cruiseroutfit
Well-known member
I'd be happy too.
We did have to pack up the sleeping bags and pads each morning. We would stuff the gear normally loaded in the back, down in the under the deck in the bench seat, so to haul 3 people this stuff needed to move. It was a very smooth transition each morning, Greg and I literally had it to under 5 minutes from park to sleep or sleep to driving, it was about as optimized as one could hope for with the situation. We would stuff our sleeping bags & roll the air pads, both of which stored in the roof cargo net. From there, open the second bench back open and slide those bags/boxes back to the back and we were off. Our team lunched along side the road often as well, the setups were designed to allow access to all of the food without needing to unpack a thing, we could have a table off the roof rack and the Red-Oxx chuck-bag open for cooking in under a minute. Kudos to those that laid out the system, I know Greg and Scott brainstormed much of the design and product selection and the gents at AT, Equipt and Proffitts dotted the i's and crossed the t's with the construction and setup.
The fridge sizes were adequate for our group size in fact we often stored things inside the fridges just to 'keep them full' rather than because we really needed too. We made an effort to cook/eat as much local fresh food as we could, thus we would stop in the small towns and visit their local market if we were not sitting down at a local cafe. Things like fresh bread, raw vegetables, etc were all re-stocked every few days as we traveled. In the event we couldn't find fresh foods or we got into a bind, the trucks had food-storage in the 'deep-nine' bins. Literally 2 weeks (or more) worth of emergency food was stuffed into a large duffel bag. We went through a couple of 1 gallon cans of the dehydrated meat (sausage and beef), using it in everything from eggs, burritos and spaghetti. The dehydrated meat was sourced by Greg from a local SLC company (turns out my SIL works for them) and I've grown quite fond of it, for dehydrated meat it was very tasty and filling.
While being self sufficient food wise is obviously an important factor, I think its also important to get to know the local culture and what a better way than at cafe's and diner's frequented only but the locals (very little tourism in these areas). In one case we ended up eating at the dining hall for a local gold mine, it was basically a company store that served meals and sold convenience store type snacks. Some of the neatest memories I have of Russia come from our interactions at the cafe's. We were enjoying our lunch in a small truckers cafe when Andery our fixer came busting through the door "Guys, guys, they have a bear!". We drop our lunch and walk behind the cafe, turns out they have a captive black bear whom enjoys left-overs from the cafe. Those experiences happened at nearly every stop. In another case, we were walking out of breakfast at a small cafe when again Andery our fixer bumped into a geologist whom had just traveled some of the routes we planned to voyage. He took us back to his office in an old government building, and walked us through some very detailed maps they had assembled through their trips into the Road of Bones.
There were 5 in our group between the two rigs. Scott's rig was primarily setup for 2 passengers and Greg's was setup for 4 passengers. We had plenty of room for personal gear, in fact our goal packing each morning was to keep the back seat of Greg's rig clear. This allowed the person in the back seat to stretch out and get some rest, its fair to say everyone got their share of sleep in that back seat over the weeks. We packed appropriate for the trip and knew that excessive luggage was going to be a detriment to loading/unloading, etc. All of my personal gear was confined to a single ARB small duffle bag and a backpack, pretty easy to shuffle around. On the first day of my portion of the trip we had 2 extra participants (Kyle and Earl whom had participated in the first few weeks of the trip), with the extra bodies and gear Scott's rig was setup with the back seat and we were storing gear on the roof racks in the gear bags.
The trucks are equipped with hot water systems but we never ended up utilizing them, had the conditions warranted it would have been an easy deploy but it was never really on our minds
We stayed in hostel/hotel type places every few nights but it was cold (not sweaty) and we all did our best with personal hygiene so I don't think anyone we begging for a shower (or begging someone else to take a shower) at any point on the trip. Again if it reached that point the system is in place, we just didn't need it. Water wasn't ever an issue. Each truck had ~5 gallons on board, when shopping at the local markets we would occasionally pickup 1 gallon jugs of water to keep handy in the vehicle. It seemed we each had a nalgene or similar bottle and we would refill as needed from the jugs or container in the back. The trucks had water purifiers packed away, if clean water was an issue at markets or such, there were rivers and lakes often enough that we would never have had an issue.
Hope that helps, lemme know if anything else pops up.
