How to Plan an Overlanding Trip for Beginners

How to Plan an Overlanding Trip for Beginners
Long-time adventurous RVers share their insights.

By: Peter & Kathy Holcombe

In recent years, the term overlanding has become synonymous with tricked out 4x4 vehicles, rooftop tents, and rugged backcountry terrain. But overlanding, by definition, is simply a method of self-reliant adventure travel to remote destinations where the journey is the primary goal. 

Basically, overlanding is the new buzzword for a good old-fashioned road trip into the wild where the route itself is the main attraction. RVers have been doing this for decades, but if you have never planned a trip like this, the logistics can be somewhat daunting. This guide is designed to help you confidently and skillfully plan and execute your first overland trip.

Note: If you haven’t purchased an off-road capable RV yet, this article shares important insights to keep in mind when deciding what features your overlanding vehicle should include – with many options available in Winnebago’s Backcountry Series! 

Step 1 - Where to Go Overlanding?

This is completely based on personal taste, your wilderness skillset, and your comfort level with risk. There are countless guides out there about where to go, but we usually start by looking for public land in an area that we are interested in exploring (national forest, BLM, state and national parks, monuments, etc.). 

Some public lands (like state and national parks) are more regulated than others, and each have their own set of rules and regulations for off-road vehicle access and overnight camping. Typically, national forest and BLM lands are less stringent on their usage regulations. Once you have a route/area in mind that you would like to explore, then you can start sorting through the logistics.

Some of our favorite places to explore the backcountry are Death Valley National Park, Big Bend National Park, and the Utah desert. (Here is a video of Peter and John from Agile OffRoad talking about one of our favorite overland routes through Death Valley.)

Step 2 - Do You Need a Permit for Overlanding?

Once you know where you are going, you can start researching the regulations for that particular area. Some areas require a permit to access the backcountry. Others require reservations for a particular backcountry site. Some are first-come, first-serve but have a limit of nights that you can stay. Some allow fires, others require that you have a toilet system to pack out human waste, etc. It is your responsibility to know and understand the rules of a particular area, and to follow them. 

There has been a huge influx of people exploring our backcountry areas, and these wild places are beginning to show signs of over use. If we want to keep our public lands open and free to explore, we all need to do our part to protect them. 

You can read Peter and Kathy’s Backcountry RVers Code of Conduct here.

Step 3 - Are You Self-Reliant?

Venturing into the backcountry requires forethought and the ability to deal with a variety of situations that might arise while you are away from civilization. The first and most obvious is: do you have enough food and water to survive for the number of days that you will be in the wild? The general rule of thumb is that you need one gallon of water per person per day to live off the grid. If you will be in extreme heat, double it. If you plan to use water for washing/bathing, you need to double or triple that amount. 

Once you have a couple of trips under your belt, you will get a feel for your water consumption. We have a 24-gallon water tank in our Winnebago Revel, and that will last the two of us about a week with moderate use with no showers. (Note: New models come with 35-gallon tanks!)

We also have a five-gallon cassette toilet on board. We try to dump it every couple of days, but we can stretch that to 4-5 days if we are conservative in our usage. In addition to our cassette toilet, we carry wag bags or pitstop bags. These are a portable toilet system that allows you to properly dispose of solid human waste while away from your RV. These portable toilet bags allowed us to properly deal with our waste for seven days when we had an emergency breakdown in the Arctic Circle. 

When we are traveling through the backcountry by vehicle, we ALWAYS pack a couple of extra days of food and water. This has come in handy when we have discovered an extraordinary place where we want to spend a few more days than anticipated, and also when we have had an unexpected delay such as a breakdown or weather event. It’s always prudent to have some redundancy when it comes to the essentials like food, water, and waste. 

And speaking of unexpected delays, part of being self-reliant is having a skillset to deal with unexpected events in the backcountry. You should always carry a comprehensive first aid kit as well as an extensive repair kit for your vehicle. You can read more here about what we carry with us to deal with the unexpected while we are in the backcountry. In addition, it is important to know your vehicle, keep it in good working order, and have some basic repair skills like knowing how to change a tire, just in case.

Step 4 – Do You Know How to Manage Resources?

We typically break our resources into four basic commodities: fuel, food, water, and power. We have added a 28-gallon auxiliary fuel tank to our Winnebago Revel which has more than doubled our range. We tend to be very conservative with our fuel range and often fill up when our first tank is empty leaving us with a large reserve. However, there have been times when we have stretched our range to the very limits of our fuel capacity. When we do the calculations, we use our average fuel consumption and then add a 100-mile buffer, just in case. It is easy to throw in a five-gallon can as an additional buffer if you are getting close to your range.

I mentioned water earlier, but it bears mentioning again. You can still function for quite some time without any other resources, but water is life. A good rule of thumb is a minimum of one gallon, per person, per day. In addition to the water in our Winnebago Revel tank, we also carry a gravity-fed water filter, so that if we get in a pickle, we can resupply our drinking water from a nearby river or lake (just be sure to have a high-quality filter). 

We typically have way more food than we need, and keep our pantry stocked with emergency provisions such as ramen noodles, peanut butter, tuna fish, and a couple of dehydrated meals. These are quick and easy and provide adequate calories to get to the next market.

While power is a luxury, it is one we have become accustomed to and that we rely on for our day-to-day operations and comfort. We have enough battery capacity to live comfortably for around two days. After that, we either need to implement conservation measures or drive. Our situation is somewhat unique in that we are heavy power consumers with computers and hard drives, Starlink, induction cooking, battery powered A/C, and a UV water purification system. In addition, we removed the solar panels on our roof to make room to carry kayaks instead. So, the only way to replenish our power supply is to drive. 

Fortunately, we have a high-capacity secondary alternator that will completely top off our batteries within about an hour or two of driving, and we typically drive at least that far everyday anyway. As you start to get a sense of your power demands and capacity, as well as how you like to travel, you can start to develop a system that works well with your specific needs. For some people, solar may be the perfect solution, for others conservation of power demands, and others may need a generator to replenish their power supply. There are many ways to stay powered up in the backcountry and with time, you will develop a system that works well for you.

What to Expect on a Typical Day of Overlanding in an RV?

Let me start by clarifying that there is really no typical day for us when we are overlanding, but there are key elements that happen most days (in no particular order). We drive almost every single day. Some days are long drive days, and others are pretty short. We typically drive less than 200 miles a day so that we have time to enjoy where we are.

We primarily eat two meals a day with snacks in between. Two shelves of our pantry are dedicated to quick snacks: nuts, granola bars, fruit, chips, and other snacks. The rest of the pantry is dedicated to other staples: pasta, rice, canned goods, bread, tortillas, etc. 

We try to have some form of exercise every single day. If it’s going to be a long drive day, I will do a quick hike before we leave in the morning, or as soon as we get to camp. Usually, we are traveling to a particular place to hike, bike, kayak, or climb, so exercise is an integral part of the journey. If there are fun things to do in an area, we will stay for a few days, otherwise, we will continue on to the next objective. 

Once we arrive at our destination, we try to keep the setup simple. We swivel the passenger seat, set up Peter’s work station, and put up the blinds. If we have time, we may set up the camp chairs and put out the awning, but that is the extent of our camp setup - five minutes tops. Keeping it simple saves us time and storage space in our Winnebago Revel. In the evenings, we cook dinner and may go on a walk, or simply get to work editing videos for YouTube or writing articles for GoLife. The next morning the whole cycle begins anew.

So, that’s the basics of what you need to know to plan your first overland RV road trip. If this is your first time overlanding, be sure to start small with just an overnight trip that is relatively close to civilization. This will give you the opportunity to test out your gear and your systems and get some experience under your belt before tackling a larger objective. Once you are dialed in, the sky is the limit. 

Here are a few YouTube episodes about some of our favorite overland routes in the western USA:

• Exploring the Schafer Trail in Utah
• Driving the El Camino Del Diablo of Southern Arizona
• Overland Journey Along California Highway 395

Hopefully, those will get you dreaming about your next overland objective. Onward!