Welcome to Botches Off-Road.
Joining us as we talk about everything from gear reviews to trail stories, tent camping
to rock climbing and all things to do with the outdoors.
Today we're going to do another little mini series of radio chatter.
We had some good feedback from it and it was a lot of fun.
So I think we're going to start with that.
And why don't you lead us off, Mark, with our first card.
Or I'm sorry, not Mark.
I don't got them.
I want you to guess what it's going to be.
I don't know the cards that well.
But we'll let Mark choose.
How about that?
Yeah, pick a number, Mark.
Let's do four.
Adventure phrases can be followed up with that's what she said.
This is along the line of that other one that we had.
Very much so.
It's after dark card.
Oh yeah, I like those after dark ones.
Yeah, that was a lot easier than I expected.
Of course.
That's what she said.
I mean, almost the same answers work here.
That was a deep hole.
Yeah.
That's what she said.
That was a big tree.
That's what she said.
That wasn't as tight as I thought it was going to be.
That's what she said.
If you really want to get crazy.
I mean, that one really kind of falls down the same loop.
Yeah.
I mean, there's lots of funny stuff you could say there, but it's the same stuff works there
as in the other ones.
So yeah, 100%.
All right, Gavin, your turn.
Pick a card one through two.
I have two in my head.
Well this one doesn't really work on audio, but I'll read it off anyway.
Make an orgasm face to the person to your left while pretending like you're driving on rugged
terrain.
I think those are the same faces anyway.
When I'm driving on rough terrain, it's probably the same face.
So along the lines of, oh, oh, oh, oh.
All right, pick another number.
Well, let's do three.
These after dark cards, man.
Jesus, dude.
And that's like, okay, I really need like a card shuffle or something.
This is another after dark card.
Throw it in the Uno thing.
You remember the Uno dispenser?
You just push the button and it plugs out like a rain card.
What is the best adventure sexual innuendo?
Can I get a definition, please?
Can you put it in the sentence?
I did.
What is the best adventure sexual innuendo?
I don't even know what innuendo means.
Oh really?
So innuendo would be like, you say one thing, but you're alluding towards something dirty.
This is just like the other ones.
Let's see.
Yeah, I don't know, man.
The ride your heart putter away wet.
Yeah.
Make sure you clean up after you're done.
Go for a bumpy ride tonight.
Yeah.
See, I don't know.
I guess it's not really how I'd consider innuendo, but yeah, that one's...
Man, we are striking out.
I think it's kind of hard trying to make a sex innuendo out of off-roading like that.
Off-roading is just sex innuendo.
This will happen with radio chatter.
That's part of the fun.
I mean, for the listeners, we're like, God dang, dude.
Get off the subject.
All right, one through four.
Someone pick a number.
Thank God.
What advice would you give someone new to this hobby?
For me, that's an easy one.
Just go out and do it.
Don't worry about spending all the money and buying all the expensive stuff.
Just go out and do it.
You got a vehicle capable of doing it, just go out and do it.
Hell, I would say a minivan can make it to a park.
Yeah, I would say do test runs.
That'd be like mine.
Go out and do it's one thing.
If you don't know what your vehicle is capable of or what you're capable of, doing it alone
is kind of a little sketchier, but do some test runs.
Take some forest roads to a state forest campground.
Go to Tin Cup.
Tin Cup is a good one to start with.
You just gave me another thing, Gavin.
Don't do it alone.
No, 100%.
Don't do it alone.
It's way more fun with friends.
Oh yeah.
No, doing it alone is one thing, but you do it with a group of people or friends, especially
who are more knowledgeable and who could support you if something ever did go wrong.
Give you kind of a safety net to explore and test your boundaries.
Yep.
Sorry to all the listeners that had to hear Doggo's walking around.
All right.
That was a pretty good card.
You just pick one at random now.
You got this.
We're watching you.
We know you're not cheating.
What do you wish you would have brought with you?
I wish I would have brought some fucking beer because I am beer-less right now.
Oh, right now.
In general, what I wish, I wish the, there was a certain point where I was really wishing
I had a portable shower system.
Not just a bath, but like an actual portable shower.
When we're out there for a couple of days in the summer, not hard to get stinky.
Do you still want one?
Eventually, yeah.
I'll look into a portable shower system.
Do you want mine?
Maybe.
We have one that he made for us on our plane crash trail.
I bought one.
That one broke.
Yeah, maybe.
Oh, that's right.
Depending on what it is.
I don't mean it by depending on what it is more as depending on the size and how I could
make it fit.
It's very small.
What do you get?
It's a little 12-volt one that you plug into your car and then you throw the pickup in
a bucket of water and it sprays out.
Oh, okay.
Yeah, it's like a little water heater.
Gotcha.
It doesn't heat.
It just sprays.
Oh, oh yeah.
No, I'm looking for heated here.
We're looking for comfort and pleasure.
You just heat the water around the fire and then you...
Comfort and pleasure.
We're not looking at heat, man.
It takes too long.
Oh my God.
I want it now.
I want on-demand.
I want it.
It is.
I want a geyser.
You ever seen those?
Yeah.
The geyser systems.
I bought one and then blew it up.
Whoops.
No, it would have been nice.
What is your favorite road trip snack?
Sunflower seeds.
Hand down.
Sam and I will demolish sunflower seeds while we're out on a trip.
We got a cup that we share.
Even if we're going for a two-hour ride, we'll stop and get a big bag of Trail Mix.
Oh, 100%.
I love Trail Mix.
It has to be cars.
Oh yeah.
Cars is the best.
I will say that.
But my issue with Trail Mix is that I'll be eating handfuls of it at a time and then I'll
get up and my ass will have M&Ms down there in the seat.
Trail Mix is much better for me as an out of the truck snack.
Anybody who eats Trail Mix on the road and doesn't get an M&M between their legs or something
in the fucking... You're like, God damn it.
What you do is you go to Sam's Club and you get the individual wrapped ones and then you
just open one end and you can just pour it in like it's a cup.
Pour the whole thing in.
I like to wear my sweatshirt backwards and use the hood as a food top.
I just pour a whole Sam's Club Costco bag of cars in it and just fucking munch.
I think Sienna and I could both collectively agree that we go to gas station and the first
thing we do is we buy me enough monsters to either last through the day or the trip because
I need those.
Then we buy the biggest bag of Biggs Sunflower Seeds Original that we can get and we demolish
those on the trail and everything.
Yeah.
I mean, sunflower seeds are a good option.
I'm not going to lie.
All right.
What have you done to reduce weight or save space?
Yeah.
Save space.
I just obviously just organizing and everything a little bit better.
Cint straps or compression sacks.
It's a good one.
Yeah.
Sacks are the best.
Yeah.
Eventually buying quality over quantity can help you with your space as far as clothing
and bedding goes.
So just I guess for comparison, I had a giant fake cotton comforter that I used to lug around
everywhere that no matter how bad you rolled it up, you could not get that thing down.
We ended up upgrading to like a synthetic down, which was compressible to a quarter
of a size of that comforter.
So that takes up a lot less room.
And then for me personally, we also have a two person tent that's about two pounds that
when we're not staying for three days at a time and we're only doing, you know, we're
staying the night and we're keeping moving.
We use that instead.
And that takes up about three to four inches by 11 inches versus the size of what you would
have for a typical pop up or four to five person tent.
So right.
And I mean, not for every trip, but you could easily get away with just a sleeping bag and
a bivvy cover too.
Oh yeah.
Yeah.
That is the most lean way you could camp.
I mean, probably honestly, as long as my wife's not with me, that's probably my favorite
way to camp.
Yeah.
It is.
That's exactly it.
As long as the wife isn't there.
That's one thing, a sleeping, a bed roll, a bed roll is perfect.
Yep.
In general, if you can find one that's integrated with, you know, the covers on it, just sleeping
by the fire, you don't need a tent or nothing.
Perfect.
I've seen people just put parts over themselves anyway.
Our sleep system takes up, I mean, smaller than your average sleeping bag will fit our
entire sleep system.
So just roll out the bivvy, stuff your sleeping bags inside and boom, you're done.
Camp set up.
Yep.
Yeah.
That's a good way.
That's definitely a good way to reduce size and weight.
But I think bedding is always your first step on that though.
I'd say bedding and clothing.
Like if we're going out for a week, I only need maybe two sets of clothes, maybe three.
Yeah.
That's the thing.
It's not a fashion show.
Nobody's there.
Nobody's there to be fancy.
Nobody's there.
I mean, when we went with Alex, I think I had one sweatshirt that I wore pretty much
the whole week or not week, but four days or whatever that we were there.
I usually bring one sweatshirt and a backup sweatshirt in case something happens and it
gets wet.
Yeah.
Right.
I have a light rain jacket that I keep.
So I have the sweatshirt and then I have a layer of like a light rain jacket.
So obviously layers are important too, depending on the time of the year.
And if your main goal is to save space, just pack hot dogs.
You just need hot dogs, beer, condiments and buns.
Don't be picky.
Just get simple foods.
If you're going out and you're trying to do a trip where you're just trying to save weight
or something, just don't be picky.
That's really the big one.
Make wraps.
Oh yeah.
Wraps are great, man.
Yep.
I mean, there's so many ways to save money and maybe we can use that as a whole different
episode here.
Let's save money.
Let's do it.
Let's make a trip where we save as much money as possible while we're eating, what we're
taking, et cetera.
Dude, we should just do that.
Like one, we should do a weekend or maybe an overnight where the goal is we've each
got like 50 bucks for the entire trip.
Not good at guess.
That's food, gas, and I mean, obviously we have our gears so we don't need to buy more
gear but.
I don't know.
We should do.
Maybe we should do a, we should save up a hundred dollars and do a Walmart Camp Hall
and just only do it after what we could get for a hundred bucks out of Walmart.
Yeah, for the three of us.
Right, right.
A hundred dollars has to get the three of us through a couple days.
No, each, dude.
Each.
Because you're starting from zero.
You're starting from zero.
Oh, you're talking not even bringing any gear.
Like just.
Yeah, vehicle only.
This could be, I really like this idea.
This could be a lot of fun.
No, no, nothing.
Dude, I'm so down.
Hundred dollars each.
Let's buy what we can.
And it didn't have to be able to live separately.
We can't rely on each other.
Can't rely on each other.
Yep.
Can't do a hundred dollars.
Okay, you get betting, you get fire, I'll get food.
It's got to be.
We could.
And then we could honestly.
Yeah, we'll do this once for for us, but we should do this as a an event like limit it
to like, you know, five people or ten people somewhere in there.
And we each you have to bring a hundred dollars for the event and all everything you buy for
a hundred dollars.
That's what you get for the camp trip.
Everybody goes to Walmart at the same time.
Yes.
Yeah.
We're just all hoping that they have what we need.
But yeah, no, that would be the thing I wanted.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Fighting over babies.
Dude, I this idea sounds really fun.
Yeah, because we could really show just how cheaply you could live.
Yeah.
And because that at the end of the day, that's just showing, hey, man, if you really do want
to get out there, here it is.
Hundred dollars.
I'll get you.
Yeah.
Hundred dollars from scratch.
If you're if you've never done it before and all you have is your car, let's do it.
Hundred dollars.
Let me do it sometime in the warm part of the year because it is unfair to do it in
the spring or late fall.
I mean, I'm kind of I'm kind of saving up money right now to about like forty dollars
worth of food from Sam's Club.
That's about two weeks or maybe even more than that, actually, because I barely touched
a ramen.
I only done one bowl rice.
Oh, ramen.
Oh, shit.
I'll say how much you got left because Sundays are too weak, Mark.
Haven't touched the ramen yet.
So you're still good.
Yeah, I'm still good.
OK.
Crab meat on our hands almost gone.
So maybe you should come with us on Sunday.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, we'll start a new card that one.
But yeah, no, Gavin, that hundred dollar camp challenge.
Like you got me all like thinking how that would be like, like, dude, that'd be so frickin
fun.
Like I said, we'll definitely do it.
The three of us once the summer and then maybe do an event with MSD for it.
You know what I do?
I could I could almost tell you right now, I'd go to the betting section first and just
find a comforter for 20 bucks and then a tarp.
I just burrito myself.
I'll probably say a little bit of my truck.
Oh, you can't ground ground only.
Yeah, God be ground.
No, you can't use a vehicle.
Oh, fine.
Yeah.
It's like, damn, if I have to sleep like shit, I mean, it's gonna be a hard bed.
Well see, guys, look, we could do hammocks.
Hammocks are like 25 bucks.
It's a big part, but it keeps you off the ground.
It's true.
There's so many possibilities.
I'm just I think I'm too heavy for most Walmart hammocks, so I might have to do the 25 dollar
mark.
Yeah.
I think all three of us are too heavy at that point.
Yeah.
But I mean, it has a good it has a good hammer.
He weighs more than me.
So mine works in my size, but it's like a parachute parachute material or whatever.
Gotcha.
Yeah, because I mean, a hammock would work if you fit in a cheap one.
I would probably just go grab a like a cheap sleeping bag because you can get those for
like they're really cheap ones like 20 bucks unless prices have gotten really bad on them.
And yeah, yeah, no, this could be a lot of fun.
And then like a six if we're only doing maybe we'll do two nights, so Friday and Saturday
night.
So I could get away with like a pack of hot dogs and a couple packs of buns.
Yep.
Maybe a small thing of peanut butter and a small do we do we add to the challenge and
make it so we have to fit it into a backpack?
No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
It's got to fit into a backpack that's like a child size backpack.
At that point, you might as well just be like you cannot succeed your passenger seat or
something like that at that point.
Yeah, well, I don't even think we should limit it.
Just whatever you can get for under a hundred dollars.
Yeah, yeah, for real.
To survive two day or two nights in the woods.
Yeah, I'm down.
Yeah.
All right.
Let's do another card.
Pick a number.
Three.
What do you always bring extra of on a trip?
Toilet paper.
Tools.
So many tools.
Yeah, but toilet paper and food for real.
Tools are probably like half my loadout.
I'm not going to lie.
Tools are probably most.
I don't know.
I got that 300 piece set.
I carry a lot.
They're just they stay there all the time.
I guess beer usually have beer left over from my end of our trips.
We do.
And it's not that we don't drink like we drink quite a bit of beer.
We just buy so much before we go camping.
Yes.
Hey, even I brought some and I'm like, I barely drink any.
I think we brought for like our yearly trip.
I think we brought three or we brought a 12 pack and like four or five, six packs.
Yeah, sounds about right.
Yeah, I just I overpack food all the time and toilet paper is just one of those things
that you buy it in packs anyway.
So I always just put the whole pack in there and.
But food, you never know, man.
You never know.
We might need it or you have moochers that don't eat.
You have to like feed them.
Hey, I packed two packs of hot dogs on our new.
New Year's run.
They're like, hey, thank God you got hot dogs because we did.
We forgot.
Yeah.
Hey, it's a good thing I did, too.
All right.
Pick a number, Mark.
What rig upgrade do you regret?
My power steering, my whole steering, all of it at this point, all of it.
The purchase of the truck.
Oh, I don't regret purchasing the truck.
I love that thing.
Sometimes I regret purchasing mine, but only because I still have to pay for it.
Oh, yeah.
Mine's I bought mine in cash so I I can beat the snot out of it and not drive it for a
week.
And I mean, it sucks because I don't have a car, but at least I'm not paying on it at
the same time.
Yeah.
I wouldn't say anything currently on my current rig, but the previous rig, when I bought
all the front end parts of my roof rack, I'm still paying for those.
Yeah.
And it was a little much.
The roof.
I was very surprised when you told me you bought a roof rack.
I was like, man, you're still paying for that other stuff.
I don't think I have anything that I regret that I upgraded on.
My air compressor.
Yeah.
I should have left the old one in.
That would have been fine.
Yeah.
Sorry, guys.
Great idea.
That was his idea bell.
You muted that.
Yeah.
Bunch of amateurs here.
The idea, I think maybe if I had to say that I regretted any purchase, maybe the slide
for my fridge, just because I could have waited a little longer and bought something that
was closer to our, closer to the size that I needed instead of one that was kind of an
all fit, a fit all kind of deal.
Cause it ended up being too long and then I couldn't close the door right.
Or the door would engage the latch and make the fridge roll out every time I opened it.
So I had to do some Jerry rigging, which is fine, but it's not a permanent Jerry rig either.
So yeah.
All right.
This is our last and final card.
Where is your favorite place to travel in your home state?
Key went on hands down.
Key went off.
Yeah.
I remember being my drumming, but you know, I was definitely still higher up there.
Man, I am nostalgia of my first camping trip with my wife at Two Hearted on the edge of
Lake Superior.
It's not really an overlanding destination.
You know, it's a, it's still a campground, but that area up there, there's a, there's
another area that I won't divulge that you could get to by getting off road, taking some
dune trails and, and you can get pretty close to the lake.
And when you're alone out there, man, well, we had the Aurora Borealis there.
I don't know.
It's bad.
I don't remember the actual name of the other name for it, but the Northern whites.
Yes.
The Northern lights.
But I remember the other one, but we had that out there that night when our tent was set
up, the kids passed out.
My wife and I are sitting in our chairs, staring at the, the first time that we could see it
with our visible eye.
That was pretty special.
So that was the first time you've seen it with your visible eye in my life.
Yeah.
Do you ever, we have them all the time down here.
I never, I never noticed this last year was the most I've ever seen them down here.
But I think one other time when I was out in Carleton, but a lot of the times like I'll
see notifications that other people are seeing them like, oh cool.
And then my wife will be like, you want to go out?
I'm like, it's like 12 or one.
Yeah.
Like we still have the light pollution from the towns nearby.
So it's like, no, around here, we really don't have that issue out here.
Yeah, we are a little farther out, but I remember back in like, it probably was 22.
I think it was 22.
I woke up to go to the bathroom and just looked out my north facing window and it was just
the whole sky was green and blue and red.
And I'm like, what the hell?
Yeah.
No, that was the first time seeing, and I are sitting up there in our chairs and this
is a group ride or a group camp event.
And, uh, and we're all just sitting there like, wow.
Like we've never seen them dance like that.
CNN has never seen them like that either.
And it was special, man.
It was a good place.
It was quiet.
Uh, people, normal people can't get there in normal vehicles for the most part.
So it was somewhat restricted.
And, uh, yeah, man, it was, it was great.
I keep going back to this hundred dollar camping trip idea.
It's good, man.
It's good.
I'm going to pick up the Kenawa peninsula and drive along that cliffside that we were
at last time.
I, you know what, for our yearly trip this year, we should do that.
I want to go camp at those spots right on the cliff side.
Oh yeah.
I know I have on our list this year that I want to do the porcupine mountains because
we were supposed to do it last year and we ended up missing our, you know, our financial
time window.
But, uh, it's, uh, it's still one of our dreams to go out there and then let's do the
Baraka area.
Let's plan the porcupines for a yearly trip this year.
Yeah.
Cause we're, we're big people.
We like the, like the waterfalls and shit too.
So stopping at the waterfalls on the way, or if we could see waterfalls on trails, that'd
be fun.
There's so many up there.
There's so many fricking trails.
I, yeah, cause we could do one of those campsites on the cliff there at Lake Superior one night
or two nights and then go down to our spot in, uh, our secret spot with a dam, the old
dam.
That'd be, that'd be a really good trip.
Yeah.
And we could show Gavin the beauty of bear country that we never got to see a bear in,
even though we tried so hard.
Yeah.
Newberry, that area up there, we, I didn't see a bear when we were up, but we saw bear
when I was a kid, when we went up there and we saw moose too.
We only seen, we only seen one, but I'd like to see a moose again.
We could see elk if we went to Pine, uh, you know, Pine river or whatever that place is
called that my granddad likes to go.
Yeah.
I'd love to see elk.
I'd like to hear a bull out call in the middle of the night.
That's just crazy.
Yeah.
I want to say it's almost eerie to hear, but when you hear it in the middle of the night,
it's almost eerie.
I can not remember the name of that campground or that campground we always went to, but
I remember this one time it was me, my dad and my sister, we were sitting around the
campfire and all of a sudden the sky, cause they were on the opposite side of the fire
for me, the sky above them just lit up like blue and purple.
And I just watched something fall out of the sky and I was like, did you guys see that?
And they're like, no, no, we didn't see anything.
And then like five minutes later, there was this huge explosion, uh, like a long ways
away and I was like, well, I think those two are connected.
Someone's gonna die.
It must be the aliens.
Yeah.
They're gonna be in contact.
Owls, man.
That's the other thing I see.
I was talking about elk calls, but owls screech owls in the middle of the night, man.
Oh my God screech owls in the middle of the night are eerie.
That one.
Yeah.
That was a screech owl.
We are yearly trip this year.
Yeah.
Oh, Sienna, Sienna, what the fuck?
It's like, you're good.
You're good.
Yeah.
My dogs are like, what the hell?
Well there was a pair of them, man.
They were going back and forth.
Yeah.
I haven't heard them that much before.
That was crazy.
And then there was that one right in the tree, like right at our campsite.
Yeah.
Yep.
We kept trying to see it, but you couldn't.
And then all of a sudden it'd be on a different tree behind and you're like, man, glad we're
all packing.
Do you want to hear something we did, uh, on that trip that still gets me.
So me, Mark and Alan had to run into a gas station one of the nights that we stayed up
late and Mercy was sleeping in her box and we forgot her.
I forgot about that.
We were gone for like a half hour and we came back and Mercy just came running up to us
like, yo guys, you forgot me.
Yeah.
Thankfully we were still there, but she was alone.
Everyone else was sleeping.
She was just outside alone.
She came by our tent a couple of times.
Plus she's a good dog.
Yeah.
Well, on that note, man, after we're telling all our campfire stories, we'll have to do
that another episode too, maybe.
And we'll, uh, we'll let you guys go.
We'll see you later.
Later.
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