300 bucks for a nice canopy. I bet. Yeah, I bet that I can. And I want to be pretty smart about it. I'd love to get to save that much money. I was trying to figure out what to do. Cuz Yeah, the Colorado, which is like the smaller size. It's like, mid size or something. I guess it's the same truck bed size as the s 10. Back in the 90s. Yeah, I'm part of the 2000s. And then and then I guess like a lot of the other Colorado's have that that extended cab type. So apparently, there's gonna be a ton of of canopies out there that would fit the dimensions of the truck bed, but I am going to insert are what I want to do. I want to try and match it up pretty well. You know, I want it to be kind of like have the same stock or something like fits pretty well. But I figured they all got or they if it fits, it's gonna kind of fit. You know, I've I decided I could probably figure it out. I don't know. It seems cool, though. The other thing I want to figure out is like the drawers, I talk to you about that before too long. It seems like I've seen people build them out of plywood. I've seen companies now making them where they have like, like I think AR ri like you can buy the canopy right? But then you can also buy this, this this piece. I don't know what it is, but it's shaped like your truck bed. And yeah, I fit it in there kind of around the wheel wheel well. And it's like these, these two long drawers like these kitchen drawers that pull out, but they're just like four feet long. And you just you just slide it out you like you drop your tailgate, and you just slide these these two sweet drawers out, load all your stuff in there. And then you put your pads and your mattress or whatever it is over the top. And you just have all your storage and then your sleeping area and stuff right inside your canopy.

Yeah, no, I've seen those. Those are awesome. And actually, I've seen a couple people do that same thing out of plywood, and I kind of Drive for Work vehicle one time. Cool. You know, I mean, if you have a canopy and it's gonna stay out of the rain, I would say go out of plywood. If you have any type of like building ability rows, you can be into, you know, 150 bucks and a Saturday and have a pretty legitimate setup. Oh, yeah, I would go that route. Definitely. Yeah. And another thing like, and on the same lines of building stuff like that, not just for your truck. Yeah, I built that kitchen box. Right. For for going along on trips. And now that's been so helpful to have.

But yeah, it's just like some constructed box where you put that that set of things in. That's a lot too. We figured that kind of early on to but like, yeah, we were like just out of college. So instead of building a sweet kitchen box that was actually functional for a long time. We got like a filing box. Like if you go down like for everybody's doing their taxes last minute, and they have to go through you know, there's like these little file boxes that are that are for like manila folders to sit in. And you'd like you're supposed to stack your stuff in and store it in the closet or whatever. It's like an office space or you know, office keeping supply thing, but they're like five bucks or something, a piece is just like these cheap, but like 1212 by 12 little plastic containers. We're like, man, okay, we're gonna get like two of these. This one's gonna be our kitchen. Like everything that's part of the kitchen stuff and augers in this one but that's how so much to contain. And sort of separate between like, I this is all the shower stuff that we want to have. That's gonna be all over there. This is all the kitchen stuff. Foodstuff, man that helped the house so much like just organize a small pieces and camping.

Well, so much of that. Yeah, so much of that, like, you know, road trip and stuff is like, or that weekend warrior type thing where you're gonna get out there and go do it really takes organization because I mean, otherwise, you're spending, you know, all of Wednesday, Thursday and Friday trying to get stuff ready. And then you can leave on a, you know, Friday night or Saturday morning and get the most out of your weekend. But when you have all that stuff ready organized, it always stays there, it never leaves it. It's so much better, man that takes off so much of the stress of doing that. Because you just get to get to go and then come back and deal with it later.

I think that's a that's a huge improvement. And I could definitely see how valuable that would be. I mean, even for I mean, it's the beginning of the season. So I'm Rusty. But I consider myself fairly well prepared for some camping stuff here to get to get started to jump into it. And when we went on that trip together, we met up with you out in plush. That was like, two whole evenings after works worth of like prepping different types of things. So you're ready to go. And you Oh, oh, yeah, I forgot about how much work this is.

No. And that's it. That's it do is like as ready as I was. I mean, I still pack from probably like Tuesday on you know, just kind of cuz. And also let's, let's be fair, this is like one of the first trips of the season, you know, it's kind of like, well, what am I missing in that kitchen box? Like, what do I need to do here? He gets cleaned up organized again. Yeah. But once you're in the swing of things, then then you're good to go.

Yeah, once you get to utilize your time. Yeah, you get kind of like you kind of evened out to it all after a bit of time. It's kind of it goes, I like that part. When you get you get you get a couple couple experiences under your belt, you practice a couple times, and then it's smooth sailing from there. Exactly. Yeah. Sometimes when you run into stuff,

it's like anything you do. Get more efficient at it. Yeah, I believe it. Robin, thanks for doing this podcast. Man. I

really appreciate you

talking about talking about Chuck stuff, talking about chips and stuff. We got so many other trips and stuff that we did in the track, too. I want to talk about that some other time.

Yeah, no, I'd like to know we got we got enough to keep going for a while. But hey, on a side note, we were talking about all these places that we enjoy going that have been getting shut down or, you know, heavily monitored due to people like littering and doing stuff like that. If you're an outdoor recreator. And you like join these places, which you should, because you're listening to this podcast, pack your stuff out, leave stuff better than you found it and take care of it. It's not just for us, it's for future generations. Yeah. And if we want to keep having rights to these areas and things, then we need to kind of maintain them and be responsible with them.

So

that's a no, it's my concluding thought, I suppose.

I think it's a super important. And, yeah, it really makes a lot of sense. I think it was like Roosevelt when he put together the Parks Service. And he said that these resources. Everybody was mad. They're like, no, give us give us the stuff. It's our land. If it's the public, we give give us those trees. Now we want to cut them down. We want to burn it. He said now it's left to the to the womb of time, I think is right, that is what he said. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Right, like we we need, it's still in the future. And people in the future from us now still are gonna need it. And

it's funny, because now he's a hero. And at the time, he was, you know, everybody

staying at the stage. But we see it even still, I mean, Robert, you know, going out a few weeks ago, seeing seeing what's out there in Lakeview. And you just look around at that kind of landscape and how unchanged it's been for a few 100 years and then you know, kind of seeing seeing those areas where Wow, there used to be water here. There's these artifacts here. You see these petroglyphs on the rocks out here from the native people that lived in the area. Yeah, and you go, man, this is unchanged. This needs to be protected in some way, or it can't be just disturbed and you know, just just ruined by, by people. Yeah,

I think that area would look a lot better with some duplexes,

rents and tracks. housing in there, put some put some oil pumps in there. Get the uranium mining industry up and running. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. Take care of those lands there for all of us if you're an American citizen, you own them.

Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, it's, you know, it's still Yeah, and amazing benefit that we have in this country to have so much public land and really just so much wilderness area that is hardly managed at all. There's so much that's ours, that we have a lot of agency over, but even just as people.

I mean, we're the world leaders as far as land conservation goes, you know, as far as like, you know, maintain public lands, there's no place in the world that has the same, the same opportunities that we do as far as that goes.

Yeah, I think it's a really cool thing. And it's just super awesome that we have, you know, so much opportunity now to get access. But yeah, man, it is. It's cool. Robin. Oh, good. Photo calm. Hey, thanks, man. Yeah, gotta plug the site at Billy Newman on Instagram. I don't know. But that's Yeah, it's best stuff. Yeah, find some photos and stuff we've got. Yeah, check out the podcast like you probably are. Subscribe if you can shoot us an email, get notes. If anybody actually listens to this. Yeah. shoot us an email or a message or something? Or leave a leave a comment on the YouTube or the I think it's maybe I'm going to be on YouTube or the iTunes listing. leave us a review or comment there. Wherever there's, there's places you can contact us. Yeah, leave us something. Give us some fodder something to work with.

Yeah, what do you what do you guys want to know about? They want to know about how we drove our trucks around the Illinois River.

I'm sure that I should. That's number one topic of this podcast in the future. But Robert, thanks, man, for doing this podcast. I really appreciate it's really cool. Hey, absolutely. Thank you guys for listening. Yeah, episode nine, man. We're working it out. And you say right tonight he came through really clear on FaceTime is where his work yeah, that's fantastic. That's that's a rarity. These parts good internet day. It's weird how it is. It's like a burn day. Right. You know, when the smoke would stay low, like a no-burn day? Yeah. It's like a no podcast day. There's no bandwidth. Yeah. No bandwidth to the countryside today. No podcast. Right. Robin, thank you very much, man. I really appreciate you doing it. Yep, we're coming back next week, episode. 10. It's gonna be the same. Yeah, that's okay. We'll get through it. It'll be great. It's gonna be better than all the other ones. Oh, yeah. Oh, that's all that's what I meant to say.

Yeah, I got a

robbery. Yeah. I think it's fantastic. Man. We're gonna come back next week. Next Wednesday. We'll probably put up another episode of The get out there podcast episode 10. It's gonna be sweet man. Appreciate? You betcha. So on behalf of Robert bisca rap, thank you very much for listening to this episode. of the get out there podcast.