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Owner Stories
International Travel
News From The Road
Tips & Tricks
Owner Stories
International Travel
News From The Road
Tips & Tricks
EarthCruiser Delivery - learning off-road driving skills
Tips & Tricks

Five New Year’s Resolutions for Overlanders

1. Check Someplace Off Your Bucket List Maybe 2024 can be the year you take that sabbatical, ship your vehicle to South Africa, and complete the African Transit you’ve always dreamed of. But even if it’s not possible, and let’s be honest, it’s not usually an easy feat for anyone, perhaps consider taking a small step towards that journey. While bucket lists are fun and inspiring, the pressure of thinking of a trip as a “once in a lifetime” experience and making them epic in length (and budget) can feel paralyzing. One way to move past this is to book

Read More +
Media

OSU-Cascades CareerLift Podcast with Lance Gillies

Looking for a new podcast for that hike or bike ride this weekend? Give a listen to “CareerLift Podcast“, brought to you by the Career Development Center at OSU-Cascades. Each week, career coaches, Rachel and Laura explore different topics to help students continue designing the career they want. They regularly feature industry professionals giving advice on how to “give your career a lift”. We appreciated the invitation for Lance to be featured and have the opportunity to share advice. It’s important to take time and mentor young brilliant minds. We have a long-standing friendship with OSU and have worked with

Read More +
Blog

Nobody Puts MOD in the Corner

We Begin Our Prototyping with a Retired GZL Shell “It’s time to start building!”, Lance said as we were finalizing the last few SolidWorks files. This jump from concept to proto-type always gets our engineers nervous. Hoping that everything was thought through, calculated out, and will line up is the dream but never the reality. By noon the next day a stack of plywood showed up, and our crew began cutting shapes on our C&C machine. Why plywood? Because it is cheap and easy to take a computer design and see how it feels when it is a tangible structure.

Read More +
Blog

MOD: One Shell of an Idea

Sharon, the owner of Aroma Coffee Hut down the street from EarthCruiser HQ, is a pretty happy camper these days. Why? Well mostly because of the amount of coffee we are consuming these days to make sure all is prepared for Overland Expo West, but also because she helped plant a seed in our overly caffeinated minds. Since the release of the GZL truck camper back in October 2017, most customers have been overly satisfied with the premium options it comes standard with. There is, however, a growing contingent of interested people who love the GZL concept but don’t need

Read More +
Budapest to Bamako Rally

The Romantic Notion of the Desert

Desert, Desert, and More Desert Mauritania is not usually on anyone’s bucket list.  It is poor, the desert is taking over, it only abolished slavery in 2001 (and still has slaves) and really there is not very much there.  It is, however, hauntingly beautiful, desolate, diverse and in some ways scary.  It was where the Rally and so many others have their desert focused portion—the Paris Dakar spent a lot of time in Mauritania.  Our first real day in Mauritania we started off on a 530 km run from Bou Lanour to Atar along the longest train in the world

Read More +
Budapest to Bamako Rally

Observations about Morocco

Morocco 101 Morocco is a really nice, gentle introduction to Africa. It has been both a Spanish and French colony with both cultures reflected. That means baguettes are available everywhere!  The scenery is amazingly diverse with the desert, mountains and then these verdant valleys with olive ‘orchards’ and vegetables.  There’s beautiful architecture, bustling markets and medinas, fabulous restaurants and nice hotels and spas.  It is a place I would like to spend a lot more time and a lot more time in our EC.

Read More +
Budapest to Bamako Rally

Up and Down The Atlas Mountains

From Spain to Morocco We did our fast drive through Europe and took the overnight ferry to Morocco where the rally really started.  The ferry came from Spain and into Spain on the Moroccan side. So right away we had to navigate out of Europe and into Morocco whose border wasn’t exactly well signed. I guess this was where the GPS exercise really started.  The roadbook gave a brief outline of the procedure at the Moroccan border but frankly, it was just a cluster with vehicles and people everywhere all trying to get the attention of an official to stamp

Read More +
Blog

Time to Cross Some Borders and Catch a Ferry

Tips for Crossing Borders As we’ve been driving and crossing borders on major highways, some countries have a “rest stop” like areas where you can buy a vignette which seems to be a “pre-paid” toll card.  It doesn’t seem to be mandatory to buy one as you aren’t funneled into this area.  We did buy them but wondered if it really mattered as no one checked them.  We started the race and crossed into Slovenia, another vignette country and almost didn’t buy one.  But we did, this one was a nice sticker (we didn’t notice) while the others were just

Read More +
On the road to Ikea
Blog

What’s a Road Trip Without a Stop at Ikea

Road Trip Preparation and Free Camping Before we left Fred’s to hit the road again I got an opportunity to do one of my favorite things…go to a grocery store in another country!  I was not disappointed as we were able to stock up on all those lovely sliced cheeses and cold cuts, beautiful loaves of bread, organic veggies and plenty of beer and wine.  We firmly believe that you should never ‘rough it’ in an EarthCruiser.  I think we’ll be pretty right for those times when things may be a bit sparse in some parts of Africa. Our drive

Read More +
EarthCruiser Community
International Travel
News From The Road
Tips & Tricks
EarthCruiser Delivery - learning off-road driving skills
Tips & Tricks

Five New Year’s Resolutions for Overlanders

1. Check Someplace Off Your Bucket List Maybe 2024 can be the year you take that sabbatical, ship your vehicle to South Africa, and complete the African Transit you’ve always dreamed of. But even if it’s not possible, and let’s be honest, it’s not usually an easy feat for anyone, perhaps consider taking a small step towards that journey. While bucket lists are fun and inspiring, the pressure of thinking of a trip as a “once in a lifetime” experience and making them epic in length (and budget) can feel paralyzing. One way to move past this is to book

Read More +
Media

OSU-Cascades CareerLift Podcast with Lance Gillies

Looking for a new podcast for that hike or bike ride this weekend? Give a listen to “CareerLift Podcast“, brought to you by the Career Development Center at OSU-Cascades. Each week, career coaches, Rachel and Laura explore different topics to help students continue designing the career they want. They regularly feature industry professionals giving advice on how to “give your career a lift”. We appreciated the invitation for Lance to be featured and have the opportunity to share advice. It’s important to take time and mentor young brilliant minds. We have a long-standing friendship with OSU and have worked with

Read More +
Blog

Nobody Puts MOD in the Corner

We Begin Our Prototyping with a Retired GZL Shell “It’s time to start building!”, Lance said as we were finalizing the last few SolidWorks files. This jump from concept to proto-type always gets our engineers nervous. Hoping that everything was thought through, calculated out, and will line up is the dream but never the reality. By noon the next day a stack of plywood showed up, and our crew began cutting shapes on our C&C machine. Why plywood? Because it is cheap and easy to take a computer design and see how it feels when it is a tangible structure.

Read More +
Blog

MOD: One Shell of an Idea

Sharon, the owner of Aroma Coffee Hut down the street from EarthCruiser HQ, is a pretty happy camper these days. Why? Well mostly because of the amount of coffee we are consuming these days to make sure all is prepared for Overland Expo West, but also because she helped plant a seed in our overly caffeinated minds. Since the release of the GZL truck camper back in October 2017, most customers have been overly satisfied with the premium options it comes standard with. There is, however, a growing contingent of interested people who love the GZL concept but don’t need

Read More +
Budapest to Bamako Rally

The Romantic Notion of the Desert

Desert, Desert, and More Desert Mauritania is not usually on anyone’s bucket list.  It is poor, the desert is taking over, it only abolished slavery in 2001 (and still has slaves) and really there is not very much there.  It is, however, hauntingly beautiful, desolate, diverse and in some ways scary.  It was where the Rally and so many others have their desert focused portion—the Paris Dakar spent a lot of time in Mauritania.  Our first real day in Mauritania we started off on a 530 km run from Bou Lanour to Atar along the longest train in the world

Read More +
Budapest to Bamako Rally

Observations about Morocco

Morocco 101 Morocco is a really nice, gentle introduction to Africa. It has been both a Spanish and French colony with both cultures reflected. That means baguettes are available everywhere!  The scenery is amazingly diverse with the desert, mountains and then these verdant valleys with olive ‘orchards’ and vegetables.  There’s beautiful architecture, bustling markets and medinas, fabulous restaurants and nice hotels and spas.  It is a place I would like to spend a lot more time and a lot more time in our EC.

Read More +
Budapest to Bamako Rally

Up and Down The Atlas Mountains

From Spain to Morocco We did our fast drive through Europe and took the overnight ferry to Morocco where the rally really started.  The ferry came from Spain and into Spain on the Moroccan side. So right away we had to navigate out of Europe and into Morocco whose border wasn’t exactly well signed. I guess this was where the GPS exercise really started.  The roadbook gave a brief outline of the procedure at the Moroccan border but frankly, it was just a cluster with vehicles and people everywhere all trying to get the attention of an official to stamp

Read More +
Blog

Time to Cross Some Borders and Catch a Ferry

Tips for Crossing Borders As we’ve been driving and crossing borders on major highways, some countries have a “rest stop” like areas where you can buy a vignette which seems to be a “pre-paid” toll card.  It doesn’t seem to be mandatory to buy one as you aren’t funneled into this area.  We did buy them but wondered if it really mattered as no one checked them.  We started the race and crossed into Slovenia, another vignette country and almost didn’t buy one.  But we did, this one was a nice sticker (we didn’t notice) while the others were just

Read More +
On the road to Ikea
Blog

What’s a Road Trip Without a Stop at Ikea

Road Trip Preparation and Free Camping Before we left Fred’s to hit the road again I got an opportunity to do one of my favorite things…go to a grocery store in another country!  I was not disappointed as we were able to stock up on all those lovely sliced cheeses and cold cuts, beautiful loaves of bread, organic veggies and plenty of beer and wine.  We firmly believe that you should never ‘rough it’ in an EarthCruiser.  I think we’ll be pretty right for those times when things may be a bit sparse in some parts of Africa. Our drive

Read More +