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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

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

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

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 +
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

Budapest Here We Are!

Being Tourist in Budapest It’s been several years since we’ve been in Budapest and it is truly a really lovely city at night which is when we arrived.  We’re at a hotel somewhat on the outskirts (has a big carpark which is essential for a vehicle rally!) but we spent Wednesday doing a bit of well-deserved sightseeing. I am a keen fan of public transport systems and no matter how confusing or in a language I don’t understand, it’s always a challenge for me to figure it out.  Budapest’s was no exception and Lance and I spent several hours on

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

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

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

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 +
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

Budapest Here We Are!

Being Tourist in Budapest It’s been several years since we’ve been in Budapest and it is truly a really lovely city at night which is when we arrived.  We’re at a hotel somewhat on the outskirts (has a big carpark which is essential for a vehicle rally!) but we spent Wednesday doing a bit of well-deserved sightseeing. I am a keen fan of public transport systems and no matter how confusing or in a language I don’t understand, it’s always a challenge for me to figure it out.  Budapest’s was no exception and Lance and I spent several hours on

Read More +