LIVE on THE Overland Podcast 12.17.24

The following is a manuscript of the podcast visiting with Alex and Meg from @slowroamers talking about traveling the Pan American Highway and living full time in their Ford Van they built and outfitted.

You can listen to the Podcast HERE – Slow Roamers on Apple Podcasts

You can WATCH the Podcast HERE on SPOTIFY – Slow Roamers on SPOTIFY

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Website is www.slowroamers.com

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The SHOW …

Joey – Hey everyone, we are live and welcome to the Overland Podcast. I’m Joey. Tony is here from Northwest Arkansas. We have some amazing people that will be joining us live on here with us. I hope you are able to come on here and visit with them because we’ve been talking backstage and they have a lot to share. And they’re in the bed. So that’ll be interesting in their van.

Tony – That’s probably the best place to sit in there. Their bed slash dining table slash desk.

Joey – Yes, multi-purpose area. Pretty close. Is that the living room? Would y’all say that’s the living room? I see a fireplace in the back.

Alex – Yeah. A wood burning fireplace.

Joey – That’s so cool. I love that.

Alex – That’s got a story too.

Joey – Oh, I’m sure it does. And we’ll hear about that shortly because I will ask about that. What an amazing week. This is already the week before one of the biggest holidays of the year. Probably, I would say the biggest holiday of the year. if not Black Friday maybe the biggest holiday of the year. I don’t know but Christmas is just around the corner I hope you have all of your wish list sent to Santa. Tony what are you asking for? You’re not going to get a bed rack…

Tony – probably not going to get it but I need a bed rack.

Joey – you might as well just not even ask

Tony – I need a bed rack

Joey – yeah well, you’ve got a bed rack

Tony – No, I need a different bed rack.

Joey – Oh, okay. Yeah. See, that would be the reaction that my wife would have if I said that. I need a bed rack. You’ve got a bed rack.

Tony – Well, Alex made a great point a while ago, and we’ll get into it, but it’s like it no longer serves a purpose.

Joey – True. And I totally understand that. Some people may not, but I totally understand. I hope you get everything that you could ever want in this Christmas holiday. We have so much to be thankful for. So many good things have happened in life this year. Our families, our friends. This is the last scheduled podcast that we have for the year. So, I’m excited. Season seven has been an amazing year. Amazing year. This past weekend was a great one for me. We actually had our very first winter men’s backpacking trip. I hope next year Tony’s coming with us.

Tony – I hope. That’s the plan.

Joey – We went and did a section of the Ouachita Trail, twenty-seven miles and fifteen of those miles was in the absolute most torrential downpour that I’ve ever seen in my life. It was amazing. Everything I own is still wet three days later. And, it was still was amazing.

Tony – Still was amazing?

Joey – I loved it. Absolutely loved it. My shoes are still wet. I know that for sure. But the Ouachita trail is one of the nation’s, National Scenic Trails. So, me and three other men, decided to go there. We slept in, uh, what do you call them?

Tony – Hammocks?

Joey – No.

Tony – You didn’t sleep in a tent?

Joey – No. No. They have actually little cabins on the trail. So, we slept in those and I was really glad because about eleven o’clock Friday night I heard thunder. The thunder rolled and it was awful.

Tony – Wait, seriously? You slept in cabins?

Joey – Yeah. Oh, it actually shelters. It’s like a log cabin without a front on it.

Tony – Oh, okay.

Joey – Yeah. They’re nice. You should see them. I’ve got pictures. I’ll send them. But you know, the backpacking world is a lot like the Overlanding world. You build your kit, but you have to carry everything with you on your back.  But other than unlike the Overlanding world, you can’t just run down the street to the store and get whatever you forgot because you’re, you know, What’s the song say? A million miles from nowhere.

Tony – Yeah. You’re a foot, a foot.

Joey – We are foot. Yeah. A foot. And my foot was hurting. My foot was hurting. All right.

Tony – Well, that’s why I’m trying to lose weight. Cause I don’t want my feet to be hurting anymore.

Joey – Well, they will. They will. I can guarantee you that. But anyway, enough about us. We have some amazing special guests with us this evening on one of the last podcasts of the year. And I’m very glad to introduce them to you. So, Alex and Megan, thank you for being on here with us. We really appreciate you taking time to come on here with us.

Alex – Thanks for having us. Also known as @slowroamers. Where did that name come from?

Alex – I’ve had the word “roam” in probably three different accounts. And when Meg came on board.

Joey – She’s slow. Is that what you’re saying? She made everything slow.

Alex – We needed something that kind of encompassed both of us because prior to Slow Roamers, it was Roamlander. and that was my business name and I wanted you know a play on words that was like Highlander but roam so it was Roamlander and that was like my you know…

Meg – That was his bachelor branding. We had to stop dating when I came on the scene.

Alex – Yeah, we talked a lot about traveling slowly and really taking our time while we were overlanding. And then, yeah, it just kind of turned into Slow Roamers eventually.

Joey – I love that because, you know, in the world we live in, everybody’s in a hurry. And it just seems like just people just don’t slow down and live in the moment so many times. And I think that name is what drew me to you in the beginning. And I started looking around. I was like, oh, this is cool. So, living that van life. I encourage everybody to take a look at your website. I know you say that’s mainly where you have all your merch at, but it also gives a little history about yourself, which we’re going to learn about here in just a minute. But www.slowroamers.com is a good place to start if you’ve never heard of them or you want to check them out. And we’ll give some more information on where you can follow them at the end of the show. But if you would, give us a little history about yourselves, where you’re from, and maybe where this love of adventure travel came from.

Alex – Yeah, you go first.

Meg – Sounds good. I’m from North Vancouver, Canada. And yeah, I was born and raised there and kind of starting in high school, got this itch to travel the world. We were just actually listening to a podcast, interviewing Rick Steves. I don’t know if you guys know him. I’ve heard of Rick Steves. He had a show on a travel show on PBS. And I was a religious watcher of Rick Steves Europe as a teen. And so, I got this crazy idea that I was going to travel the world as soon as I graduated high school. And that’s kind of what I did. I was backpacking overseas largely in my early twenties and then sort of took a break. But yeah, was always going on camping trips and sleeping in tents. And at a certain point, after one too many times of getting caught in the rain, I was like, I need to upgrade this situation. And so, I bought a little Dodge Caravan minivan and stuck a bed in the back and went on my first overland trip. And I just never looked back after that. I was like, this is the best thing ever. This is the best way to travel, the best way to see the world.

Alex – So. Hey, there’s my wife. So, Meg was a badass solo female man before it was cool.

Joey – That’s awesome. That sounds just like my wife. I met my wife and as soon as we met, she got to tell me about herself, about how she had worked at this summer camp and had taken these girls on all these backpacking trips. And that was kind of her job to take these girls. And I said, that sounds awful. That just sounds totally awful to take teenage girls on a backpacking trip. But that’s what she did. And she loved it. And she mentored the girls and she spent more time in the woods than I had by the time I was that age. And I was like, you’re amazing. So that’s what a great story. And to get a Dodge Caravan. How cool.

Meg – Her name was Shirley.

Joey – You even named it. Okay, that’s Shirley. Shirley the Van. That’s so cool.

Alex – Meg’s definitely probably better traveled than I am. You’ve seen way more of, what’s Southeast Asia, Europe, Australia, you know, she’s been places, I’ve only been to Europe a couple of times, you know, Scotland, nothing in Asia or South the equator.

Tony – So I’ve barely been out of Arkansas.

Alex – Big, beautiful world out there, Tony.

Joey – Yes. So big, so big. My wife and I have a competition. She’s been to more countries. I’ve been to more continents. So, she’s trying to catch up and I’m trying to catch up. And since we go everywhere together now, I don’t know how we’re going to do that.

Alex – Yeah, exactly. Right on. Yeah. For me, like I’ve always kind of been into, you know, from an early age, probably about eighteen. I was into off-roading trucks. I actually started off with a 1987 Toyota forerunner. And I had this idea that I was going to like get it out and circumnavigate Canada. But I was only like eighteen. I had no idea how I was going to fund it. Unfortunately, I drove that truck into a concrete barrier being stupid and young.

Tony – Oh, no.

Alex – But that that evolution continued and I kind of went to rock crawling for a little while and then probably about 2013-14. Overlanding started to come on the scene. And, you know, it was like, well, this like describes, you know, I want to go for long distances, see places that are far away, but do it all vehicle born and, and like kind of self-sustained. And, and it was like, Overlanding that describes what I’m doing. So, I kind of jumped on that bandwagon pretty fast and, my first trip was off to Alaska and went from Edmonton, Alberta, all the way up to Alaska and back, which was about eleven thousand kilometers in two and a half weeks. I drove every single day for like five to six hours.

Tony – Wow.

Joey – Wow.

Alex – So that was kind of like my first big trip. And then after that, I continued to do small stuff until 2016 when that was the first time I went south for the winter because I was working on a farm and I didn’t have any work really during the winters. And so, I just start like traveling south for like four months. And that’s when, I really discovered like long-term travel and, and was pretty much hooked and continued to build rigs to better suit what I wanted to do.

Meg – And, He’s still building rigs.

Alex – Still building rigs.

Tony – That’s a never-ending process.

Joey – We talk about that all the time. In fact, I’ve actually mistakenly made the statement on the show live that I have my rig exactly how I want it.

Alex – You’re lying through your teeth.

Joey – So anyway, look at what Benji said, Rob. I swear. I knew it wouldn’t take long. This is a joke. We’re going to get to that later. I’m not getting to that right now, I swear.

Tony – That’s a running joke. It’s a serious thing.

Joey – It’s like, hey, come on here. You’re listening. We’ve got these amazing people in here. Ask some questions. And that’s… That’s always the number one question. So, this is very exciting for me because this is one of the goals that my wife and I have. I’m very close to retirement. And one of the goals that we have is actually to buy a van and do some things. So, I know that my wife, hopefully she’ll get back from buying Christmas presents because I know she’ll have a lot of questions.  We want to get to a point where we can… having a home base, but having the freedom to go and do what we want. So, do you have a home base that you call home or are you in your van full time?

Meg – We’re in our van full time. What we consider our home base is where our parents are. So, we’re always welcome to go home and stay with our parents, but we don’t have a home. This is our home.

Tony – Both sets of parents are in Canada, I presume?

Meg – Yeah.

Joey – Okay. You always want to keep that relationship really good. So, you always have a place to go back to.

Meg – Exactly.

Joey – But there are so many places to go, so many things to do. I’m not sure it would be even possible to see everything or go everywhere that you want to go. But traveling like you do makes it a lot easier to be able to do that. So, what made you settle on where you are now doing this route that you’re doing? What made you think, OK, that’s what we want to do?

Alex – Well, the Pan American highway, that’s what we are currently doing, is basically in our backyard. Like we don’t have to go overseas to go and do it. So, it kind of makes sense that if you want to do a really big overland route, that’s going to take you multiple years to do, do the Pan American highway. Cause it’s right here. People come from all over the world to drive this highway or stretch of road and I learned about the Pan Am, back in, well, Richard Giordano, Richard and Ashley Giordano. I knew Richard from like the early days when he was building little red.  He and I had similar trucks and got chatting on Expedition Portal and stuff like that. And that’s when I learned about the Pan American highway. And then I watched him do it. I read his blogs and, I was like, oh, this is a thing. And I didn’t really consider it or seriously consider it until I was on my first trip to Baja. And I had crossed into Baja with some Swiss friends that I’d met up in Alaska, my second trip up to Alaska, and they were doing the Pan Am. And I distinctly remember when it came time to turn around for me to go back home and they continued, down the Baja peninsula across to Mazatlán and then continued to Central America. And that was the first time that I looked south of wherever I was and was like, what’s there. I don’t know what’s there basically no knowledge of what’s beyond Cabo San Lucas. And that’s where the fascination started.

And then, there’s obviously a lot of moving cogs in doing a trip like this. And the big one is financial. And I had no idea how I was going to do that financially. And there’s a bunch of other stuff in the way of that that were just extra complications. So, it wasn’t until, many, many years down the road when Meg and I met and we started a thing that makes it possible to do year and a half long journey and that’s how we are here now…

Meg – a thing

Alex – a YouTube channel yeah but also like the advent of Starlink makes so much possible and we have Starlink on the van so meg can work online I can you know edit and post up YouTube videos no problem and suddenly we’re like oh we make just enough to pay for food fuel and incidentals we can do it.

Joey – You have great photography skills. Have you had any training in that?

Alex – Not like classical training or like schooling or anything like that. I’ve just always had a fascination or, or desire to take photos and, tell stories and that kind of thing. And I’ve just kind of, learned as I’ve gone along. It’s mostly been just like learn by doing. Just pick up a camera, start taking photos, and oh, that looks like crap. Well, what if I can’t?

Joey – Self-taught. I love the self-taught.

Tony – I’ve got your Instagram account up here on my other monitor, and it’s just stunning. I just love all the color. Just going through some of your, looks like Alaska trip pictures.

Joey – Yeah, it wasn’t that long that y’all were way up in… The Dempster Highway.

Tony – Yeah, way up there.

Joey – You posted a lot of really good pictures up there. And I wanted to talk about that. You know, a lot of us have… bucket lists, places that we want to go. And you’ve, you’ve been to some places that I’ve never heard of. And so, I love, I love how Instagram lets you tag where you’re at. So, it kind of gives a little area. It doesn’t tell your coordinates or exactly where you are or anything like that, but it does give an idea about where you are. So, tell us about some of the most memorable places that you’ve been, that you love. Memorable places.

Meg – Tuktoyaktuk, which is the terminus of this trip, the Pan American Highway for us. It’s the most northern point that you can drive to in Canada. Yeah, so that was pretty, pretty cool. And doing the Dempster Highway was, it was just amazing. The fall colors, it snowed on us in August and it was, yeah, it was just such an experience.

Tony – Yeah. That’d be a weird feeling.

Alex – Yeah. It’s a little different. I mean, definitely for, for guys like you that are in Arkansas, you know, you probably stay pretty hot.

Tony – Oh, it’s Satan’s armpit.

Joey – Yeah. You know, in, in June, July and August, we’re looking for somewhere else to go. You don’t want to be here. So, we usually either go higher elevations or we go North. And so, that’s one of the reasons why we need ideas about where to go because we’re always looking for somewhere to go during those months because you don’t want to be here. You don’t even want to go outside much less camp. And there’s no air conditioner that can keep up that, that, that you just want to use.

Tony – I mean, a zero, a zero breeze works pretty well, but that goes through batteries like nobody’s business.

Joey – Yeah, it does. And plus, you’ve got to come out sometime. Well, I love that. I love that y’all been to some amazing places. Travel is one of my passions. We constantly are trying to go somewhere, go someplace new. It helps us get away from life. And we have a beautiful world that’s out there just waiting to be explored.  But you’re experiencing some of the things that Tony and I have been dealing with the past few months. With every up, uh, there’s going to be some downs and you recently, about things all being torn apart. And so, tell us about the behind the scenes, the things that you have to deal with, about how it’s not all glorious and glamorous.

Alex – Well, obviously our home is a van. So, it’s a house that is going to go through the roughest, abuse than any house will ever go through. So, it requires a crazy amount of maintenance all the time. And recently we had a bunch of kind of slowly encroaching issues with the van that I had to address. And, so that’s what the, our last video was about was just like the two weeks of maintenance that we did before dropping into Mexico. And, I had to pull out our refrigerator or center console, pull the dog house, pull the passenger seat, pull out all the intake stuff on the van just to get under the intake manifold to pull it off. So, I could change out knock sensors, which is a common issue in the Chevy 350’s or it’s a 4.8-liter LS. And, um, like, I can’t afford to pay someone to do that. So, I had to do it myself. And it was a long, long learning experience. So that’s just kind of like a little bit of insight into like, just maintenance alone can be a huge kind of like downer on your travels. It stopped us for two weeks. Luckily, we have great friends to house us in Phoenix while we did that maintenance. So that’s like one aspect of it. And then there’s the relationship aspect of it. Meg and I living in a tiny space.

Meg – Yeah. Like we’re not even, we’re like, uh, Fifty square feet or something like that. Fifty or forty-five square feet.

Joey – Yeah, that that gives a whole new meaning to tiny house.

Meg – Yeah, for sure. Over the summer, everybody that stepped in the van said, wow, this looks much bigger on video. Looks much smaller in person.

Joey – Yeah, exactly. So, is the is the mechanic in is that self-taught as well? Did you just have to learn as you go with that?

Alex – Yeah, it’s another like learn by doing kind of thing. I’ve done a lot of knuckle bashing in my life. And so, whenever I had a truck or vehicle that needed maintenance, I shiver at the idea of having to hand over my vehicle to someone else to work on it. So only for the big jobs would I hand it over to like a trusted mechanic and otherwise everything else I do myself just to save money and to learn.

Joey – The only trusted mechanic I have is Tony. And it’s funny because Tony is a Jeep guy and I’m a Toyota guy. And, you know, when I’ve needed stuff done and I would say, have you ever done this before? And he’s like, no, but I’ll watch a YouTube video and figure it out. And sure enough, we’ve had parts scattered from one side of his driveway to the other. And I’m like, there’s no possible way I would have ever attempted this. But sure enough, we get it all back together.

Tony – When we did the motor and transmission swap on my daughter’s car.

Joey – No, that would have stressed me out. I’ve never done anything like that before. Yeah, and you watch a YouTube video and pull the motor out of a car.

Tony – And I tell you, if it wasn’t for – so I’ve got a good friend, Michael, who is there for me night and day. Anytime I need anything, have any questions, he’s a career ASCE certified mechanic. And, I mean, he’s since moved on in his career, but he’s still – he still you know works on Jeeps and stuff and he’s always been a great source of you know hey you need to try this or look at this and so I go and I try this and I go look at that and then I call him back and yeah it didn’t work it didn’t work yeah, he’s like okay I’ll be right there.

Alex – so I have a couple guys like that back at home that I can call on whenever I have an issue, I’ll shout out Lance and Wes. If you guys are watching those guys, I can, you know, usually ask any questions about mechanical stuff and they’ll get me an answer within a few minutes to an hour or something like that. And it’s, it’s always like really rock-solid information and, and, so it’s always great having those friends that you can just quick dial, hey, give me some advice on this.

Joey – So, have you seen down where you are, if something major happened and you needed a mechanic, how hard would it be to find one?

Meg – There’s mechanics everywhere down here. They’re super resourceful.

Joey – That’s good.

Alex – Yeah, we’ve had some work done in Baja.

Meg – We had our front end replaced. And overall, it was a good experience other than they didn’t grease anything. So that was unfortunate. But other than that, it was amazing.

Alex – And it was like a twelve-hour shop day for two hundred bucks US. But yeah, all of our other intrepid traveler overlander friends, have had to get work done in Mexico and, and beyond. And it’s always a pretty good experience and yeah.

Meg – People down here are so willing to help. And also like, I think like Mexican mechanics have a reputation for being very, very resourceful people. And I think it’s just on the daily, they have to make something out of nothing. And, so they really know how to finagle a vehicle, I guess, or repair.

Alex – And yeah, like the one experience that we had, it was great on the price, obviously, because we paid like next to nothing for so much work that I think it was just like a cultural thing. Like, I just didn’t know that, you know, they’re going to hand back your vehicle, but it’s your responsibility to pay for the grease and to grease your ball joints. And unfortunately, we were down like, the Baja one thousand like a big section of the Baja one thousand and I got into the vehicle just to check stuff over and I’m like these bull joints haven’t been greased and heated up and wore and so it was just like a learning experience for me I’m not going to fault anyone for it because like I just didn’t know yeah, it’s a cultural thing but yeah if we need to get if we need to get something repaired. I don’t have any issue bringing it into a mechanic down here.

Joey – That’s good. That’s good to know, especially for anyone that’s planning on traveling down there. Well, I love your rig. You call it Betty. Any reason for that name?

Meg – It’s the evolution from Shirley to Betty. I love, I love old lady names. Naming vans after old ladies.

Tony – That was my grandma. My grandma was Betty Lou.

Joey – There you go. I love that. Well, I love how you have transitioned. You had a… we had talked behind the scenes about how it was like the penultimate of the Bachelor overlanding rig. But when y’all got together, you transformed this 2006 Chevy Express from a white delivery van to this. I don’t know how you would describe it. Would you describe it a luxury travel home? So, tell us what, what you did, how you transform that, and made it worry into something you can live out of.

Meg – Well, so I bought the van in twenty nineteen before I had met Alex and I was just upgrading from my Dodge Caravan to something bigger, a bigger palace on wheels. And I built that out in 2020 with the help of a friend and it was just a really basic it was super cute perfect for me but it was really basic in terms of what we have now and then I met Alex and he had the Toyota and we tested it out it was way too small and we both sort of looked at the van and said hmm we can try and make this work.

Alex – And so I’m like a pretty diehard Toyota guy. I have been all my life. I’ve always kind of liked Chevys. I like the way they look like they’re older trucks and stuff. And when we decided like, okay, I don’t think the Toyota pickup is going to work because it’s too small. And we started looking at the Chevy. I knew nothing about a Chevy Express van aside from the fact that it had more interior space for us to live in. And I looked at him like, well, it’s got to look cooler at least. So, I started by putting like a coil spacer in it just for like inch and a half lift. We put some 276/75 KO2’s on it. I built some steel bumpers and a steel roof rack for it. I kind of tore out a lot of meg’s initial build and then made it just like a little bit more functional put a slightly bigger uh electrical system in it and that was betty two point oh um we traveled in that van for six months and she went everywhere that we wanted her to go and I was just like at the end of that six months was like this van is awesome like yeah you know two-wheel drive van over that ones they got to learn a little bit about the express platform and Meg, didn’t know at the time, but she had bought the one ton version of the three quarter ton van. And, so it’s got like big suspension. It was equipped factory with the Dana, in the rear and then a 4.8 liter with the Dana transmission. And, you know, like it shares, Lower control arms with the Chevy Silverado and everything’s built pretty tough It’s one of the last you know body and frame vans that are coming off the off the assembly line stuff and I was like, okay this fan is actually like a pretty good platform and we’ve had zero issues with the engine and the more I’ve been learning about the engine and the LS platform like oh Okay, so this is like the 3.4 l or the twenty-two already of Toyota, like for Chevy, like the 350’s are really good engines. And then we decided, OK, we’re going to do the Pan Am. And I’m like, well, we need more space and we need more clearance. I want bigger tires. The biggest thing that’s going to stop us is mud. So, we’ve got to run mud terrains and I want to winch in the front and. blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You just add to the list and we’re like, okay, we’re going to rebuild Betty for 3.0. And so, two summers ago we brought the van back to my, my parents.

Meg – First, we raised the roof.

Alex – Yeah. Cut off the roof. I top on. And then, for four months, it was a process of me ripping out the interior. And then building an entirely new interior that’s far more functional, can store more. And then new bumpers, bigger lift, bigger tires, so on and so forth. And now we are in Betty 3.0.

Joey – With a fireplace.

Alex – With a fireplace. With a wood fireplace. Actually, this was Betty 2.0 as well.

Joey – You can’t get a wood fireplace in a $150k Sprinter van. I mean that’s just that’s living you can do whatever you want when you build it yourself.

Alex – that is true just don’t tell the insurance companies.  You don’t put that down when you say oh what’s in your car.  no earlier I mentioned the Swiss couple that I went to Baja with so that guy he went back to Switzerland he’s a bit of a pyromaniac and they have a wood fireplace in their van, their Sprinter van. It was a 4WD one. And he went back and he started his own tiny wood stove company. And when we were building Betty 2.0, I contacted him. I was like, Andres, I need a wood stove for a van because we don’t have a heating system. And so, he sent us all of this for free. It was this was the very first stove of this size that he had ever, you know, built and it was off the assembly line. So, this is like the prototype. We’ve been rocking it for the last two years. It’s been awesome.

Tony – Heats that space up pretty good, I bet.

Alex – Yeah. Now, like we’ve got a lot more insulation in the van, so we hold heat better. And yeah, I mean, it’s great. You know, you want to sit for two or three days in the cold. We have enough wood under here for two or three days to keep us warm.

Joey – How important is, in all your travels, how important would you say is having that inside space to be able to go to and get out of the weather?

Meg – so important yeah, it’s invaluable…honestly this like this is our lives this is not just us on like a little trip where we can go home and so for this space to feel like it’s home super important and to have a comfortable place to work and cook and all the rest of it.  Kudos to those folks out there that can do it in a rooftop tent and yeah, It’s not us. We need more creature comforts, I guess, to thrive on the road. And yeah, this van has really suited us so far.

Joey – Well, you talked about Andres, was it? You talk about in several of your posts about how the best part of traveling isn’t the destination, but the people you meet along the way. So, tell us about some of the people that you’ve met that have made an impact on you. You’ve already spoken of one. Any others? And I’ve noticed that you have posted pictures with other people. So that’s a really cool story.

Alex – Well, we call those people our road family. Most of them exist in North America. Actually, most of them. All of them. All of them are from North America. Yes, actually. People that have really made an impact.

Meg – Tim and Denise.

Alex – Yeah, Tim and Denise from Cantwell, Alaska, for sure. They are two kindred spirits. We met them down in Baja. And we’re kind of like following in their footsteps. They were going down to Baja on, I think the fifties and their Volkswagen.

Meg – I think the seventies.

Alex – The seventies. The seventies. They were going to Baja in the seventies in their Volkswagen van and just, you know, bouncing around and, you know, around and exploring Baja before it was cool. And, and they’ve also traveled all over the world. They, they purchased their property up in Cantwell long ago and would work in Denali national park for summers. And they would just go and travel and they slowly built their property. And it’s kind of like what we would like to do and everything that they have done. has been like yeah, we want to do our lives that way and so they have definitely been very like instrumental and inspiring us to do what we’re doing now and to like travel while we are able and then you know make a life that you know uh we’re happy with and we’re proud of.

Joey – What keeps you uh what keeps you going each day? what’s your motivation?

Alex – Do you want to answer that one first?

Meg – I think that seeing the world and just being immersed in nature the way we are, it’s just like such a pleasure and a gift to wake up every day and get to have this revolving backyard and yeah, be in these just epic, epic, inspiring places. So yeah, I couldn’t dream of a better life. The thrill of seeing something new. All the time.

Alex – Yeah. I think, I think for me, I’ve always really just wanted, or I guess more so kind of, I got into my thirties and realized that the life I was living was not exactly what I wanted to do with my life. I was kind of just like following a prescribed route or, or, or path. And I realized that I really want to do something with my life that when I look back on it, I can be like yeah, I did that I did the thing and I’m it was hard or it was it took a lot of effort um it wasn’t always fun but I did it. And so, the last few years, I think, with Meg and with, you know, the advent of course of being able to work online and fund all of this through a YouTube channel. Um, has uh really opened up a ton of possibilities and uh it’s really cool being able to like look at that and be like oh this is the life I’m living okay that’s really spectacular and just embracing it while we’re here as well right like looking at it and being like this is really incredible, we need to work for this and hang on to it and so that’s what keeps us going.

Joey – For someone who might want to do this like you follow in somebody else’s footsteps, for somebody that might want to follow in yours and do this full time one day, what advice would you give them? What would you say to them?

Meg – I would say start small. We started by doing a number of shakedown trips to figure out, to really dial in the rig and dial in our routines on the road and just like make sure with one hundred percent certainty that that we can sustain this for a long time without killing each other, without…

Joey – You laugh, but that’s a real thing. When you’re in a small space, you have to get along. So, I totally get it. I totally get it.

Meg – Yeah. And I think we’re pretty well prepared for this. I know that there are people out there that kind of just throw themselves into it. And we’ve had some questions like why, like last year, why aren’t you just starting the Pan Am now? And we still felt like we had some things to straighten out. So, I think that’s what I would say. Just start small and do bite-sized trips here and there and just make sure that this is really what you want before actually taking the plunge and like selling your house or whatever it takes to get on long term.

Alex – …and kind of to add to that or maybe to go like a little bit more minuscule with it I think there’s a very common thing that a lot of people do when they’re looking at like, you know, the overland lifestyle, the van life lifestyle. And they think they get this idea that there’s this perfect rig out there for them. That’s going to enable them to do everything. Well, I’m here to tell you that the perfect rig doesn’t exist and you’ll never find it. You’re always going to sacrifice something. So, start with what you have. Go out and do the small thing. Like, you know, get used to camping and sleeping in your back seat. Or if you have a van, just like throw a blow-up mattress in the back and bring a cooler with you and go out and see if you like doing that. You know, if it gets you the thing that you’re looking for. you know, maybe by making small improvements to your vehicle later on, you’re going to be able to get more of what you’re looking for, but going in and spending all this money and, and, and chasing now this idea of a perfect rig and not going out and doing the thing because you’re, you’re just trying to get the, the vehicle to do it is not the way to go about it. Just baby steps, small stuff. Don’t dump a whole bunch of money and all this effort into building your perfect rig, just like go out, man, and experience what you want to experience and then like figure out what you want.

You know, I used to build van interiors and always had clients come up to me and say, I want this, this and this. And I’m going to, you know, I’m buying this van. I’m like, okay, cool. Slow it down for a second. Just go get yourself some like plastic organizers, a blow-up mattress and a twelve-volt cooler and live out of the thing for a month first. and then come see and spend your money like so yeah, I’ve probably gone a little bit long on that one but…

Joey – oh I you know we see it all the time we see it all the time people have it backwards.  They think they have to have all the stuff first before they go and my question is, how do you know what stuff to get before you go? Everybody’s different. Everybody lives different. Everybody has different habits, different things that they like, different things to make them comfortable. So how would you even know what to get? And the worst thing you could possibly do is post on a Facebook group and say, hey, I need this. What do I need? And everybody’s going to advise you to get what they have, which is going to be a thousand different things. And your question’s never going to get answered. So how would you know? without going so totally agree.  If you had if you had to go back and start all over, what would you change is there anything that you would change about how you how you started out?

Alex – How far back are we going?

Joey – Let’s go. Let’s go. Three 3.0…

Alex – on this trip. Yeah. Oh, wait. Yeah. I preached like light vehicles.

Joey – And you’re at almost ten thousand pounds.

Alex – Yeah. Pretty light. And I, you know, I’m realizing after two years of full-time vehicle travel, that weight is the silent and slow killer and you can put it on a lot faster than you can take it off. And, when I was building this interior, like all this beautiful wood you see. It’s all really thick and it’s all really heavy. And the little, the little 4.8 l V8 pulling around 9,000 lbs. is struggling, specially out here in Mexico, where, the grades are crazy. The corners are as tight as heck and you’re up and down, up and down all day long. And the van is just like, kill me now, please. So, yeah, if I had to go back and do it again, I would build everything exceptionally light as light as possible. No more like two-inch maple countertops. Five eights Baltic birch ply and as much, you know, hardwood accents as I can do.

Tony – Well, it’s almost as much as Joey’s FJ weighs.

Joey – Oh, yes. I’ve got an FJ cruiser and it’s got everything and the kitchen sink. It doesn’t have a fireplace, but I’ll be getting one now. But the very first question that I get from everybody is how much that thing weigh? And I was like, I haven’t weighed it. I don’t want to know. Yeah, I don’t know but my little 4.0 V6 struggles just to get out of the driveway.  So, I totally get it

Tony – my three ton jack struggles

Joey – yeah fortunately I hadn’t had to use that much… so, I totally get the weight thing.  Well, you tell great stories. You mentioned earlier that you love being a storyteller. And I love on your social media and all of your platforms how you tell a story. You don’t just keep it simple and do one sentence is like, hey, we saw a mountain. You tell the story about where you are, what you’re doing. You give insight into who you are. And I absolutely love that. So, I just wanted to give you kudos there on being a good storyteller because not a lot of people can do that well. You put out really good videos. Is your YouTube channel, is that the thing that you concentrate on the most? Is that where you want people to go to see where you are, what you’re doing?

Alex – Absolutely. Yeah, a hundred percent. I guess like I’ve mentioned a number of times that it’s like our one of two means of income while we travel. And so, we’re starting to lean heavier and heavier on the YouTube channel and the income that comes from that. So certainly, I want people to go there and to watch the videos. Cause that’s how we get paid. But I definitely, because it’s long form and I like the long form platform. That’s just really where I focus my attention. It used to be a lot of Instagram, but now that Instagram is pushing short form content and that’s the only way that you can really get anywhere on that platform. I’ve just kind of been like, at whatever, like I’ll post photos because that’s what I signed up for on Instagram. But, on YouTube, they’re staying true to how they started, which is long form. And I can tell a longer story. I can show more of where we are. And, I think that we can have like kind of a better personal connection with our audience through video and the stories that we tell together.

Joey – So do you enjoy that part of it? You know, a lot of people, feel like that, you know, posting the video, doing all the work. But you know, you do consider that, part of your career, but a lot of people do it for fun, but it’s, it’s not their favorite part, but do you, do you enjoy doing the videos?

Alex – The storytelling is, is that something, you know, it’s a double-edged sword, on one side. I absolutely love it. Like, it’s my favorite thing to wake up and edit video and to put everything together. And, it’s, it’s like a real, like engaging thing for my mind to, to put all the aspects of a video into one thing. But on the other side, hard to make it good.

Joey – Yeah. To make it good.

Alex – You know, it’s enabling us to do what we’re doing now. But at the same time, it’s like we’re here in Mexico right now. And today I sat in the chair right over there and edited for probably ten hours, you know, because I want to get ahead of my videos so that I can slow down a little bit. And sometimes just like long editing days is what it takes. And that means that like I’m not going for that walk with Meg. Or maybe you have to push that hike that we want to do till later or, or I’m missing the sunset or something like that. So yeah, it’s double-edged sword.

Joey – I can see that because if you do consider that part of your income or your main source of income, you do feel the pressure that you got to put a video out a week or got to put two videos, two videos out a week. And yeah, you know, I know YouTube expects that and you kind of have to count on that, but that also does take you away from, the enjoyment of actually being where you are. And so that true double-edged sword for sure.

AIex – I wanted to comment for just a second. Like that’s another aspect. That’s a kind of a double-edged sword because like on one hand, like, I’ll be there in the computer editing like crazy. But then one thing that we’ve learned that’s really good to slow down time is practicing presence. And Meg can practice presence by going and being quiet. I can practice presence through being behind a lens and focusing on minute aspects of a landscape, for instance. So again, it’s totally two-sided.

Joey – Yeah, find your thing. What were you going to say, Tony?

Tony – Oh, I was just going to say that you and I have talked about that aspect a lot. And I’ve learned that you’re you would be a great you’re a great storyteller. But oftentimes when we go out like on these short trips, it’s difficult to get enough video to put together, you know, enough for a long content for a long form without sort of taken away from the experience.

Alex – Yeah. So, it’s difficult. It takes a lot of work.

Joey – Plus if, you know, if you’re a weekender, which like ninety nine percent of the people that Overland are, you’ve only got a very short amount of time and pretty much you’re spending the whole-time shooting video, you know, if you want to put a video out. So, there was a time where I wanted to do it and then it just got to the point where I was like, maybe one of these days, but right now I just want to enjoy this time. So, you kind of have to decide.

Alex – We shoot over like four to five days for a video. And that’ll get us anywhere from, um, twenty-five minutes to forty-five minutes of content.

Joey – That’s mind blowing. Crazy. Somebody who’s never done it. Yeah. Somebody who’s never done it. They have no idea. Yeah. You know, and that’s like I said before, that’s making it good. That’s not going out and putting out, you know, forty-five minutes of B-roll. That’s everything that’s doing it right and making it good where people actually want to watch it. Megan also has a social media at @slowroamer.meg. You show a lot of what you do, a lot of cooking shots, videos. We mentioned behind the scenes a while ago about your non-bread video and your salads. Do you enjoy the cooking of it?

Meg – Yeah, that’s definitely the main part of my job on this journey.

Joey – I thought it was mechanic.

Meg – Yeah, no, I’ve loved cooking for many years and it’s no different when we transitioned into the van. I like to get just as creative and ridiculous with our meals in the van as I would in a regular kitchen. So yeah, I really love it.

Joey – Is it a challenge in the van or is it something that you’ve gotten used to? I’m very used to it now. It’s definitely different. You have to be super mindful of dishes because I’m not going to just make the mess that you would in a kitchen because you’ve got a sink with unlimited running water and, in your regular kitchen here, we wash dishes, dishes with like under a liter of water. Yep. So, yeah. And then obviously the space and just having two burners, not having an oven, all that kind of stuff factors in. But I see it as a challenge, a fun challenge.

Joey – What’s your favorite thing to cook? What’s your go-to?

Tony – What’s your favorite camp meal?

Joey- Yeah, here we go. Let’s just get it over with. Favorite camp meal.

Meg – I can’t really narrow it down to any one meal. I love the variety of it. I love thinking of new meals to make all the time. But I mean, Mexican’s definitely a favorite camp meal, like burrito bowls or tacos or whatever. Alex loves a dish that I make with Italian sausage and gnocchi.

Joey – Oh, I love gnocchi. Oh, gnocchi. What do you make your gnocchi out of? Is it sweet potatoes?

Meg – I haven’t made my own gnocchi yet, but that might be something that happens on the Pan Am because… can’t get it anywhere yeah um so we’ll see we’ll see but right now just the store-bought gnocchi…

Joey – that I yeah that would be a challenge because I’ve made it before with sweet potatoes and you actually have to bake the sweet potatoes to get them soft to make the gnocchi.

Meg – so you can boil them or steam them…

Joey – I’ll be looking for that

Meg – I think my favorite thing is like I love baking. I travel with my sourdough starter so I’m always making sourdough cakes and breads and stuff.

Joey – do you have an alternative to an oven to use a Dutch oven or anything like that?

Meg – I use an omnia That’s right. I saw that. I saw that in your pictures.

Joey – Yeah. That’s cool. How did you develop your love for cooking? Was it, did you do it as a young girl or later in life?

Meg – I come from a household that, um, where my both parents did not know how to cook at all. So, I ate a lot of crappy food growing up. Um, and so as soon as I was old enough, I was kind of chomping at the bit to start making my own food because I hated what my parents cooked so much. I binge watched food network, um, all the time. And so, I think that’s probably what’s informed how I cook and the skills that I have. I think it’s a passion that came from necessity at the beginning and involved into something that I really started to love.

Joey – That’s great. Well, other than that, what are some of the other extracurricular activities that y’all like to do when you’re traveling? What do you, what do you enjoy doing outside?

Alex – Definitely hiking. That’s really our main go-to. We don’t carry any kind of like bikes or things like that with us just because they’re theft hazards and get covered in dirt and stuff like that. So, if we want to be active, we usually get out on hikes and we will go to an area based on the kind of hiking that is available there. Like when we were in Baja, we tried water sports but turns out we’re not super good at doing water sports.  We had a surfboard and a paddleboard and some scuba gear like flippers and masks.

Meg – We find ourselves moving a little. I know we’re the slow roamers, but we, we do find ourselves moving a little quicker than your average person that would just post up in a spot and get out all their sporting equipment. So, we ended up not really using our water sport gear, to warrant carrying it around all the way through South America so we really love hiking because all you need is hiking boots.

Joey – backpacking is one of the best because with limited space you don’t have a lot of room to carry a lot of stuff and so it is one of the best things you can do I mean you fit everything you need in a little backpack and you’re good and you go so…

Meg – We’ve got all our multi-day backpacking equipment with us. We have yet to go on a multi-day backcountry journey, but Alex has a bit of an affliction with leaving the van.

Joey – I can imagine. I can imagine. I can see that for sure.

Alex – Let’s admit it. I’m a homebody, but I want to travel, so why not live out of a van? Bring my home with me, but It’s hard when like literally all of our life’s possessions are in this van and, you can only lock up a vehicle so well and decides, so I’m like, I want what’s inside. Then it’s like, okay, goodbye life. Yeah. Yeah. It’s hard for me to like, think about, okay, we’re going to go and, and hike around for four days, you know, and leave the van somewhere, but we’re going to try when we’re down in, South America. we’ll probably just go park the van in a compound or something like that and pay someone to watch it and then do those hikes.

Tony – Yeah. That’s something that, you know, we’ve talked to several couples that do this full time, and that’s something that’s not really considered. Your whole life is in your vehicle, and how would you leave it sitting?

Joey – How do you feel about leaving that with somebody you don’t know?

Alex – Not great. Not great. Well, and in another country, too, you know, I mean.

Joey – Well, and, you know, I just got back from backpacking three days, two nights in Arkansas, and I didn’t like leaving my car where I did. There’s just something about it and something in the back of your mind. What’s it going to be like when I get there? You can’t trust anybody these days. And I can I can see, and that’s just my car and everything I own is not in that car. So, I can’t imagine how much more it would be for you thinking about things like that.

Alex – So, I think that like for me, at least people can take all the stuff in this van. I don’t really care about that so much. It’s my hard drives with all my photos and video on it. Don’t because I can’t replace that. I can’t replace those, those memories that are, you know, digitally backed up. Um, everything else is replaceable. It’s just money. It’s just stuff, but don’t take my memories.

Joey – Oh, my goodness. Well, we are about to enter into a holiday season and it’s very non-traditional for you to travel to a different country, live out of a home in a place that you don’t know. You mentioned earlier there, you know, the decorations about where you are and how different they are in this holiday season. Have you had to change anything? Anything or give up anything to celebrate the holidays in this in a different way? And I ask that because people who may want to do that do this full time like you are one of these days. That’s something to think about that a lot of people don’t consider being away from a traditional holiday… having family together, gathering around the fire, around the Christmas tree, opening up presents type of thing. So, what traditions have you started? And have you had to give up anything doing this?

Alex – You know, it’s interesting. Neither Meg or I, well, together we haven’t celebrated a Christmas back at home since we met.

Meg – Yeah. This is our third Christmas.  In Mexico. In the desert. In the desert. I don’t know, like my family was long ago, we kind of took the emphasis off of, uh, like traditional Christmas celebrations, there’s not a whole lot of pressure to be in a certain place or to be with certain people. It’s like, you know, when I was back home, we would, you know, just spend the evening together. We’d eat some food. It wouldn’t be like the whole get up of presents and stuff. So, we never, like, I personally never had to give that up. Um, but I think it’s made a little bit different on your side.

Meg – Yeah. Yeah, we were just talking about this the other day. Holidays make us definitely think about it a little bit more, but there’s a large element to what we’re doing that is sacrificing our relationships, whether it’s family, friends. We don’t get FaceTime with the people that we love anymore. And although we’re making friends on the road, you know, it’s like ships passing in the night. Everybody has their own travel plan. So, in terms of friendship, it’s like, yeah, maybe we’ll see you down the road after two days together or something like that.

Alex – Yeah, it’s definitely a sacrifice in my mind that we’re consciously making to live this dream of ours. Yeah, our relationships suffer. And yeah, it’s especially noticeable at Christmas time. when all of our family and friends are together at home celebrating in the snow and we definitely miss that.  So we try and carve out like little fun things to do together the last two years that we’ve spent in the in the desert at Christmas time we’ve had friends around but this year we’re in the northern part of Mexico and we haven’t seen another overlander. So, I think this Christmas will be just us two.

Meg – Obviously, I’ll make something really special for us to eat. And we have little fairy lights or little Christmas lights strung up. But yeah, maybe we’ll go forage for a pine tree that we can make for Christmas tree.

Joey – Yeah. Do you enjoy the local traditions wherever you are? Do you kind of take those in and do you participate in any of the local stuff when you have holidays around?

Alex – Honestly, I think that’s TBD. We have spent collectively five months in Baja, Mexico. Otherwise, we’ve been in North America for most of our travels together. And I think so far, we haven’t really run into like any huge, like Mexican tradition that we could. Santa, which is Easter. We saw last year and that’s crazy. The Mexicans really get out and celebrate, which is awesome. We’re kind of, borderline antisocial in that respect. So, it was like, it’s kind of celebrations where like, stand on the outside and watch from a distance. Big crowd of people. Yeah, we usually try to stay away from that. It would have been really cool to celebrate Día de los Muertos in Mexico City or something, but we’re too late, obviously, for that. So, we’ll see what kind of Christmas shenanigans we get up to. But again, we’re kind of like… Ooh, I don’t know about going into a town at Christmas. Like, I don’t know what that’s going to look like. If there’s going to be like parades on the streets that we want to avoid in the van or something like that.

Joey – You just never know. You just never know what you’re going to run into. And, and that, that kind of leads me to my next question was, do you, do you on this, on this route, on this journey that you have, do you have a plan? or you just kind of take it day by day about where you’re going to end up, where you’re going to go. Do you have a long-term plan or a day-to-day plan or just, just go with it?

Alex – Obviously we have Argentina, Southern Argentina as our final stop on this trip. So that’s kind of guiding us, but in terms of specific plans, we go week to week.

Joey – What about a timeline on that? Do you have a timeline on when you would want to get there? it’s really based on seasons, honestly. Um, we’re, we want to be in Argentina for, not the winter, just not the winter. So, like late, really early spring, to late fall or something roughly like that. Also, we would like to get through central America before rainy season really hits. But that’s really basically it with, we plan a week out and move as we need to or want to. And if an area is not suiting us, then we’ll move to the next. Like right now we have a, we were telling you earlier we’re doing the Copper Canyon Overland route next week, which we’re going to try and stretch out over a week. And then after that, we’re like, where do we go? Yeah, we don’t know. We’re kind of just like trying to gather intel on the area that we’re in and see what’s out there and if there’s any cool stuff to go see or experience and just go there.

Joey – That’s cool. That’s awesome. Do you have any plans after you finish this route? Any plans at all?

Alex – Like the Pan Am?

Joey – After you finish the Pan Am, anything into the way future?

Alex – Yep. We’re playing way, way ahead. It’s not public knowledge as to what we are doing. We’re kind of saving that. Our, our patrons know, but yeah, we, we’re going to be traveling for a long period of time.

Joey – Awesome. That’s great. Uh, well, go ahead, Tony.

Tony – Well, I was just going to say, so once you get down to the end of this trip, are you going right on to the next trip? Are you going to backtrack and go back home for a minute and then start the next one? Yeah. So, will you literally drive it in reverse?

Alex – No. No, we’re probably going to sell a van in South America. Ah, okay. Just because like… So if any listeners want to buy Betty, the van. People do drive it from South to North.  It is not common, but it’s definitely done. And the upside of someone buying a vehicle like Betty, you know, going north is that once they get to North America, they can insure the vehicle in North America. I believe, anyway.

Tony – That is cool. That’s so cool.

Joey – Well, that’s exciting. It’s so exciting to get to see you, meet you, follow you. And I want to encourage everybody on Instagram they are @slowroamers… on Facebook It’s the Slow Roamers. Website is www.slowroamers.com. YouTube is @slowroamers. And then you do have a Patreon. Do you want to talk about your Patreon a little bit about what people do and what they can get from that?

Alex – Yeah, absolutely. So we’re, we’re pretty novice at, at Patreon. We are introducing more and more as we go along. As of right now, we are sharing our Gaia maps, our camp spots, sneak peeks, behind the, behind the scenes stuff. You know, like future plans, basically, like I said, people know kind of what we’re doing after the Pan Am already. Um, and yeah, like when we can, we’ll be doing early releases of our videos for those who want to watch it before the weekend. Um, yeah, that kind of stuff. And it’s just like, we, we haven’t tiered it in such a way that like, if you pay more, you get more. It’s just like, if you want to support us in, in one of these three tiers, you can do that and you’ll get whatever the lower tier gets. It’s just a way for people to like help put gas in our tank, keep us going.

Joey – Awesome!! Well we’ve reached the end of where we like to be and I think we’ve covered a lot of ground and we didn’t do it very slowly. We did it very quickly. And so that was really nice. Well, I want to say thank you so much for coming on the podcast and visiting with us and just letting us get to know you a little better and letting us see a little bit inside the walls of Betty 3.0, pretty amazing. So, for everybody listening, I hope you have completely enjoyed learning more about this amazing couple as much as we have. Thank you again for coming on with us. We really appreciate it.

Alex – Thanks for having us, guys. This has been fun.

Joey – I want to thank everybody for tuning in. I hope you’ve gotten as much of this as I have on behalf of Tony. Tony, have a wonderful week.

Tony – It’s good to see you, buddy.

Joey – Hope everybody has a great week. On behalf of the Overland Podcast, we hope you have a wonderful week. Have a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Tony – See you next year.

Joey – See you next year, I guess. Unless we do something crazy next week from South Texas. I don’t know. But until then, look out for number one. Don’t step in number two.  We are OUT!

the END of the Show…

The follow is the file for the notes for the show if you’re a weirdo like me and want to know all the deets!