Using Our Rig.

Car camping has always been as involved as you want it to be. Want pack your car full of gear, amenities and a good highway ride? Great. Have fun setting up and tearing down most your trip. Or would you rather have a minimal setup with your backpacking gear? Awesome. Don’t be surprised when your significant other is complaining about your smell three days into your trip! All in all, it comes down to the dichotomy between comfort and simplicity. Light and nimble or comfortable and cumbersome?

Our setup has both.

When we started on this journey we wanted to make sure that we had a car that was comfortable on the highway. Let’s face it: a majority of your driving as an Overlander is going to be on the highway. We wanted something that was smooth, quiet and had a nice interior. Now we don’t need air conditioned, massage seats or a heads up display and 1,000 horsepower, but comfortable seats with a good sound system is valuable to us.

The Vehicle: We have covered the benefits of our Discovery 5 previous posts, but I will point out a few key points that make this car a great Overlanding vehicle:

1. Comfort. This thing rides like a dream on the highway. The air suspension (not a cheap repair bill when it starts breaking) eats up small and large bumps without us noticing them too much. This, plus the added rubber from our bigger tires means that this car cruises like a luxury Mercedes.

2. Power. The diesel Disco is by no means powerful, but it is enough to keep at or above those 75 MPH speed limits while towing. With a low range transfer case and all of the torque from the diesel, we don’t have any problems towing our 3,000 pound trailer uphill, off road and at altitude.

3. Storage. This car is pretty large. The OEM configuration is 7 seats, but we don’t need all of them. In fact, we have a drawer system on top of the two rear fold-up seats and have removed the passenger side seat in the middle row for our Yeti cooler. With the drawers and the remaining room in the cab, we have no problems with storage. In fact, with the majority of our gear stored in the trailer, we don’t need to put too much stuff in the Land Rover. Be careful with this…. When you have extra space to “live” out of, it quickly becomes something akin to a messy teenager’s bedroom.

The Trailer: This is where most of our gear is stored permanently. From cooking hardware to toiletries, this is set up so that we can hook up and leave at a moment’s notice. All we need to do is add water and make sure the batteries are charged. Although covered in other posts, here a few things we love about the trailer:

1. Kitchen. We have everything we need here: pots, pans, cups, stove, sink, and pantry. These all stay in the trailer and are cleaned as used on the trail.

2. Fridge. The batteries in the Turtleback Trailer allow us to run a pretty large fridge. We have a dual zone 72 liter SnoMaster that has no problem running for a few days on the batteries (as long as it isn’t piping hot outside). Plus… we get to have ice cream on the trail and we can freeze meats for longer trips.

3. Suspension. The Icon Vehicle Dynamics suspension is a must on this trailer. First, it makes for a comfortable ride when going down the highway at 75 or on those chunky off-road trails. Second, it protects our gear. We can leave our gear free floating in most compartments and, even after off roading, come back to them in the same place….generally speaking. Our toiletry bags end up upside-down on their shelf instead of two shelves down and leaking.

3. Weight. This thing is by no means light. It takes my best squatting form to move this thing just a few feet, but when you think about how how much gear is packed into this thing, it’s damn light. Fully loaded we are sitting around 3,000 pounds, which is well below most SUV towing capacities.

The Pair: If we look past the fact that these two look like they were meant for each other… they perform even better as a pair on longer-form trips. Acceleration performance is sufficient, braking power (with an aftermarket brake controller installed) is almost the same as not towing. Maneuverability is hindered slightly, but with the ability to “jack-knife” to angles greater than 90 degrees, you can get yourself out of (or into) anything.

If you want to follow along on our journeys check out @Dirty_Discovery on Instagram. Since there is so much going on, that is usually where we end up posting the most updated stuff!