Roads and Destinations

If you think the otherworldly spires of the Trona Pinnacles look like something right out of Star Trek—you’d be right, because this surreal landscape is where numerous science fiction movies have been filmed. Star Trek [read more]

Alaska. Without a doubt, it’s one of most popular long-range, road trips for truck camper adventurers. Alaska (and the Northwest Territories of Canada) embodies all that’s great about overlanding—enjoying the journey as much as the [read more]

The Route 66 Fun Run. The name sounds like a marathon, a long-distance foot race on the famous highway. Yet the Fun Run is anything but. It’s actually a three-day road trip and car show, [read more]

Tucked away in the Texas Panhandle is a new kind of destination for truck camper adventurers. Merus Adventure Park is a privately-owned, 5,500-acre eco-playground set at the edge of Palo Duro Canyon. With stunning sunsets, [read more]

Discovering old ghost towns has made some of our best and most memorable camping experiences—accompanied by an occasional flat tire from the rusty nails and tin cans left buried in the desert. One the best [read more]

North, South, East, West, which way for your truck camper is best? You might be asking this question if you woke up last January in International Falls, Minnesota. It was a -3 degrees Fahrenheit. No [read more]

The Off-Road Safety Academy has released its official schedule for 2024. Owned and operated by credentialed off-road instructor, Bob Wohlers, the academy provides several offerings, including recreation, corporate, and government 4×4 training, and backcountry adventure [read more]

In late summer of 2023, I planned a trip from my home in Minnesota to Tuktoyatuk (hereafter referred to as Tuk), a village sitting on the Arctic Ocean in Canada’s Northwest Territories. Tuk has a [read more]

It was Friday, November 17. The wife and I had just spent a glorious week in Sante Fe, New Mexico, seeing the sights and staying at one of the finest Bed and Breakfasts in the [read more]

Elk City, Idaho is a small community—much smaller than our hometown of Sisters, Oregon. The population, as of 2020, is 170. Good things come in small packages! It was once a boom town when gold [read more]

A rough map of Dinosaur National Monument’s Echo Park doesn’t look like much but don’t let that fool you. Start by drawing several zig-zags that extend into a long tail that opens up into a [read more]

Dinner was over and the campfire was beginning. It was an old school evening. No propane or smartphone apps. Crackling flames, against a dark backdrop of Ponderosa soldiers, kept us warm on the outside. A [read more]

The American West has vast amounts of public land offering almost unlimited opportunities to explore off road often with free camping. Iconic trails such as the White Rim, Mojave Road, Bradshaw, Camino del Diablo, Moab, [read more]

Regular readers of Truck Camper Adventure may recall an article I wrote back in October, 2019 reviewing our 2015 GMC Sierra-Outfitter Caribou Lite 6.5 combination. At that time we were in Baja, Mexico, just five [read more]

Rita and I have explored southern Utah and northern Arizona on two extended trips last year. On these trips we visited over a dozen state and national parks, including the Grand Canyon, Zion National Park, [read more]

The U.S. National Park Service has designated five free admission days in 2022. According to the release, the dates in 2022 are as follows: January 17: Birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. April 16: First [read more]

My wife, Lindsay, and I were pretty naive when we set off to visit Alaska in our customized flatbed truck camper. Ok, we were incredibly naive. We had never camped in our rig before the [read more]

I remember the day well. It was a cold March morning in Sisters, Oregon. My good friend Rick and I were enjoying a cup of coffee at a shop named after our town. That is [read more]

“Vancouver! Vancouver! This is it!” These were the last words heard on the radio from Geologist, David A. Johnston, seconds before Mount St. Helens exploded in a massive eruption on Sunday, May 18, 1980. As [read more]

Six weeks of dirt, dust and dog food has been cleaned from our camper. We brought home enough of the Southwest, Midwest and Utah to amend a garden. It was a very successful and memorable [read more]

Arizona’s White Pocket has long been on our list of places to visit due to its remote location and unique geological formations. It is a photographer’s mecca, and until the last two years, a relatively [read more]

In the autumn of 1879, some 250 members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints—men, women, and children—and 40 covered wagons undertook one of the most challenging and dramatic pioneering expeditions in American [read more]

It’s been called the Devil’s Highway and the Way of the Dead, but the El Camino del Diablo has been used for thousands of years by Native Americans, Conquistadors and explorers traveling from Mexico to [read more]

The Tumco Historic Townsite is an abandoned gold mining district located near Yuma, Arizona on Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land. The Tumco Townsite is one of the earliest gold mining areas in California, beginning [read more]

One look at a map of Big Wash Road and you might just dismiss the drive as too rough for a truck camper. Located in the Cerbat Mountains of northwestern Arizona, the 4×4 drive features [read more]

The Bradshaw Trail. Most of us have heard about the Southern California Jeep trail, but few truck camper owners have explored it. When we first started researching this road in preparation for the 2020 Truck [read more]

With a world-wide pandemic and all, 2020 has been crazy year and it’s not even over yet. In spite of all that’s happened, David and Jenney Kiel, like most of us, still have been able [read more]

Death Valley is the largest national park in the contiguous United States encompassing 3,422,024 acres, and is the hottest, driest and lowest of all national parks in the United States. Approximately 93 percent of the [read more]

Big Bend National Park.  If you have been paying attention in the last few years, Big Bend keeps popping up as a National Park that you need to visit. We had read several blogs and [read more]

Pull up an online satellite image of Maine at night. Look for the big dark spot in the middle, where no man-made lights shine. Right in the middle of that dark spot is Baxter State [read more]

In May of 2019 we set off on a one-month trip to both the American and Canadian Arctic Ocean communities—Prudhoe Bay in Alaska, and Tuktoyaktuk in Canada’s remote North West Territories province. It was planned [read more]

While thousands visit Mexico each year despite media reports of its dangers, few explore Baja as one can in a truck camper. Baja is a large tract of land roughly 1,000 miles from Tijuana to [read more]

Any tour of Big Bend National Park should include several drives. The most popular of these include Ross Naxwell Scenic Road, the Basin Road, and the Rio Grande Village Road. These roads are popular because [read more]

If you’ve never been to Big Bend National Park, you’re really missing out. This underappreciated, 800,000-acre park located in west Texas offers not only stunning beauty with hundreds of miles of hiking trails, but also [read more]

Washington state’s Olympic National Park has long been one of our favorite parks to explore and relax in. While Hurricane Ridge, the Hoh Rainforest, and Rialto Beach get most of the park’s 3 million visitors, [read more]

There is nothing like an early spring trek to Canyonlands National Park, Utah and its environs to drag you out of the winter doldrums. However, old-man Winter had one more hard punch in store for [read more]

It’s hard to leave an old friend. Easy going familiarity creating a layer of quilt-like comfort over your travel experience. The people, food, traits, language. The every day no longer a challenge as eight months [read more]

While on my first journey across America along the Trans America Trail I became fascinated with the idea of finding or building the ultimate overland rig. In my mind, I have played out all sorts [read more]

No Labels I am not an Overlander. At least I no longer use that shackle as a definition. As labels go, Overlander may already have passed its sell-by date. Overlanding’s Australian bush travel origins being [read more]

It’s 1977. Spellbound moviegoers watch agents of the evil empire approach the droids in Star Wars. Feeling the need to protect his tin friends, Obi-Wan raises a wise hand and breathes the immortal line, “These [read more]

ALL BOW DOWN Utah. The staid Mormon state that slaps you in the eyes with every corner, every turn, every time. The beer is good; commonplace session ales that average 3.2 percent alcohol by weight, [read more]

Interested in living full-time in a truck camper and exploring North, Central, and South America? Michel and Sabina Robitaille of Ontario, Canada are making that popular dream a reality. After planning this trip for a [read more]

Truck Camper Adventure is proud to present this trip report by off-road guru and contributer, Jeff Reynolds (aka Jefe4x4). Anza Borrego Desert State Park is one of the best state parks in the entire country. [read more]

The Grand Canyon has become a victim of its own greatness. A reader who had recently revisited the South Rim after several years was shocked at how much more commercialized and busier the national park [read more]

When asked which road within the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument was the best and most scenic, a Ranger at the Cannonville Visitor Center said without hesitation, “Cottonwood Canyon!” This was a little surprising to me [read more]

If you’re a daredevil who enjoys thrilling, hair-raising drives then you’ll love tackling the Moki Dugway in southern Utah. Located on Utah-261, the dugway twists and turns 3 miles and drops 1,100 feet from the [read more]

Did you know that it’s possible to drive to the bottom of the Grand Canyon in a truck camper or a Jeep? It’s true. Located on the Hualapai Indian Reservation, we first heard about 4×4 [read more]

One of the great things about the great state of Arizona is its geologic diversity. In fact, of all the states in the union, few offer a landscape with more color and variety than The [read more]