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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 Community

Owner Stories: Howard & Heidi Snell – Adventures in Remote Living

Howard and Heidi Snell are beloved members of the EarthCruiser family and one of the earliest U.S. owners, securing #3 in the beginning days of EarthCruiser USA. Since then, they’ve moved on to their second EarthCruiser, which they put to good active use in the Western U.S. and Mexico. This past year has slowed their travels a bit, including group trips that they enjoy, but it hasn’t dampened their adventurous spirits which, as you’ll discover as we did, is something that has abounded in their relationship from the beginning. It is inspiring to hear their story and we are so

Read More +
Blog

Thankful for EarthCruiser Owners: Owner Stories with Glenn & Jeanne Capachin

Our “Thankful for ___” theme has so far covered EarthCruiser Pets, Veterans, and now we’d like to take a moment and express our thankfulness to EarthCruiser owners: far and wide; past, present, and future. You are what makes this crazy adventure worth it. For this month’s EarthCruiser Owner profile we caught up Glenn Capachin, a highly active EarthCruiser owner that’s always off on some trip of another. He’s quick to offer his help, and valuable advice, to fellow EarthCruiser owners, having put his own rig through a lot of paces and bringing a lifetime of experience with big rigs, car

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 +
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

The Start of the Desert

Mines in the Desert From the high Atlas Mountains, we came down to the beach and then into more of a desert area.  Much like Central Oregon, this wasn’t a sand dune desert but a more rocky, gravelly one.  This is where we entered Western Sahara, which is about 800 km of what was once disputed territory between Morocco and Mauritania.  Both sides used to mine it…land mines! So we pretty much had a transit stage from outside of Dahla to our first camp at Bou Lanour in Mauritania. It was suggested we didn’t venture too far from the road,

Read More +
Budapest to Bamako Rally

Budapest to Bamako and Back – Post Rally

Budapest to Bamako We’re on the plane home now from the Budapest to Bamako rally and we’ve had an amazing time.  It was a long couple of weeks -nearly 20,000 kms there and back. We didn’t have access to wifi, hence the lack of posts.  We did finish the race in Banjul and did really well considering we really didn’t know what we were getting into.  Initially, I thought this was a GPS charity event, which it was but it was also a very serious well-organized play for keeps rally. The teams that came in the top 3 positions had

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 +
Blog

Pre-Race Day Scrutineering Activities

Preparing for the Race Thursday was scrutineering, race briefing, GPS collection and for ourselves laundry and reorganizing day.  It is becoming a reality and we’ll be on our way with a 3000 km – 3.5-day mad dash through Europe for the first Morocco stage in Midelt on January 16. Traps for Young Players We’re part of the race category which means we have certain tasks to perform each day based on a GPS waypoint.  We brought a tablet with us to be able to access the maps and waypoints but found it was incompatible.  Therefore we had to get a

Read More +
EarthCruiser Community
International Travel
News From The Road
Tips & Tricks
EarthCruiser Community

Owner Stories: Howard & Heidi Snell – Adventures in Remote Living

Howard and Heidi Snell are beloved members of the EarthCruiser family and one of the earliest U.S. owners, securing #3 in the beginning days of EarthCruiser USA. Since then, they’ve moved on to their second EarthCruiser, which they put to good active use in the Western U.S. and Mexico. This past year has slowed their travels a bit, including group trips that they enjoy, but it hasn’t dampened their adventurous spirits which, as you’ll discover as we did, is something that has abounded in their relationship from the beginning. It is inspiring to hear their story and we are so

Read More +
Blog

Thankful for EarthCruiser Owners: Owner Stories with Glenn & Jeanne Capachin

Our “Thankful for ___” theme has so far covered EarthCruiser Pets, Veterans, and now we’d like to take a moment and express our thankfulness to EarthCruiser owners: far and wide; past, present, and future. You are what makes this crazy adventure worth it. For this month’s EarthCruiser Owner profile we caught up Glenn Capachin, a highly active EarthCruiser owner that’s always off on some trip of another. He’s quick to offer his help, and valuable advice, to fellow EarthCruiser owners, having put his own rig through a lot of paces and bringing a lifetime of experience with big rigs, car

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 +
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

The Start of the Desert

Mines in the Desert From the high Atlas Mountains, we came down to the beach and then into more of a desert area.  Much like Central Oregon, this wasn’t a sand dune desert but a more rocky, gravelly one.  This is where we entered Western Sahara, which is about 800 km of what was once disputed territory between Morocco and Mauritania.  Both sides used to mine it…land mines! So we pretty much had a transit stage from outside of Dahla to our first camp at Bou Lanour in Mauritania. It was suggested we didn’t venture too far from the road,

Read More +
Budapest to Bamako Rally

Budapest to Bamako and Back – Post Rally

Budapest to Bamako We’re on the plane home now from the Budapest to Bamako rally and we’ve had an amazing time.  It was a long couple of weeks -nearly 20,000 kms there and back. We didn’t have access to wifi, hence the lack of posts.  We did finish the race in Banjul and did really well considering we really didn’t know what we were getting into.  Initially, I thought this was a GPS charity event, which it was but it was also a very serious well-organized play for keeps rally. The teams that came in the top 3 positions had

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 +
Blog

Pre-Race Day Scrutineering Activities

Preparing for the Race Thursday was scrutineering, race briefing, GPS collection and for ourselves laundry and reorganizing day.  It is becoming a reality and we’ll be on our way with a 3000 km – 3.5-day mad dash through Europe for the first Morocco stage in Midelt on January 16. Traps for Young Players We’re part of the race category which means we have certain tasks to perform each day based on a GPS waypoint.  We brought a tablet with us to be able to access the maps and waypoints but found it was incompatible.  Therefore we had to get a

Read More +