Overlanding in a Borrowed Four Wheel Camper (Pt. 3)

Hello everyone! MAK here! It’s hard to believe that this is the last episode of our our mini series “Wish You Were Here”! Enjoy the episode!

We hope that you enjoyed this little series. As mentioned all of this took place back in April (2021). As soon as we started making our way north towards Alaska we turned all of our focus towards filming that experience.

Aimee taking in the view from camp

I’m thankful we waited to work on this mini series until we were out of Alaska because it gave us a chance to put the long hours into it that we felt it deserved. This was also our first time ever editing a project where we had an additional videographer (Chase) and photographer (Aimee). It was fun to have their perspective to work with in the editing process as we are such fans of their own photo and video work! We felt like it added a new dimension to the finished product. So shout out to Chase and Aimee for joining us on this trip and helping us capture the experience!

MAK making dinner in the back country of Death Valley National Park

Alright, now into the behind the scenes of this episode!

We made our way into the backcountry of Death Valley for our last few nights in the park. Though we’d all been out to the racetrack before, it was exciting to return after well over a year. We made it to camp earlier than we had in a while so I set about making one of our favorite camp meals, black bean and sweet potato tacos!

We had an attempt at our first camp fire of the trip but a park ranger came by and mentioned that we’d want to put it out due to the rocks being made of a bunch of toxic chemicals because they came out of old mining operations up the hill. So we promptly put it out and retreated into the camper.

The following morning we headed to Teakettle Junction to leave our newly decorated kettle. We had a little moment of silence for Luna, because the last time we visited this special place, Luna was with us. It felt nice to leave a little ode to her out there. <3

This road was one of the main reasons we wanted to exit the park this way. Usually, Chase and Aimee are driving in their VW Vanagon so we thought it would be fun to drive something that they otherwise wouldn’t be able to…

This section of road is a long deep pit of moon dust. We’ve seen people on motorcycles fall and disappear briefly into the stuff. It made for an incredibly fun drive and was unlike anything that Chase and Aimee had ever driven through. Pretty wild looking right?!

We spent one last night in the park down an old mining road that we had all to ourselves. At the end we found a few last mine shafts that we poked around before heading out of the park and to the Alabama Hills for a quiet day to recover for all the none stop movement over the last week.

We settled into a beautiful spot where we watched the sunset from camp, then later, a full moon rise over the valley. The moon was so bright that night that it almost looked like day time in some of our time lapses because of the shadows the moon was casting.

I think we all were in need of the slow day after leaving Death Valley to recover for our last few days of the trip. As an added bonus, we FINALLY got the camp fire we’d been trying to have for over a week!

After a day high in the mountains visiting with the ancient bristle cones, we returned to the valley for an evening of climbing the boulders that were around our camp spot. We call this type of climbing, “wild climbing”, and we’ve really come to love it. There is something so special about seeing a rock that inspires you and just have fun with it. As apposed to getting caught up with the difficulty rating of a climb!

That evening we climbed for as long as we had usable light then returned to our little camp for a meal made over the fire!

Obviously, some fishing was in order. However, the spring time in this area is gusty (as we learned nearly everyday on this trip), and it made for some windy conditions on our fishing day. But that didn’t mean we didn’t give it a try!

Sadly we ended up being completely skunked but we really enjoyed the view from this stream so we took our time enjoying the surroundings.

There is a little surprise at the end of the episode for you all, if you watched to the end of the episode, then you know what I’m talking about. ;)

We hope that you all enjoyed this little mini series as much as we did. It was a joy to experience, it was a pleasure to edit, and it’s bee so fun sharing it with all of you! Now that this is off our plate, we’re officially moving all efforts over towards editing and putting together our Alaska series! We will keep you up to date on how things our progressing on our end to let you know when you can expect to see the new series!

Until next time my friends!

MAK