00:00
I am here now, this time at Overland Expo in Loveland, Colorado, so this is my third event
00:18
to attend, and so this is a bonus episode for Overland Expo.
00:24
I figured I would just do the intro while I'm here, rather than wait and go back to
00:29
my quote-unquote studio in my closet.
00:31
So right now I'm looking at the Forester Hybrid that Cary is building out for the Rebel Rally
00:39
with the help of Milton and Subaru of America, and of course some build partners.
00:46
And seeing this thing in person is pretty incredible.
00:49
It looks absolutely amazing.
00:52
They've got the Mountain Subi, Subaru USA, Silver Bullet XB, XV on the back.
01:01
They've got their Instagram handles there.
01:04
So yeah, the color is really, really nice.
01:07
This blue is amazing.
01:09
And being that it's a hybrid, of course that's great too.
01:12
And this thing, if you are following and watching their journey on Instagram, this
01:18
car is pretty amazing.
01:20
It's doing some really, really cool stuff off-road.
01:24
So I think it's going to do amazingly well at the Rebel Rally.
01:27
So thank you, Subaru, for partnering with Mountain Subi and putting this thing to the test this
01:34
year at the Rebel Rally.
01:36
That's going to be super, super cool.
01:38
We also have here in the Overland Expo booth, there's a Cross Trek Wilderness.
01:44
It's the blue color, I guess hyper blue.
01:46
I'm not sure exactly what color it is.
01:49
It's got some rock sliders on it, front bumper guard with some lights, and also some ditch
01:59
lights and a rooftop basket, some LP Adventure wheels.
02:03
And it's looking really good.
02:05
Really, really good.
02:06
Oh, and it's also got a rear tire swing.
02:08
So Subaru, you can just ship that to my house or my apartment whenever this is over.
02:14
Thank you very much.
02:15
Okay, okay, scratch that because I found out later on that that is Robert Champion's Cross
02:21
Trek, so I don't think that'll work out having that shipped to me.
02:24
I mean, not that they would do that anyway, but I thought that was kind of funny.
02:30
And because it's a really, really nice Cross Trek, it looks really great.
02:35
And of course, me owning a Cross Trek and, you know, wanting to eventually get a new
02:42
one at some point, but also keeping Pearl, that's probably the most logical plan at some
02:50
But yeah, I don't think that Robert would appreciate anybody shipping that to me, because that's
02:56
Yeah, she had to throw that in there real quick.
02:59
And then of course, we've got the big love sign up here where people can take pictures
03:04
and post them up there.
03:06
And then we've got Troy with his outback wilderness talking to people.
03:12
And his build, of course, looks completely amazing.
03:16
With all of the modifications that he's done to it, it looks really, really good.
03:21
Then you've got the owner lounge, which is really nice.
03:25
People in here are chilling, having some snacks and drinks, picking up some little
03:32
And then we have Betsy Blackie with Basaltic Outback.
03:38
And she's got hers here on display with a lot of really nice accessories on it.
03:44
She has, I'm not exactly sure what it's called, but it's a little like the step that you
03:47
can put on your tire so that it looks like you can get to your roof rack a little bit
03:53
And she, of course, has the Subaru Outback Wilderness.
03:57
And she's got it fitted out for car camping really well.
04:00
And I see a wee boost up there, too.
04:03
Then, of course, there's the Subaru Wilderness badge on display here.
04:08
And then lastly, we've got the little stage where Carrie and Milton are currently doing
04:15
a little demonstration or talk about modifying your Subaru.
04:20
I was up at the stage before, right before them talking to Tanya.
04:26
I had her on the podcast in this episode.
04:30
And then now I'm heading over.
04:31
We've got a Wilderness Forester, which looks really, really nice.
04:37
It's also the same color as the Cross Trek, the Hyper Blue, I believe is what it's called.
04:42
And they've got it kitted out in the back with a little dog, like a shed, portable dog
04:48
shed or something, and then the ramp.
04:50
So yeah, this is Overland Expo in Loveland, Colorado.
04:54
Oh, one more thing.
04:55
We've got the little trailer over here that, like the pull-behind trailer with the topography
05:02
and everything on it.
05:04
That looks really nice.
05:05
It's also got a rooftop tent, bunch of merch in the back, so nice, nice little setup here.
05:11
So that's Overland Expo, Loveland, Colorado, Mountain West.
05:17
I was planning to record everything, the whole intro from there, record it from the
05:23
But I can't help myself.
05:24
I get back here to edit, and there's just something about having the headphones on and
05:29
talking into the mic that it's just, it's a lot different.
05:32
It's something, but it's like the experience of it.
05:35
With this bonus episode, it's going to be like the other ones where I will introduce
05:39
the first day, and then I just let the conversations roll, and then I will introduce the second
05:45
day just so you know that what day it was on.
05:50
But yeah, I had some good conversations and met some good people.
05:55
So they will introduce themselves for each of the conversations, so I'm not going to like
06:01
tell you here like I had this person on this day, and this, and this, and this.
06:06
So you will find out as the conversations come.
06:10
But before we get into those conversations, I just want to say thank you again so much
06:14
to Subaru and Joe for bringing me out to Overland Expo and allowing me to be a part of
06:22
this journey and a part of Overland Expo 2025, since this is the first time that Subaru has
06:28
officially participated.
06:30
I really appreciate it.
06:31
I had such a great time.
06:33
Everybody else had a great time.
06:34
It was such a great space, and we've got one more event to go to.
06:38
I'm looking forward to that, and I'm looking forward to meeting new people and seeing
06:45
So yeah, we will get into this conversation here from Overland Expo, Mountain West, and
06:51
Loveland, Colorado.
06:54
Oh yeah, and of course we're going to start off with day one, which was Friday.
06:59
So that's what these conversations right here are going to be.
07:02
Alright, we're here at Overland Expo, Mountain West, and yeah, it's just audio.
07:20
So we're here at Overland Expo and Mountain West in Loveland, Colorado.
07:25
We're here in what somebody called the Subaru Oasis when we were in Oregon, which seems
07:31
like more appropriate for this.
07:33
So why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself, because I have my first guest here.
07:38
Hello Rafael, my name is Tanya, and yeah, I'm a content creator from Mexico, but now
07:45
I'm living in Bellingham, Washington, and I'm so excited to be here in Loveland,
07:52
This is my first Overland Expo.
07:54
This whole world is just so new to me, and I'm just so thankful that you have
08:02
So what brought you to Overland Expo, and specifically to the Subaru Oasis?
08:10
So yeah, good question.
08:11
I have a Forester Wilderness 2024 that I got last year, brand new from the agency or
08:20
the dealership, and ever since I got it, I just kind of had this wild dream of making
08:27
it into an adventure car, and I already do a lot of travels, and before I wasn't driving
08:35
that much, and now that I'm in the States, I'm literally enjoying the freedom of having
08:40
your own car and being able to drive everywhere.
08:44
So it just makes sense to be here and learn about all the brands, all the experts, like
08:51
learn about everything that I want to do to make this dream a reality.
08:56
So being that you have a Subaru and a Forester, you're in the right spot, and wanting to do
09:02
more with it, because there are a few cars here with people that can definitely help you
09:07
out, that have done some pretty amazing modifications to their Subaru's, so it's a perfect spot
09:14
No, I'm so excited.
09:17
So what made you choose Subaru to purchase, and then also why a Forester Wilderness?
09:24
So yeah, it was a little bit torn between which car was I going to get, but to be honest,
09:30
the safety features that it has being a solo traveler right now, and being able to feel
09:37
secure in my car, that was like one of the highest priorities of getting this one.
09:41
I did some test drives from the cross track, like I've been out of the outback, but
09:47
the Forester was the one that made me decide to choose over it just because
09:53
of the room that it has.
09:56
The Wilderness Edition particularly was perfect for me just because of the seat, the seatings,
10:02
and then being able to put all the back seats down very quickly and just being able to
10:10
That was like wow, it has so much room, I love the moonroof, and yeah, I just fell
10:17
So how long, when you bought it, did you start car camping right away where you like, this
10:24
is your goal and your vision to car camp with it and among just traveling?
10:29
Well, ever since I got it, yes, that was my vision, but I didn't start right away.
10:35
I think I just started this year just because it was kind of like the winter, and then
10:40
I was doing a lot of traveling internationally, so there wasn't a lot of time to actually
10:46
enjoy the summer, but this summer I did my first car camping outside of my trailhead to
10:52
go see the sunrise and it was so beautiful and so quick and that was an amazing experience
10:58
and now I just came back from Alaska and I tested out a roof tent and I'm like yeah,
11:05
I want to have that in my car so I'm starting this journey of documenting everything, taking
11:12
people along with me for, yeah, like to see and to learn with me because I am not that
11:18
experienced in this space, this is all new to me in Mexico, like at least where I grew
11:24
up, it's not that popular, like there's like sewer ooze, like it's kind of like
11:28
new there, but this, you know, car camping, it's kind of like getting popular now,
11:33
but it's not like as crazy as it is here, I'm seeing so many beautiful vehicles and
11:39
infinite possibilities and I'm just like overwhelmed and amazed about all the options available.
11:45
Yeah, of course Subaru specific, you've got plenty of people to talk to here in the little
11:50
Subaru space, but being at Overland Expo and being able to explore all the different options
11:55
for camping and any other type of gear you might need while you're out, this is like
12:00
perfect spot for that.
12:01
Yeah, for sure, I'm very thrilled to see what else or what are the additions that
12:08
I can make to my car, like the changes or modifications I would say.
12:12
So how did you find out about Overland Expo and then how did you find out that
12:15
Subaru was at Overland Expo?
12:18
So I came to a conference in Colorado in the travel adventure space from the ATTA,
12:25
the Association of Travel Adventure, and there I connected with other people and
12:30
then told me about this Expo because I was talking about my desire of just
12:35
turning my car into the best adventure companion and they told me about this
12:40
Expo and yeah, basically I just decided to come here following this dream
12:45
randomly and come here.
12:47
So did you know that Subaru was at the Expo?
12:50
Yeah, well like once I started researching, I saw like there was a lot of
12:53
brands and I was like, well, that's cool, that's where it's going to be there.
12:56
I have Subaru and need to learn about the space.
12:59
And it's perfect because this is the first year that Subaru has done all of
13:03
the Expo's because last year they did like a little pilot at the first event in
13:09
California and then based on that they decided to come to Overland Expo and
13:16
attend all of the events this year, which we're all glad because it's been
13:20
it's been such a great experience and I know it's gotten a lot of great feedback.
13:24
I didn't know, but I was checking also that like in some
13:30
Subaru's Instagram account, they have a lot of people that are like you said
13:35
fans of the brand and it was like, well, that's an amazing community and I want to
13:40
be kind of part of that.
13:41
So yeah, I don't know anyone that owns a Subaru like in where I live.
13:47
Well, kind of like, but I haven't met the community, so I'm excited to
13:52
like just immerse myself in the community and be able to share
13:58
traveling experiences.
13:59
And what's nice too about the Subaru community, especially like the off-road
14:02
and overlanding community is when you like if you reach out to somebody to
14:08
ask a question, everybody is so helpful.
14:11
So like don't ever be afraid to reach out to somebody if you see somebody
14:15
that's doing something you know that you are interested in because like so
14:20
many people have experienced that where you know they're new to the
14:23
community, they're like maybe a little afraid to reach out to people,
14:26
but then they end up reaching out and are very surprised that people
14:30
are extremely helpful because like what happens with us is we see
14:34
somebody new come into the community.
14:36
We see somebody that gets a new Subaru and then we get really excited
14:40
for them, especially somebody that's really passionate and really
14:45
wanting to use their Subaru for what it was made for and beyond.
14:49
We all get super excited about that and we just want to like help
14:52
everybody with their journey.
14:53
So it's a great space to be in.
14:55
No like and I've been discovering a lot of like new things that I didn't know.
15:00
I don't know if you have heard about Rebel Raleigh.
15:03
So like I just learned about that you know like I think two weeks or
15:08
something I let go before coming here and I was like wow imagine like I just
15:12
could imagine myself using my Subaru to explore and then learn all these
15:17
things and just all about learning and you know making everything work
15:22
in my favor in some ways or just like do crazy things that I haven't done before.
15:26
Yeah so the Forrester Hybrid over there that Cary is driving.
15:30
Cary has been participating in the Rebel Raleigh for the past.
15:34
I think this is going to be her fifth year and she the previous
15:38
years was driving her own outback and this year she's going to be driving
15:43
the Forrester Hybrid.
15:45
And so she's been doing a lot of testing so she would be a great
15:48
person to talk to because she's actually participated for several years
15:52
as a driver and now she's got the Forrester and then of course we've got
15:57
this Forrester Wilderness right here.
15:59
What color is yours?
16:00
Mine is the green the first green I think.
16:02
Yeah they're so beautiful.
16:04
Yeah every single color of the wilderness I've seen is a good color.
16:09
Like I think but I think the white I didn't like the white that much
16:13
just because since you have the black thing at the at the hood
16:17
I just feel it's like makes a lot of contrast whether all the other colors
16:21
it's kind of like it blends in and it doesn't look as intense but yeah like
16:25
yeah you're talking about the right on the hood yeah like the black thing that
16:29
it's covering that it's kind of like so that's a good point that was like the
16:32
white it was like everything was perfect except that was like
16:35
it's just a lot of contrast and all the other ones are
16:38
more like blending in and it's just like they look beautiful.
16:41
That's a good point yeah because I have my cross-track is white
16:45
and everything on my car is black and white like I've gone with the black
16:48
and white theme. Ah but then in the wilderness you have like the
16:52
yellow like little things so that's it.
16:55
Yeah but I mean since mine is just a you know a 21
16:58
base model like it's it's funny because I was looking at a picture of it the
17:02
other day when it was stock yeah and then the way it looks now and I'm like
17:06
it just like it doesn't look like my car you know like
17:10
what it is now is like that's my car. Yeah yeah that's amazing.
17:13
Yeah so it's it's fun to build them up but so how long have you been
17:18
doing content and like what kind of content are you doing?
17:21
I have been creating content I guess over the past six years.
17:25
Oh nice. But since I'm very passionate about photography
17:29
about traveling and yeah just content creation allows me to blend
17:33
the things that I'm passionate about and now it seems that I'm passionate
17:37
about driving since I got back in Mexico I didn't
17:41
need to have a car to be honest I was like for the
17:44
past 30 years I was like I knew how to drive but I
17:47
never owned a car until I moved to the States. Okay. So yeah like before I was
17:51
afraid or anxious like to be driving you know in big cities and now that I'm
17:56
like much more confident driving like I just see
17:59
like infinite possibilities now that I'm like driving I'm like oh I can drive
18:03
anywhere everywhere I want to drive. Yeah. So it just
18:08
just made a lot of sense to also do like this car camping living here just
18:13
because the options in the United States
18:17
available for you know this type of lifestyle
18:20
are just beyond what I had imagined and I'm so excited to
18:25
explore more of that. Yeah and you're in the Pacific Northwest so you're in like
18:28
the perfect spot for that too. Yeah that's why I moved there I was
18:31
living in Houston I started living in Houston and I was like
18:35
yeah so that's you mentioned that before we started recording because I
18:38
live in Houston how long were you in Houston? For six months.
18:40
Okay where'd you live? Kind of like outskirts of like downtown so like
18:45
everything was at least 30 minutes and yeah like nature was like two hours and
18:50
oh yeah everything was like far there's no sidewalks I wanted to walk from where
18:54
I lived to downtown and it was like freaking seven
18:56
I hope it's something like that so yeah yeah Houston was not for me.
19:01
Yeah I know it's I've been there my whole life I live in west Houston
19:05
and I've said it so many times on the podcast like owning the type of
19:08
Subaru that I have living in Houston is the worst spot for it
19:11
but that's where I live I don't really you know I have kids there and family and
19:15
stuff. Funny thing I was born in Waco so yeah I was born in Texas.
19:19
Oh that's I was just in Waco last week yeah so I was driving I went to a
19:24
project for work up in McKinney, Texas and on my way back down I stopped by
19:27
Waco because I've driven through Waco I just never really stopped in Waco
19:32
so that's Carrie right there by the way so she's the one that did the
19:35
rebel rally. Perfect, that's what we tried to occur.
19:38
So you said you bought a Subaru for safety where were you doing your research to
19:43
find that out because when I bought my Subaru I didn't
19:46
buy my Subaru for safety I didn't know about the
19:49
safety features I bought it because I thought it looked cool and because I
19:52
wanted a manual but so many people that I've had on the podcast
19:55
that was a huge reason for them purchasing a Subaru is because of the
19:59
safety features so where did you do your research to find all that out?
20:02
My research was mainly done with my friends at own cars and they were like
20:06
looking it for me and they were like oh you can have these options
20:09
I was also looking at other brands and kind of testing kind of like similar
20:15
price range as well but when I bought it last year
20:18
to be honest I wanted to buy a used car but then
20:20
it was almost the same as a new car and I was like well I can get a new
20:24
car and then I just get I got a nice like interest rates
20:29
and the loan and I feel that was like the reason that I picked it
20:33
because the Subaru had a very good promotion and I was like well I want to
20:37
have the cheapest or like the lowest interest rates
20:40
and I liked the car so that was like the second highest like
20:43
there just being able to have a good financial
20:46
you know decision like in terms of buying a car
20:52
and that's why I decided to buy a new instead of used but I was like and
20:56
also the fact that Subaru holds its price for like the long term and even if
21:00
you want to sell it yeah you're gonna like you're it's gonna be a very good
21:04
investment so that's why like those were my top three reasons like safety
21:08
like the financial opportunity that I got and being able to
21:11
not have a loss when you sell yeah yeah it's good
21:15
anything else you want to share before we
21:18
well I'm very excited to start this journey of car camping and I feel I'm
21:23
in a great spot here at this Overland Expo it's
21:27
about like less it's like 10 a.m. right now almost
21:30
but yeah I feel I've got it already so much information
21:34
just for like this first day before even midday so yeah I'm so excited and stoked
21:39
about the future so before we end where can people find you
21:42
yeah my Instagram handle it at Tania Barillo like T-A-N-Y-A-B-A-D-I-L-L-O
21:49
and that's my website as well I have TikTok and I'm gonna start
21:53
a YouTube documenting like everything and seeing like sharing
21:58
more in depth of like this car camping series
22:01
okay great well it's nice to meet you and I'm sure we'll see you around for the
22:05
next couple of days yeah for sure thank you so much for
22:07
having me you're welcome
22:10
all right we're here at Overland Expo it's noon
22:13
and the weather's pretty nice it's a little overcast but this is my time
22:17
slot to record with somebody and so I found somebody to record with
22:21
who owns two Subaru's welcome to the CBNU podcast and welcome to Overland Expo
22:25
Mountain West hello hello go ahead and you can introduce yourself to
22:30
hi my name is Margie and I have two Subaru's right now
22:35
I'm on my fifth and I went back to my second
22:39
oh very nice very nice so what are the two that you own right now
22:43
I have a 2025 cross check wilderness and I have a 2018 outback okay so
22:51
before we started recording you were telling me that the cross track hasn't
22:54
been out much because I was excited to hear like how it's been doing but
22:58
you mentioned that it's hail season so you've been keeping it protected and
23:02
we live in Cheyenne and there's hail and I don't want to have a
23:07
damaged car so it's in the garage I driven it maybe
23:12
I don't know aside from home from the dealership maybe
23:15
three or four times okay and I really really like it
23:19
but I just don't want it to be all messed up
23:23
totally understandable so what made you like so you have the
23:27
2018 outback what made you decide to get into the cross track wilderness
23:32
so actually my first Subaru was a cross track in 2015
23:36
okay and I didn't really like it because
23:41
there was no power in the engine so then after that I got the 2018
23:46
outback and then after that I got another outback and then
23:52
after my second outback in 2023 I got a cross-track sport
23:57
and I absolutely loved it my mom had gotten my 2018
24:04
outback and she was ready for a new car so
24:10
she got my 2023 cross track I bought a new cross track and I took
24:15
the 2018 outback back from her to use as a hail car
24:19
okay yeah dedicated hail car dedicated hail car
24:23
hey you know I guess if that works for you you know but I mean that's
24:26
yeah the hail is that's no good I saw uh somewhere on Instagram a couple of
24:31
weeks ago some bad hailstorm it it was like
24:35
busting out car windows and stuff that happened to a lot of people in
24:39
Cheyenne our neighbor has one of those big SUVs with like
24:44
where half of the roof is glass yeah and the whole thing's completely
24:48
shattered so people had broken out windows they
24:51
had broken just everything dense everywhere
24:56
some people got it really bad some people are getting a new roofs right
24:59
now on their houses so it's but the insurance companies love that
25:05
but I guess that's what it's for yeah that's what you pay for right yeah
25:09
so what do you think about so have you been to overland expo before
25:14
we did we came last year okay so obviously Subaru wasn't at overland
25:18
expo last year but so what do you think of the Subaru space here at
25:22
overland expo I think this is really nice I have been to
25:26
another Subaru space at a ski resort okay
25:29
and um winter fest it was a winter fest okay
25:33
yes it was in um lake Tahoe oh nice um but this is a way this is a way better
25:39
set up probably because the weather has something to do with it right
25:42
yeah but that one they just pretty much had vehicles
25:46
okay um this one is definitely I mean there's obviously vehicles here but
25:50
there's kind it's kind of more interactive I guess
25:53
which is pretty cool yeah it's I I like it uh because it's more open it doesn't
25:59
really feel like a booth you know it's just yeah for sure and when I was in
26:05
an uh Oregon I was talking to a gentleman there and he said he said he feels like
26:09
it's more of like a Subaru Oasis because of the way that it's set up
26:13
that makes sense yeah and the lounge is really nice yeah the owner now just
26:17
really cool and then it's nice to see some factory vehicles on display
26:21
and then also vehicles that people have done some really nice modifications to
26:26
yeah I always like I mean but that's kind of the theme of this whole event right
26:29
as modified vehicles so I definitely think that's fun
26:33
plus I mean it's always nice to see what you can do I don't really know
26:37
that I'm gonna go off-roading in my wilderness okay
26:41
um my joke right now with my husband is no more hobbies
26:45
and yeah and I really enjoy my mountain bikes so
26:49
okay I think I'd rather if I had the time I think I would
26:52
rather go ride my bike than yeah go off-roading
26:56
so what got you interested in Subaru in the first place
27:00
um value yeah at the time when I got my first one
27:07
um we just we were kind of looking for an
27:11
interim car okay and it was you know it's always nice to get a new car
27:17
as opposed to a used car yeah and it was just it was a really good value
27:22
and so we got it and then I was just honestly
27:28
I've always been blown away by what you get
27:32
in a Subaru yeah and it seems like anytime I compare to another brand
27:38
um yeah I just you just don't get as much
27:43
yeah and so I feel like I kind of always end up coming back to the
27:46
Subaru because of that and the all-wheel drive system is
27:51
it's so good it works really well
27:55
really really almost a little too well I have to tell you
27:58
there's a really wide street um near my house
28:02
and when it gets about a foot of snow on it okay
28:06
um I really like I like to drive down it and get a little loose
28:10
oh yeah and um and the all-wheel drive system works a little too well for
28:15
that so it doesn't let you have as much fun as you
28:18
want to it doesn't let me have as much fun as I want to
28:20
exactly um or even like out in a parking lot just
28:24
trying to like with the little snow trying to drift a little bit yeah
28:27
it really wants to catch but then on the same you know
28:31
same token driving down the street in snow
28:36
with traffic and cars on the freeway whatever I feel
28:40
like my cars got me back yeah I had I had somebody on the podcast a long
28:44
time ago that was I think he I think he had rented a
28:48
cross track or was interested in buying a Subaru or something I
28:52
can't remember the whole story but it was a snow storm and he was driving
28:56
down the street in this cross track and there was like
29:01
so many other cars off the road because they just slid off the road
29:05
and he said he even saw some jeeps you know that had slid off the road
29:09
and he said the Subaru was just going right through had no problems made at
29:13
home and and I was you know at the time I was I hadn't
29:17
driven through snow before and I was like man I want to experience that because I
29:21
live in Houston but living in Houston we do get a lot of rain
29:25
and yeah trying to get those especially an underpowered car trying to get it to
29:31
drift is difficult but it also makes me feel good
29:35
that the all-wheel drive system is that good that when
29:38
I'm driving in heavy rains I'm not as worried about
29:42
you know I mean you could potentially hide your plane because if there's water
29:46
there's water isn't that you can do about that but like turning going up and
29:49
down hills and stuff it's going to definitely do a lot better
29:53
right and I'm actually my mom does a lot of driving
29:56
and I'm glad that she's in a Subaru because I mean not only because of the
30:00
all-wheel drive but just the general safety of it
30:03
yeah absolutely and ironically enough from my 2023 cross track to my 2025
30:10
my insurance went down oh good that's good like
30:14
how highly regarded Subaru safety is yeah yeah both of my kids now have
30:20
Subaru's so them also living in Houston I'm glad
30:24
that they have Subaru's now for for the safety and for the all-wheel drive and
30:29
all the rain that we get so yeah right
30:33
that's good that you've had so many Subaru's you know and that you've
30:36
come back to it that's really nice to hear
30:38
yeah there are a lot of fun to drive
30:43
I mean I yeah I just I like them yeah and
30:49
how do I explain it I don't know there's just so many
30:54
aspects of a Subaru that I think fit well
30:58
for my lifestyle and just you know we'll load up the bikes and all the
31:04
gear and everything and it everything always fits
31:08
and we can get wherever we need to go and even you know
31:13
if you're headed out somewhere like off of dirt roads
31:17
for us to go ride we can get there no problem we don't always have to take a
31:21
big truck yeah because they're so capable they're
31:25
super capable and then they're super creature
31:29
comfortable as well yeah they get really good
31:31
gas mileage I mean there's just so many different benefits to a Subaru
31:37
so what when you were getting the cross-track wilderness like what was it
31:41
that attracted you to the wilderness edition
31:45
um so one of the but other than the fact that they look really cool
31:50
yeah um one of the the things was we had
31:56
okay so my 2023 had 17 inch wheels and we had bought snow tires for it
32:01
okay and the 2025 sports have 18 inch wheels
32:08
but the wilderness has 17 inch wheels so we were like whoa well we can swap the
32:13
snow tires that's nice we don't have to buy a new set of snow tires
32:17
yeah um I liked the exterior styling a little bit better
32:21
or well a lot better than the sport because they kind of redid the sport
32:25
yeah um I like the um
32:29
well I love hate relationship with that that whatever that sport tech fabric is
32:34
that they use um I like that it like cleans
32:38
really well and um but it gets really hot when I wear
32:43
shorts and stuff so I just always have to throw a towel in the seat and sit on it
32:46
but whatever no big deal I think it's like a really durable
32:50
material too like so that's that's really good
32:53
yes I'm at some point if I get another
32:57
cross well my next car would probably be another cross track but
33:01
I'd like to get it with that that'd be nice mm-hmm what color did you end up
33:05
getting I got the metallic gray okay I liked how
33:08
it blended really well with the cladding that they put
33:12
yeah and then I really liked how um the metallic accents
33:17
that one right there yeah the metallic accents are kind of like that
33:22
orangy bronze color oh yeah instead of like the limey yellow oh yeah of the sport
33:29
I mean which looks good too but I already had one so I thought something
33:32
different yeah no that's good and you know you said
33:36
you're not planning on taking it off-road or going off-road with it but
33:40
it's nice to know that you can you know at some point if you decide like
33:44
because what's nice too is you don't have to do anything crazy with them but
33:49
you can take them on some trails that a normal car wouldn't really be able to go
33:53
on and just have the confidence that you can get
33:56
through it because like that was one of the main reasons that I bought mine
34:00
is we have a family reunion up in east Texas
34:03
and I was driving my previous car which was a lot lower
34:06
and I saw this road it was like a county road
34:10
and it had like some divots in the road and all this stuff and I'm like
34:15
like there's no I want to go see what's up this road but I can't
34:18
and at the time I knew that I wanted a cross-track but I was like you know if I
34:22
had a cross-track I know I could get up this road
34:25
and so like for me that was kind of like the biggest thing is being able to
34:29
go places like that where I couldn't with any of my previous cars
34:33
not necessarily I'm not trying to do any rock crawling or anything but just
34:37
the knowing that you can go and take some paths that you couldn't in any
34:41
other car was like the big one of the biggest appeals to me
34:44
right yeah that makes sense yeah so you think you'll
34:48
always own a Subaru then probably unless they
34:52
unless something really drastic happens to either a Subaru or
34:56
my life yeah yeah okay well thank you for taking
35:00
some time to sit down with me and record you're welcome
35:03
it was nice meeting you you too yeah and if you want you know if you're
35:06
interested you want to go listen to there's over 200 episodes so just
35:11
people out in the community I've had the woman that's sitting up there
35:14
she goes by mountain subi she also is driving the not the
35:19
cross-track but the hybrid forester over there okay
35:23
she participates she this will be her fifth year participating in the
35:26
rebel rally which is an all women rally
35:29
where they race for just trying to get from point A to point B
35:34
she has taken that yeah I'm carry
35:38
where do you do the rebel rally where do you do the rebel rally
35:43
California Nevada desert yeah so I was just telling her about the the
35:49
forester sorry the generators over there what I was just telling her about the
35:53
forester I'm just telling her about people I've had on the podcast oh yeah
35:57
yeah because I was yeah because she's driven her
36:00
her outback and the rebel rally the previous four years
36:04
so hi Kerry hi Margie nice to meet you nice to meet you too she has a
36:11
2025 cross-track wilderness but she also has a 2018 outback
36:16
and she's had some other Subaru's as well so we were just chatting about it
36:22
yeah we'll be a starting competition
36:26
like the October we'll have three Subaru's
36:30
we'll have three Subaru's competing this year
36:33
so that's super exciting and looking forward to
36:37
nice yeah again thank you for hopping on the mic
36:40
you're welcome all right have a great day you too thanks bye
36:47
all right I'm here at Overland Expo Mountain West and we're in the
36:51
beautiful owner lounge here at the Subaru Oasis
36:55
so welcome to the podcast would you please introduce yourself
36:58
hi my name's Ann and I live in Palmer Lake Colorado and I have a 2024 outback
37:04
wilderness all right so that's good to hear and
37:07
before we started recording I asked if it was your first Subaru and you said oh
37:10
no no how many have you owned I've owned nine
37:15
okay so do you have the little ownership badge with a nine on it
37:19
yep nice I sure do yep and five five other
37:24
little emblems that came with it so that was a pretty sweet deal because
37:27
that's free yeah yeah it is nice it's nice that you can
37:30
put those on there and show your proud ownership of it
37:33
yep so what are the other Subaru's that you've owned
37:36
previously all outbacks okay except for actually we had a 93
37:43
legacy sedan and that was a five-speed manual
37:47
the kids learned to drive on that very tough little car
37:50
going through teenagers um and then we had one other
37:54
outback that was a legacy but other than that they've been the the station wagons
38:00
yeah I the outbacks are really really nice
38:04
I and like the so the before the newest newest outback like the current
38:10
generation outbacks I they're a little too big for me
38:14
but the wilderness all day long I could there's
38:17
there's something about the wilderness that I love
38:20
well like I mentioned before we started our recording here
38:23
um I bought that 24 wilderness in June of 2023 because they had no more 23s
38:30
available so I didn't even have a chance to test
38:34
drive it but I got in it they taught me how to handle
38:38
and break in the turbo and I've been grinning ever since
38:43
so what made you decide on the wilderness
38:46
well if I was good so all these other Subaru's I've had
38:50
never had a car payment I bought them all cash nice
38:54
and I was trying not to have a car payment but then
38:58
when I couldn't find what I wanted and a used Subaru at that time
39:01
used good used cars for a good price for hard to find yeah
39:05
I went ahead and went new and I thought if I'm going to have a car payment
39:09
I'm going to get the wilderness yeah there you go no regrets
39:12
so what would you say is your favorite thing about the wilderness
39:17
oh my gosh were there too many favorite things
39:21
number one is I love being able to pass everybody else going uphill
39:26
yeah I really do I mean it's and I've got 36,000 miles on that car now
39:32
and it's given me absolutely no trouble some of the older Subaru's that had
39:36
turbos I know there were some issues but this one's been fine
39:40
the other thing I really like is it lives up to the hype in the X mode
39:45
so if you put the X mode on and you need to use it because I've taken it off
39:49
road like where I take my Jeep okay and it has clearance
39:54
it handles downhill scree just fine
39:58
I'm very pleased with how it performs off-road yeah
40:03
and if you don't know what you're doing you could get yourself in trouble
40:06
but if you know how to four-wheel drive and how to manage your vehicle
40:10
this thing lives up to the hype good that's good to hear
40:13
yeah I haven't driven a wilderness personally
40:17
but I hear a lot of good things about it I know the X mode is really good
40:21
unfortunately my car since I have a base model
40:24
manual transmission it doesn't have X mode but
40:28
it's okay because I love my car for other you know
40:31
various reasons and I live in Houston so I don't really need X mode
40:35
well I was curious how it works so there's a little road outside of
40:42
you wanted to put into the test yeah it goes up to a
40:46
collapsed caldera so it's an old volcano
40:50
that you can get to within a mile and a half or so off of I-70
40:54
and it's a pretty steep road the only thing up there besides
40:57
actually when I went up there there were three Subaru's parked at the
41:00
bottom I just thought to myself they're
41:03
rookies I went on up I have my own wilderness I went on up
41:08
the only thing coming down were ATV's yeah I'm like what did I just do
41:13
but I got to the top no problems but coming down that little volcanic
41:17
pebble scree stuff I put in an X mode
41:22
and it does exactly what it's supposed to and it did the hill descent
41:26
breaking all the way down even down around the
41:30
hairpin course I had no trouble good good so then that just pretty much
41:36
solidified your confidence in the car yep
41:39
yeah that's good to hear yep yeah I know that they've just continued the
41:44
I think they're called Geolander tires they came stock on the new Subaru's
41:49
yeah um I think there's better options out there that's the only
41:53
thing is if we were getting to this point what do I not like about it
41:57
was those tires they're okay for summertime driving
42:00
and stuff but they're not that great in the winter on snow
42:03
okay yeah so I put snow tires on it in the winter but
42:07
I think that the newer Subaru's coming out are not using those tires anymore
42:12
okay yeah that's good yeah so what got you
42:17
interested in Subaru in the first place you know years ago whenever you
42:20
bought your first one well it gave me the option
42:25
I was the kids were young when I divorced and I wanted to be able to go skiing
42:29
and camping and have an all-in-one vehicle that could
42:33
carry it all so if you got enough roof racks
42:37
system you can load a Subaru up as much as a
42:40
suburban yeah and so I could take the boys camping
42:44
and skiing and all of our stuff fit so I knew that was the right car
42:50
post there you know I have a friend that's a mechanic
42:54
and he has his own shop and he works on all things Japanese
42:58
but his focus is Subaru so I already knew from him that's what I wanted and
43:03
I am a die-hard Subaru owner obviously with a nine under my belt
43:08
yeah no that's awesome that's great to hear because
43:11
I mean I'm on my first Subaru and I didn't really know much about Subaru
43:15
at all before I bought mine and so it's you know it's great to hear
43:19
stories like that because I know for me this won't be my
43:23
my first and only Subaru it's it's um they've definitely
43:28
and and I've told the story before on the podcast but
43:31
I went out with a friend who was looking for a new car years ago
43:35
and he went to a Subaru dealership and I was looking around at them
43:39
it was before way before the cross track I don't even remember which
43:42
particular model he was looking at but I'm I know they had the Forester
43:45
and they had the Outback and some other ones but I remember looking at them
43:50
going like why would you want to buy one of these they're so funky looking
43:54
you know but like now that's what I really like about them is they're so
43:58
different you know and and they're just and knowing how
44:01
capable they are as cars and how reliable they are
44:04
and then experiencing the all-wheel drive they're just
44:08
they're such great cars well you know um I think that's a
44:14
selling point is you get a lot of vehicle for the price point
44:18
and they're fairly affordable to ensure
44:22
I know there's a lot of qualifiers out there with insurance
44:25
they're very affordable to maintain they're
44:29
cheap to own and of course the newer Subaru's cost more and whatnot but
44:34
it's still a very affordable car you get a lot of car
44:38
and a lot of safety features and and any of the Subaru's you get even old
44:42
ones yeah the one that um I had a 2013 Outback
44:49
that I got t-boned in I was so disappointed to lose that car
44:53
it was a wonderful car and it's kind of belly aching about it to the tow
44:58
truck driver when I went to pick it up out of the
45:00
re out of the the city town lot and he said hey it did its job
45:06
I've seen a lot of accidents and you could have been a lot worse off but
45:10
you were in a Subaru and those are his words I'm not making that up
45:14
yeah but that car did exactly what it was supposed to
45:18
I was in and out of the emergency room and recovered within a few months
45:22
I would have been in much worse shape if I'd been in a different car so the
45:26
safety features are very real yeah and I've had so many people
45:30
say that I've had quite a few people on the podcast that have been in
45:33
accidents and that have said I'm pretty confident
45:38
that if I was in any other car I wouldn't have survived that or it would have
45:41
been really really bad in the Subaru savory yeah
45:45
and that's I didn't even buy mine because of safety safety features but I'm just
45:50
glad to learn that after I bought it and now
45:53
my daughter owns a Subaru Crosstrek a 2024
45:57
third generation Crosstrek and my son has a 2010
46:01
Outback so it's I feel good knowing that they're in
46:05
Subaru's well that's what I bought for my boys
46:08
their first cars were Subaru's I'm like I'm not buying anything else
46:12
when you get enough to afford to buy your own car you can get whatever you want
46:17
my second one has had two Subaru's of his own
46:20
nice after the first one you bought for him yep
46:24
nice so he's bought two more the other one went with Toyota so I'll
46:28
forgive him but yeah I mean that's where we're at
46:34
I mean I personally will always have a Subaru in my garage
46:37
that's good to hear probably going to be a wilderness of some sort yeah
46:40
no the wilderness like I there's the Crosstrek wilderness over here which
46:45
one of the guys has modified some but even the Crosstrek wilderness
46:49
with no modifications just off the factory floor they're so nice
46:53
they look really good yeah and it might possibly be my next car
46:59
however I would have I would get a second one because I can't get rid of my
47:03
manuals and I'm trying to see how many I'm actually trying to see how many miles
47:06
I can get on it because right now I have 132,000 miles
47:11
and I've only had it for four and a half years
47:15
fairly broken in yeah I know so I there's actually a guy that I know
47:20
he has an an older outback but he has 390,000 miles on his outback
47:25
I got three of mine one of them was that 93 legacy
47:29
and I got that one and two of the the outback station wagons to
47:35
over 300,000 wow and then they all died mostly because
47:42
my youngest son drove him into something and it just
47:46
ended up having to be told yeah but I'll bet you I could have got a lot more
47:50
miles on it you just had to replace the head gaskets
47:53
do some maintenance but those things they were it ran strong all of them
47:57
yeah my son's outback is uh it's 2010 3.6 r and he has I think
48:03
206,000 miles on it he's having some transmission issues with it
48:08
but other than that everything else is like the engine is
48:12
such in such good shape you know for the age and it's he's also like I
48:17
think the maybe the fourth or fifth owner because the guy that we bought it
48:21
from bought it and then sold it and then
48:23
bought it back and then gave it to his father-in-law and so it's
48:26
and it's had some modifications done and then take it off and then put back on
48:30
but it's still yeah so but it's a it's a good car and
48:35
you know he's enjoying it so well thank you so much for hopping on and
48:40
sharing a little bit of your story I love it you know
48:44
I always I always praise Subaru's you know I've lived it I've
48:49
experienced it on all different levels I'm a happy camper
48:52
good that's good to hear thanks for having me on you're welcome thank you
48:58
all right there's our conversations from day one of Overland Expo Mountain West
49:02
and now of course we're going to get into day two of Overland Expo Mountain
49:05
West with some more great conversations thank you all so
49:09
much for tuning in thank you so much for listening I really really
49:12
appreciate it let's get into the rest of this
49:15
bonus episode I'm here at Overland Expo
49:18
Mountain West why don't you go ahead and introduce yourselves
49:21
and let us know like is this your first time at Overland Expo in Colorado
49:26
yeah and Ken and this is Courtney Jason
49:31
it's my first time at the Overland Expo Colorado
49:34
I've been to one in Flagstaff with Courtney before this is my first time
49:38
at any Overland Expo very nice yeah and I saw you
49:42
y'all were at Flagstaff so that was pretty cool
49:44
yeah dude it was absolutely right yeah because what were y'all wearing there
49:48
I think we were in our cow out yes yes yeah okay and I was like whenever I saw
49:53
y'all in these outfits I'm like they're kind of like the people that were in
49:56
Flagstaff I'm like is that the same people yeah that's awesome
50:01
that's super fun so tell us like what happened recently because you're in
50:05
the market for a new Subaru and she just bought one recently
50:10
yeah so two months ago we were sleeping in our bed
50:13
had our cars parked out front and a drunk driver hit both of our cars
50:17
totaled them out we got Courtney into a new 2017 Forester
50:21
very good now I'm just kind of limbo on what I want to get
50:24
yeah shopping and stuff so I'm excited about what you used to have and I know
50:29
you're looking for another one because you had a cross-track that was a manual
50:32
which is what I have yeah six feet so yeah phenomenal
50:35
yeah yeah a little touchy off-road because it's better in the
50:39
the clutch while you're doing things it's different yeah well it's super
50:43
funny about that is my very first off-roading experience was in
50:46
Colorado and we went to Woodland Park with some people that I had
50:51
I had on the podcast and we were going up and over this little
50:55
hump or it was a little small hill and my son was with me
50:59
and so I'm going up and over this little hill and I'd never driven off-road
51:03
and especially not in a manual I know it's not as easy and my son was like
51:07
what's that smell I guess my clutch yeah I hear that it's a
51:11
common thing yeah that the riding the clutch when you're
51:15
in the woods with them I've she got stuck in her out back before they got totaled
51:20
out yeah and I thought I gradated my car trying to get her out of the sand with
51:24
it yeah yeah now they're stinky yeah but at least easy to replace though
51:30
you know like replacing the clutch in a manual transmission compared to the
51:34
the CBTs a lot simpler of a task yeah I I
51:39
I would like to try to replace my clutch whenever the time comes
51:43
but I don't have access to a shop or anything so
51:46
hopefully I can get someone help me out but I have 132,000 miles so far and I
51:50
haven't had to replace it it's not too bad though
51:53
no yeah yeah so and what is it your your
51:58
forester your forester right yeah I have a 2025 forester
52:01
nice nice and you had you didn't have a Subaru before that but then you had
52:06
a Subaru prior to the your previous car so what did you have
52:10
before yeah so I used to have a 2007 Impreza okay and that was replaced then
52:15
with a Honda Accord which was then replaced with a Ford Escape
52:18
and I went back to Subaru with the 2025 Forester very nice welcome back to
52:22
Subaru I love being back yeah so were you just like
52:26
after I know your story with your Ford and everything but
52:30
were you like I just want to get back into something that I know is
52:32
reliable or were you were you kind of contemplating going
52:36
back to Subaru before that yeah I mean when I moved to Colorado
52:40
you know I had the Honda Accord got stuck it in the snow once and was like all right
52:44
well I need something with all-wheel drive or four-wheel drive
52:47
you know be a little more reliable yeah win for something nice and cheap
52:51
and ended up paying more for it so in that died was like all right
52:55
do a little more research find something super dependable
52:59
you know something that can handle Colorado and the weather the mountain
53:02
passes things like that I bought my Forester and have been loving it ever since
53:07
very nice yeah so how long have you had it now I bought it in December okay
53:11
great yeah so you've had it long enough to really get to know it well yep
53:15
it's been hasn't let you down yet hasn't let me down it's been great
53:18
on everything I've thrown at it you know snowy mountain passes or
53:23
back trails just you know everything stock has just
53:26
worked great yeah because you haven't done any modifications to it and
53:30
which is really nice to hear how capable it is being stock
53:33
yeah I mean long-term want to do those modifications but
53:36
yeah I've been looking at researching before I spend the money yeah
53:40
yeah okay good nice most glad to have you back in Subaru and I know you are
53:44
too yeah so and y'all are all with camp Subaru
53:47
this uh this weekend right yeah so how did y'all find out about camp Subaru
53:52
we all invited like through email or something
53:55
yeah I just got a random email one day filled up the form figured
53:59
oh there's no chance I'll get accepted and got the acceptance email
54:03
very nice yeah so what's your camping experience been like over there so far
54:08
that's been great I only had one night so far but
54:10
had a lot of great food a lot of great people great conversations about Subaru
54:15
yeah yeah it's great to be around a crowd of people that you are
54:19
you know have common interest with for sure it's great
54:22
yeah yeah so all right thank you all for hopping on the mic for a little bit
54:28
yeah you're welcome all right so I'm sitting I'm sitting here at Overland Expo
54:34
Mountain West and we're in the owner lounge with Chris how's it going man
54:39
good good having a great time our name is Chris right yeah Chris
54:44
like wait a minute I've met people if this is legal purposes it's Christopher
54:47
okay yeah all right proper yeah yeah so uh won't you introduce your Instagram handle
54:53
let us know where we can follow you yeah so I'm just on Instagram not YouTube or
54:58
anything else it's a silver roux underscore off-road
55:03
okay and what kind of you have a forester right yeah yeah it's a 2021
55:08
forester sport okay yeah nice nice so is so the
55:12
forester is that your first forester or your I mean your first Subaru
55:16
no so I had my first car was a 2004
55:20
WX wagon um Blaba I think that's what they called the
55:24
no force yeah um yeah bone stock okay when I first one yeah
55:29
and uh didn't last long until I started modifying it right away went the
55:34
the off-roading route put forester struts on and all the
55:37
train tires nice we had it at one point it had a um a
55:42
built motor uh bigger cams in it so then kind of idle like a
55:47
hot rod and put it on e85 and I was young at the time and just
55:51
didn't treat it right and I uh blew the motor three times
55:54
yeah wow yeah that'll do it yep it's one way to go about it
55:59
yeah so did you have something did you have another Subaru like
56:02
after that or did you what else did you have a so
56:05
after the yeah after the wagon uh the WRX I ended up moving into Tacoma
56:11
um I had the Tacoma for about four and a half or five years
56:15
got into the whole off-roading space a lot heavier with the Tacoma and kind of
56:20
set it up to to travel the country and explore
56:24
trails and kind of you know live out of it for
56:28
the lack of better terms um I did that for a long time
56:31
and uh eventually uh a little over a year ago
56:36
it got rear ended I totaled the truck and um
56:40
I just kind of reevaluated the car situation and where my
56:44
life was and my priorities and um started looking at
56:48
Subaru again and I found the found the forester and that's how we kind of ended
56:52
up in the forester yeah so like what have you done to the
56:56
forester and and like you modified it as well yeah so um
57:02
the thing I like to say is uh with the Tacoma I spent a lot of time getting
57:06
it set up to be really easy to to live out of I have
57:10
everything kind of set up to you know everything has a place so once you
57:13
kind of use some you can put it right back
57:15
and now I knew going into the forester that was going to be a little bit of a
57:18
challenge because uh you know coming from a truck everything's
57:22
kind of open you about yeah um in the forester you know space is limited
57:26
so I kind of had to apply everything that I learned from the Tacoma
57:30
and make it work in the forester and over the year now that I've had the
57:34
the forester and gone out and used it a ton and lived out of it
57:39
um uh when I'm out you know off-roading or getting the
57:42
backcountry it it's working better now in the
57:46
forester than they did in the Tacoma I'd say I'd say that the
57:50
the way that it's set up it there's less friction when it comes time to
57:54
setting up camp um a lot of companies out there like
57:58
adf and um Sherpa racks they're making roof racks so I can put
58:02
everything up on top of it adf makes these uh quarter panel moly
58:06
panels for the back so you can put stuff out of the way
58:09
so my sleeping setup is completely um unobstructed very nice so yeah it's it
58:16
whatever I learned everything I learned from Tacoma applied to the forester
58:19
and I enjoy it more and I go to the same places I went
58:23
in the Tacoma in the forester so and what about like the off-road
58:27
capabilities yeah so the off-road capabilities I
58:31
I'm still getting more and more impressed by how well it does
58:35
yeah um I uh I may have mentioned already but I've
58:39
gone almost everywhere I've gone in the Tacoma
58:42
maybe sparing maybe one or two trails that just overall clearance wise that
58:48
you just know it's not going to make it yeah but there has been very few times
58:51
where I've not been able to take that side road down off of a
58:55
forest service road um it's gotten me through most
59:00
everything that I've wanted to to the point where it's so capable that I've
59:04
found that I'm pushing it more and more yeah yeah that seems to happen
59:07
yeah this is good you know it's good that you can find out what the capabilities
59:11
are yeah yep it it's exceeded expectations and
59:15
then some that's for sure so having a Subaru before then going
59:19
to the Tacoma and then out back into the Subaru again
59:22
you obviously came back to the Subaru for a reason
59:25
so you think that you'll continue to stay with Subaru
59:29
yeah you know um I I think from my experience with the forester
59:34
you know and and for the most part what I learned from the
59:37
WX before I mean I I know I blew the motors on those but for the most part
59:41
that was the only thing only issues I had with it
59:44
I never had any other issues with the suspension components
59:48
any of the the electronics in the car I mean all that stuff
59:51
were fantastic so I came to the forester because of some
59:55
previous experience in reliability and hearing
59:58
everyone else's stories about reliability I just knew
00:01
that's that was the way to go yeah and you know the all-wheel drive here in
00:07
Colorado is it's absolutely fantastic in the snow it's
00:11
arguably one of the best all-wheel drive systems so and I've heard that you know
00:15
having done the podcast for four and a half years now I've heard that from so
00:19
many people that I've heard that from people who
00:21
have been in either four by four or some other
00:25
all-wheel drive system they say especially when it comes to all-wheel drive
00:29
particularly they say that Subaru's is just like superior above others
00:34
absolutely I I've been stuck in the snow
00:37
on the road in some deep deep snow events in a Tacoma
00:41
I have not been stuck yet in the in the forester very nice
00:44
that's one thing and the interior I am also extremely impressed by too
00:50
because I get out there and I off-road and it feels
00:53
you know at times like you're kind of kind of beating the thing up but
00:57
when you're on the inside I just it feels like kind of like a luxury car
01:01
yeah and the moon roof oh man oh nice that was another selling point for the
01:05
forester yeah it is absolutely fantastic
01:08
having that yeah I'm sure if you're out there in like some really
01:12
remote spots you can look up through the moon roof and see the stars
01:15
I yep it's exactly what I do I'll pull the moon roof back and I'll
01:19
watch shooting stars the only problem with that it just keeps me up a
01:22
little too late yeah so is this your first time to
01:25
overland expo it is yeah I've been trying to get here
01:28
for a couple years now and works always kept me away
01:32
in some some form or another so um yeah first time here local here so it was
01:38
nice to just come down the street and then got to come in for the
01:41
Subaru camping experience too so it's kind of
01:45
amazing it was worth the wait you know yeah making the fours and now you
01:49
come in Subaru's ears that's really cool
01:51
so what do you think you like the whole setup here with the little Subaru Oasis
01:55
we've got going on yeah so I've been you know
01:58
hearing about it on on your podcast and and a lot of other people talking
02:02
about how it uh they really made it warm and
02:05
welcoming feeling and and like just really cool
02:09
personalized feel and actually seeing in person
02:13
they've nailed it yeah you know it it's unlike a lot of
02:17
this is the most approachable booth I feel like I've seen yet
02:20
yeah I've had other people say that too like it's the most inviting
02:25
space you know of all the vendors here and yeah absolutely
02:29
it's just I like how spread out it is it doesn't feel like you're boxed in
02:33
in any means you know so it's uh I think they did a great
02:37
job with it yeah absolutely yeah so what has your
02:41
camping experience been like so far over at Camp Subaru
02:44
yeah so um I mean first off they've taken
02:48
extremely well care of us Joe over here we weren't supposed to have dinner last
02:52
night but all of a sudden there was pizza so that was a huge plus
02:57
you know they've catered breakfast in the morning
03:01
the you know every time someone's coming in everybody's getting up to speed and
03:05
what's going on and you know we're over there at a
03:08
Boyd Lake and everybody's got their own little spots but
03:12
it's the first time that I've camped in a campground
03:15
with a whole bunch of other people going I'm really used to sleeping out in the
03:19
woods or in the desert where I'm when I'm in the back of the
03:22
forester it's just like ah peaceful so it's a little bit
03:24
different and you're like oh there's dogs barking and stuff but you know what
03:27
it's it's part of it and I'll say the one thing that's nice is it's
03:30
kind of the added safety of other people yeah which because I'm a
03:34
little bit of a of a scaredy cat when I'm out
03:36
doing stuff so now it's like cool I don't have to worry about that anymore
03:39
oh that's good yeah slept a little better yeah that's good
03:43
and I know they were doing yoga over there too yeah I did it I took I uh took the
03:47
time to sleep in a little bit okay yeah sleep is good I don't usually get to do
03:52
that uh out off work or I mean when I'm on working so yeah I had to sleep a little
03:58
okay good yeah now it's it's been nice being here
04:01
and I've been I've had an opportunity to go to Flagstaff
04:05
to Oregon now this one and then I'll continue on to
04:09
Virginia but I'm like it's it's a great opportunity to
04:13
meet a lot of different people and I think it's great that Subaru is
04:17
doing this that they're participating in Overland Expo
04:20
and I think it's a good presence for them and this is like a really great
04:24
event for Subaru to be involved with yeah
04:28
absolutely I think um I thought I had heard that it was last year that they
04:33
had a small test booth I think and they're
04:36
kind of trying it out yeah and then this year they obviously as you can
04:40
see here um went all in and uh seem hopefully they continue to do it because
04:47
yeah I think it's awesome I think we're it's been cool seeing a lot of other
04:51
people that are uh you know not even Subaru owners
04:54
coming in and uh you know like we had over here at the axle swap with
04:59
Milton I think there was two people or at least one that was a toilet owner
05:02
you just wanted to come over and do that and I haven't seen any other booths that
05:06
have like done an axle swap demonstration I mean that's pretty
05:10
yeah it's pretty unique yeah yeah so you know we're trying to like
05:13
think of ways to stand out a little bit more and do some
05:17
different and get people out in the community that have experience
05:20
doing stuff like this to give people a piece of mind
05:24
that it's potentially something you can do yourself because I changed both my
05:28
front axles on my car and I did it with the help of them
05:32
and also watching some youtube videos but also
05:36
knowing that they had changed out several axles and like
05:39
having that peace of mind that hey I've got somebody that can help me out
05:43
if I if I need it you know yeah absolutely well and it's just great
05:47
you know obviously there's a lot of Subaru owners coming through here so
05:50
it's great to talk to some people and find out you know some of their
05:55
stories and you know it's like I was talking to a woman yesterday
05:59
that I asked her if you know the Subaru that she owned was her first one she's
06:04
like no this is my ninth super ninth Subaru yeah
06:07
so it's pretty pretty cool and yeah his fourth one over here yeah
06:13
and then so it's just it's so fun because like
06:16
especially for me because this is I'm on my first Subaru
06:19
and I didn't know a whole lot about Subaru and I before I bought mine
06:23
so to see all these different cars and hear these different stories it's
06:28
like really a lot of fun yeah absolutely and and
06:31
I think the being over at the camp has been pretty cool because we've had
06:36
you know you have a super diverse group like you're saying and I think we've
06:41
talked about that a lot is I mean everybody from first owners to people
06:45
that have had them for years and years and years
06:48
I mean I'm personally like into the off-roading side of things but I've
06:51
learned you know already somebody that came in and
06:55
just started getting off-roading and they're doing little things to make
06:58
their camping better and you know learning something from them you know
07:01
I mean I I am definitely not uh I haven't been
07:05
doing it that long and know everything by any means but it's just a
07:09
pretty cool place to come and just see what everybody else is doing because
07:13
there's always everybody has a different view and
07:15
different way of doing stuff oh yeah and yeah yeah like you've got Betsy
07:19
over here that she does her car camping she's got a whole setup in the
07:23
back there with her luno mattress and luno pillows and stuff and yeah
07:27
she said she slept really really well last night in her car and
07:31
did you sleep here at that oh nice yeah yeah it was uh it was really cool and uh
07:38
but yeah and it you know it's just fun to see the different there's a lot of
07:41
similarities and things that people do with their cars but then everybody
07:45
puts their own personal touch to it yeah and that's what's really cool
07:48
and yep you know and you get ideas from other people so
07:51
not necessarily like oh i'm gonna copy your build but
07:54
get inspiration yeah exactly that's fun because like
07:58
there's you're always like messaging people through instagram
08:01
because we're all spread out all over the place and the amount of help that
08:06
people are willing to give and the excitement for each other is like
08:09
what really makes it fun too yeah absolutely yeah
08:14
so thanks for hopping on the mic yeah absolutely I appreciate it
08:17
yeah yeah Joe you want to add anything
08:21
I'm just looking for some some good night's sleep tonight that's what I'm
08:24
really looking for that's my goal today yeah same
08:28
here yeah yeah that's cool thank you thank you
08:34
I'm here at Overland Expo I'm out in west and I'm sitting here with Chris
08:37
how's it going good nice to meet you yes nice to meet
08:40
you as well yeah I was great chatting earlier and we're
08:43
talking a bit about your your outbacks and so I decided
08:48
to get you in my noon slot which is really cool
08:51
so why don't you let us know what you're driving now and then you can let us
08:54
know what you were driving previously okay yeah
08:57
I have a 2025 Subaru Outback Wilderness edition
09:01
okay the galaxy black paint oh nice which I discovered really
09:06
looks like a galaxy yeah I had it for weeks and then one day I caught it
09:10
in the light and I was like oh wow there's the
09:12
there's sparkles in here nice yeah yeah I have a
09:16
2021 cross track and it's crystal white pearl so it has like this little nice
09:20
pearl lesson look to it you know and that's what I ended up naming my car
09:24
was pearl because I couldn't think of anything else at the time
09:27
so yeah so you've got that but you had an outback that you
09:30
owned previously yeah that's right
09:34
yeah I had a 2005 Subaru Outback XT it was a limited turbo edition and it was a
09:44
five-speed manual that is that must have been so fun to drive
09:47
it was amazing I really liked that car I had a young family so it was perfect
09:54
for getting us around Colorado and you know and never had to
09:58
worry about snow or oh dad or any of that stuff
10:01
and manual transmission with a turbo was just really really fun
10:05
oh gosh yeah I know so I have a 21 cross track that's a manual
10:10
and you know it's a slow baru because it's got the 2.0
10:14
but it's being a manual it's so fun to drive right it makes the driving
10:18
experience so much better so I can't even imagine like what
10:22
that must have been like driving that outback yeah it was pretty fun I mean
10:25
you could definitely do very sporty things with it yeah
10:29
so when did you did you buy it in 2005 or did you buy it yeah we bought it in 2005
10:34
and we sold it in 2021 um we just kind of outgrew that car okay because the
10:40
2005 model was I would say significantly smaller
10:44
yeah the current models of Outback yeah yeah and I I absolutely love the older
10:50
Outbacks they're just they look so cool I know they are smaller on the hood
10:54
oh man yeah but I they are smaller but I like that smaller body style it looks
11:00
so good so how many miles did you have on it by the time you
11:03
sold it actually not that many my wife drove it as her main
11:07
daily driver and she only lived like a mile and a half from home so
11:12
it only had like 85,000 miles oh my gosh that's
11:15
see that's funny because my cross track I've had it for almost four and a
11:20
half years and I have 132,000 miles on it
11:23
yeah it was crazy the dealer was pretty excited to get it oh yeah I mean that
11:27
would be amazing to have a car with that little mileage for you know that age
11:31
yeah yeah so what got you into Subaru in the
11:34
first place well you know we were looking for
11:38
something that combined two things I had a truck and my wife had a sedan
11:43
and at that moment in time we needed a single vehicle
11:47
okay because we our son was just born all right and so
11:52
what car is out there that has the utility of a truck
11:55
yeah and can drive around the city like a sedan
11:59
hmm I wonder pretty much that's what led us to Subaru
12:03
and the other thing was when we were car shopping
12:07
we were comparing it to Volvo and there was another
12:11
car that was in the mix and Volvo for the price
12:14
was bare bones right it had barely anything in it
12:19
where the Subaru at that price was maxed out it was the XT limited it had
12:24
all the stuff so it was almost no brainer
12:29
now did you both know how to drive manual before you okay
12:33
I taught my wife how to drive manual though okay when we were kids
12:36
oh 17 yeah nice yeah it's uh it's it's a dying form of transportation you
12:43
know and transmission unfortunately but I mean I was
12:46
thankful to be able to get a second gen cross track as a manual
12:50
and I absolutely love driving it which is why it has 132,000 miles right
12:55
so when you so before you bought the XT did you
12:59
know much about Subaru um I knew of them you know
13:03
like I saw them around uh I think I always thought of the crocodile
13:07
Dundee commercials yeah um but yeah I never I never really
13:12
saw myself as a Subaru person until I had one and once I had one
13:16
it became really clear that this was just a
13:21
an all-around good package of a car yeah that's what I liked about it well I mean
13:25
you had it for 16 years yeah I mean that's
13:28
that's pretty amazing that says a lot and even though you didn't have a
13:32
whole lot of miles in 16 years I'm sure you
13:34
thoroughly enjoyed it yeah I mean we drove it to
13:37
South Dakota we drove you know we it's not like we didn't drive it
13:40
yeah we didn't have that daily grind that a lot of people do when they
13:44
yeah miles in their car that's good yeah so what did
13:49
what was like some of the things that you enjoyed most about that car other than
13:53
it being a turbo and being a manual because I'm sure that was like
13:56
high on the list of enjoyment that was that was probably my two favorite
14:00
parts of the car I mean having the the high ground clearance to
14:03
at that time in 2005 it had eight inches of ground clearance which was
14:08
at that time higher than a Toyota 4Runner oh nice yeah I think 4Runner was
14:14
we're at 7.9 so it was it was just having that kind of piece of mind
14:19
taking that that car over things was just nice
14:24
yeah so did you have did you do any kind of modifications to it or was it
14:28
completely stocked it was just completely stocked the entire
14:31
time we didn't have to do anything special to it
14:33
if I have a regret from that car it's that we never did anything with the
14:37
wheels yeah the wheels were like road wheels you know okay
14:41
with the low profile tires yeah and so we never really
14:45
tried to do anything too aggressive did you did you
14:48
change it out with any other tires because you're
14:52
in Colorado and you've got snow yeah we did definitely
14:55
we went through I think four sets of tires over the lifetime with it
14:59
okay but we always got the same low profile
15:02
tires because we didn't want to get new wheels
15:04
yeah and did you have any issues with snow I'm
15:08
never yeah that was not a problem that's great
15:11
yeah so so it seems like there's a little bit of a gap between when you sold it
15:16
and then now that you have the 2025 did you have something in between or did
15:20
y'all have a second car that y'all had as
15:22
as like your only car for a while well um after we purchased that car I did get
15:27
myself a Volkswagen Passat and I had that for a little
15:30
time okay and then I upgraded that I actually
15:34
I went on a trip to Hawaii and I rented a Jeep
15:38
and me and my family had a really great time exploring Hawaii in a Jeep
15:42
and when I got back I wanted to get something
15:45
more off-road capable yeah just a little bit of research showed me that I
15:50
did not want a Jeep
15:52
oh that's good yeah and so um at that time I
15:56
decided to get a Volkswagen Atlas because they were offering zero percent
16:00
financing yeah and the Atlas Peak Edition I just did air quotes
16:05
the Peak Edition is an appearance package it has
16:10
all-terrain tires on it and and it's always in all-wheel drive
16:14
with the rest of the Atlas line isn't in all-wheel drive yeah
16:18
and um it was good it did what I wanted it to do I
16:22
did go off-roading with it but I just found the limitations of the low
16:26
ground clearance and how big that car was
16:30
yeah it's pretty big I found that pretty fast yeah so I only had that car for
16:34
about a year and four months okay so then what got you back
16:39
into Subaru again well I wanted ground clearance
16:42
yeah that was the number one priority and uh
16:46
I started looking at Subaru's uh I was actually looking at the cross-track
16:50
I thought all Subaru engines were turbo
16:54
I just I was under the impression that they were all turbo
16:57
so I was looking at cross-track and then I found out that it's not turbo and
17:01
because of my experience with the first Subaru yeah
17:06
I learned what turbo means in Colorado you know I learned what it means to be
17:10
driving up I-70 have somebody cut you off
17:13
and be able to recover and go yeah you know yeah
17:18
I really do like the turbos in fact every vehicle we've had since that
17:21
first Subaru are all turbo oh okay everything has been turbo since
17:25
so now yeah now you've got a turbo again with the outback wilderness
17:30
yeah so but I'm guessing too that your experience owning your first
17:35
Subaru had other than the ground clearance had a lot to do with it it
17:39
did it did and this uh new outback with the
17:42
wilderness package on it has 9.6 which I think is crazy
17:47
yeah I did video of myself going over some rocks and stuff
17:51
and at the time I didn't know was it good or not and I
17:54
looked at the footage and I cleared it by a mile it was
17:58
yeah I didn't I mean it was I have so much ground clearance now I love it
18:02
I yeah so my cross-track I don't have a lift on it and mine's like
18:06
well I have aftermarket wheels and tires so I don't know what what it
18:09
actually is now but stock it's like 8.7 and so I'm guessing it's
18:14
probably about the same yeah but there's been times when I've been
18:17
going on trails and I'm by myself and I'll look at
18:21
something and I'm like oh man that looks kind of rough like from inside the car
18:24
it looks bad yeah then you get out and you go down you look at the line and
18:27
like man that's easy yeah and then there's there've been times and I've
18:30
like taken a video and I look or I'll like or I'll watch
18:33
like my daughter in her car or something or somebody else wherever I'm
18:37
at and I'm like oh hold on let me go look at that for you
18:39
and then they start going through it I'm like that was something that was
18:42
nothing yeah you know it just always looks worse from inside the car
18:45
but totally agree yeah so I mean that's great that you've got the ground
18:49
clearance and so how long have you had it now well I actually just got it in
18:53
June but okay I've already replaced the
18:56
tires and I I can feel like how this is going to
19:00
become a thing yeah because I've I just got the um
19:05
the topo decals I'm going to put that on probably
19:09
next week and then I'm looking at all this stuff here at the expo and I
19:13
I'm just thinking yeah this car is going to be with me for a while
19:16
I just have a feeling well and then for for context because of people
19:21
that can't see we're sitting in front of an outback wilderness
19:25
we're sitting in front of Betsy's and uh Basaltic Outback and she's done quite a
19:31
bit to it she's got lift on it she's got her ditch lights
19:34
and then she's got her awning and a roof rack you know so there's
19:38
it's these cars it becomes fun to start thinking about all the
19:43
modifications that you can do to it and like
19:45
even if you're not going to do any kind of crazy mods just doing like you know
19:50
you're going to do the topo on it just doing decals and stuff to
19:54
personalize it and make it stand out a little bit more
19:57
even that is like you know fun to do that because like that's what I did with
20:01
my car first because I couldn't really afford to do anything else
20:04
and so just like finding the decals that I wanted to make it look the way I
20:08
wanted it to look and you know and I've even changed those around
20:11
so it's it's it's a lot of fun to to have these cars and do fun stuff with them
20:16
yeah yeah and I've only had it since June and I already have
20:19
5000 miles on it because I've been everywhere in it
20:23
yeah I've gone places I just never thought I would go
20:26
yeah um I'm exploring more of Colorado it's like it's like just open the doors
20:32
for me yeah and that's the fun part too is
20:35
like when I bought my cross-track I knew I wasn't
20:38
probably going to do anything crazy with it but I wanted something that was good on gas
20:42
I wanted something that was affordable and I wanted something that
20:46
would take me places that my previous cars wouldn't take me because like
20:50
you know I just wanted the ability to get off the pavement and go explore
20:54
some different things and so I really enjoyed it
20:57
yeah yeah I'm not a I'm not a rock crawler or anything like that I'm
21:01
not interested in that that kind of overlanding
21:04
but I really have been enjoying the Colorado Trail system
21:08
I've been using on-ex off-road to just sort of guide my
21:11
my path and it's been really fun so have you like started looking around at
21:15
different places that you want to go explore
21:18
yeah coming up with a list yeah I've got a whole like bookmark list of places
21:22
I want to go try to very nice take photos I mean that's
21:26
ultimately this is all for my photography photography channel is
21:30
I want the Subaru to get me where I want to go
21:34
so I can take these photos that I want to take
21:37
yeah because when we were talking earlier today you said that so far
21:40
the Outback has been able to take you places that you
21:44
weren't able to get to before and so like now you can continue that and
21:48
and that's what's great too is like a lot of people have said that
21:52
on the podcast is like if they want to go hiking or they want to go
21:55
mountain biking or something you know their Subaru can get them
21:58
further up into spots so that they can get to the
22:02
through spots that they really want to go to right and that's what's like really
22:05
nice about these cars too even if you're not going to use it to do crazy
22:08
off-road stuff it can just really enhance your outdoor
22:12
experience and lifestyle yeah yeah it gets me up
22:16
90 of the way and I do the rest you know my legs do the rest and
22:20
yeah I have discovered places I've discovered scenes that I never would
22:24
have seen or known about without good getting up there right yeah
22:29
they're a lot of fun and I know just everybody really
22:33
enjoys them and the community is like super super great so
22:37
do you have an instagram page for your car it's not specific to my car but I
22:41
do have an instagram page okay what's your instagram page it's
22:44
at chris frytag so that's my name um and my last name is spelled f-r-e-i-t-a-g
22:51
and I always have to say that because everyone in school learned
22:54
that stupid i before e-scept after c rule yeah yeah do you do you plan on
23:02
starting an instagram page for your car I actually kind of thought about that
23:06
um because all these people they they met one another through their passion
23:11
of Subaru and my I'm sort of mixing genres here
23:15
with my Subaru my photography so it might be worth starting
23:20
my own page just for the photography or for the uh Subaru yeah and a lot of
23:24
these people have met each other through instagram
23:27
and or through facebook or something because I mean
23:30
that's how I got connected with a lot of different people was through
23:34
I was like okay I'm gonna do the silly thing and start an instagram page for
23:38
my car right and and I'm glad I did because if
23:42
I hadn't I wouldn't be sitting here with you today
23:44
right yeah because I got connected with people
23:47
through instagram saw how passionate they were
23:50
and decided I can't you know that's when I had the idea for the podcast of like
23:54
let's get these people on here to share more about their story and their
23:57
journey because there's so many people are like consuming
24:00
podcasts so much these days and it's such a great way to get
24:05
uh you know a media where you don't have to like sit and watch
24:08
something you don't have to sit and read something
24:10
because you can listen to a podcast while you're doing so many different
24:13
things you know if you're out on a long drive it's great
24:16
time to listen to a podcast if you're going for a walk if you're
24:19
you know I listen to them when I'm like washing dishes you know folding clothes
24:22
or something so it's like it's an easily consumable
24:26
you know form of entertainment to you yeah yeah I agree I listened to it a long
24:29
time in my outback I have carplay wireless carplay
24:34
and I just listen to my podcasts while I'm driving around
24:38
so with the outback wilderness other than the ground clearance and that's
24:41
the Subaru like what are some of the features that you really like about
24:44
the outback well the the ground clearance is definitely
24:48
the the best one um what else do I like about it
24:53
you know I haven't had any problems with the CVT or
24:57
having power or anything like that in fact I feel like it
25:01
sounds very much like a normal transmission I haven't
25:03
haven't had that effect happen that sort of
25:07
sounds like the car is stuck in a gear yeah I haven't had that happen to me
25:12
at all um so everything just feels very
25:15
reliable and good like I haven't I guess if I have a feature I like the
25:23
best is I don't have to worry about it yeah I don't think about
25:26
yeah I'm not worried about stuff falling apart
25:31
so that's probably my favorite feature especially what I'm doing
25:35
stuff really deep in the mountains or way out in eastern Colorado chasing
25:39
storms I don't want to be yeah worried about my car
25:42
yeah so what are your uh other than going and exploring and you know you're gonna
25:46
do the topo wrap on it do you have any other plans for your
25:50
car as far as like modifications especially being here at the expo you
25:54
know and seeing a bunch of different things and seeing some of these cars
25:56
on display here at the booth are there things that you are
25:59
thinking of that you want to do yeah I think the first thing I want to do is
26:02
skid plates okay I do have a front skid plate that
26:05
came with the wilderness edition yeah but um I think I want to get some beefier
26:10
skid plates yeah really protect my vehicle from
26:13
anything like that you know something that I misjudged
26:16
oh yeah just be nice um and then I think an awning
26:21
would be great yeah you know those those just look like practical
26:24
you know yeah I'm up in the middle of nowhere and I want to
26:27
sit down for a sec and take a break put the awning out
26:31
like that would be great yeah they're yeah they're definitely very nice
26:34
and especially to give you some shade get out of the sun for a little bit and
26:38
just sit and have a snack or something enjoy the view you know
26:42
definitely come in handy you do you think are you planning on
26:46
potentially getting a lift to lift it even further do you
26:50
think that the places that you're going to be going that what you have
26:53
will be adequate for it um you know I was talking to some
26:57
super good people and that they were like the first thing they would
26:59
recommend is tires and I've already got that covered
27:03
and then skid plates so I would do that next
27:06
I'll probably wait and see how much I do to see if I need a better
27:12
suspension a lift because right now what comes
27:18
with the wilderness edition is so nice yeah you know they
27:22
they kind of specced it out to be what I want it to be
27:25
yeah so it's it's pretty nice that it's all
27:28
part of the package you know that that wilderness edition is really
27:32
um I don't know it feels like a very Colorado car
27:37
yeah so having owned the XT before and your previous outback and
27:43
owning it for 16 years I'm guessing you'll probably have this one for
27:47
quite a while that's that's the plan and do you do you think that you
27:51
potentially see yourself always owning Subaru's or at least a Subaru
27:56
probably you know like at this point I get
28:00
pretty brand loyal when once I find something that works for me
28:04
um so yeah I I actually plan on having it for a while and
28:10
that's why I want to protect it right that's why I want to do like the skid
28:13
plates first so I guess I guess some of the
28:18
ways that it's changed your life too is being able to you know being that
28:21
you're in photography and you want to get some of those good shots and
28:24
everything is just being able to take you further
28:27
yeah yeah it's really been a great vehicle too
28:30
another thing that I like about it is having the Atlas for even just one year
28:36
I couldn't reach the other side of the car oh yeah
28:39
so now it's really nice to be able to like put stuff on the window
28:43
um you know like I can reach over and I can get to the other side of the
28:46
car so it's it's really nice having that from so I do all this
28:50
in-car camera stuff okay for my for my youtube channel
28:54
and so you know just having access to the whole car
28:58
really makes it easier to do to do my job yeah
29:02
good well thank you for hopping on the mic and chatting for a bit
29:05
yeah it's great to hear like I would love to find an outback like your
29:09
your previous one your o5 that would be super cool
29:13
it was really cool but we definitely outgrew it
29:16
that was the whole reason we I mean my my oldest is 19 and you know
29:22
everything we were all just getting bigger and um the the new outbacks
29:27
definitely have more room in the yeah so they're nice
29:31
are you encouraging your kids to get out back or I get get
29:34
so that's that's the funny thing my youngest
29:38
he might get to drive my outback when he's 16 right
29:41
so we'll see how that goes but yeah um he's into it though he likes it
29:47
like one of the first things he said to me is he liked it better than
29:50
the atlas so yeah that's important yeah kid approved yeah it's kid approved yeah
29:54
teenager approved cool well thank you so much Chris yep
29:58
enjoyed it thanks you're welcome all right you ready yeah
30:02
what do you want me to say all right I'll guide it all right I'm here at camp
30:05
Subaru at Overland Expo Mountain West so this is day two evening two and
30:12
standing around a campfire people eating s'mores eating some good food
30:16
laughing having some great conversation around Subaru's and everything else
30:21
so welcome how are you doing I'm doing fantastic yeah what a beautiful night
30:27
my name is Emily dresser and I am the yoga teacher in camp post here at camp
30:32
Subaru very nice so how did you get that gig
30:36
well to be completely honest I had a marketing agency reach out to me because
30:40
I am already a teacher at the Overland Expo's of yoga
30:44
and yeah the marketing agency reached out asking if I would like to
30:48
teach yoga for Subaru so started there in Pacific Northwest that was my first
30:54
time and then here I am now as a camp host doing yeah camp post duties
31:00
keeping vibes high are you doing them like mostly local to you or are you
31:05
going to travel to the next one too which is in Virginia
31:08
well I'm currently in Bend Oregon so I traveled 17 hours in our truck
31:13
camper to get here all right and we will see what happens I'm hoping to
31:18
continue my journey with Camp Subaru very nice good yeah
31:21
no it's I know it's it's an exciting time and
31:25
we're glad you're out here so like what has been your overall experience
31:29
being with the campers and with Subaru building community is so important
31:34
these people are going to leave lifelong friends and
31:37
it's really cool that Subaru prioritizes the relationships that they
31:41
have with their people yeah yeah that's been nice
31:44
so you get up in the morning and teach yoga class
31:47
at what time 7 a.m we've got yoga going on and then the second word done
31:53
breakfast and coffee is ready and then the shuttle comes and takes
31:57
people to the expo nice so you did that Friday
32:00
morning you did that this morning and then you'll do that tomorrow morning
32:02
as well tomorrow morning before we send people off
32:05
yeah very nice very nice cool well thanks for hopping on the mic for a bit
32:09
absolutely thanks for having me you're welcome
32:13
okay I'm here with my next guest here at Camp Subaru night two of
32:17
Overland Expo Mountain West why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself
32:22
hello I'm Elias Arredondo I'm a Subaru owner
32:26
brought to be here nice what Subaru do you own
32:30
I have a Forester Wilderness 2025 very nice very nice yeah those are cool
32:36
so what has your experience been like here at Camp Subaru
32:41
it's been excellent it's been
32:46
it's far exceeded the expectations that I had okay
32:50
because I've never had any experience with any
32:54
event like this so it's very unique and that's why we came out here because
33:00
if it would have been like something else we already knew we would
33:03
probably be like oh it's just like some gimmick or whatever but coming out
33:06
here and meeting all these people it's just like
33:11
a different way of experiencing some
33:15
product basically because it's just a product but then it becomes more than a
33:19
product yeah we have this kind of interaction with
33:21
other people that use the same product yeah exactly it's been
33:24
unique and remarkable about it now did you know anybody before you came to
33:29
Camp Subaru or are you meeting all these people for the first time
33:31
everybody's brand new we've been only here about a year so
33:35
everybody's right now okay we're new to this whole thing
33:38
nice amazing so and were you here Friday night
33:41
yeah as well yeah we came Thursday night Friday night Saturday
33:43
very nice very nice yeah so what do you think is going to be like your biggest
33:48
takeaway from this experience
33:52
probably the different approach because usually
33:58
marketing and brands I guess in their
34:07
in their projecting their brand or whatever they tend to be
34:17
condescending maybe yeah but Subaru is a different brand and they just
34:24
you know you bought they you bought their product but then now
34:28
it offers something else that it's without attachment so yeah
34:31
that's why when we were invited we were like I don't even know what this is
34:35
but that's why we tried it yeah now that we're here we're like okay this is
34:39
great yeah because there's no strings attached it's not like
34:42
you know it's yeah they're not trying to get something out of you yeah it's
34:45
just like they're doing this for you and that's honest yeah and that's what
34:49
comes through and so that makes it different and yeah Joe with Subaru
34:54
like he's done such a great job of curating all of this and putting this
34:58
together and you know I like there's been a camp
35:01
Subaru with the previous Overland Expos this year and so it's had nothing but
35:06
positive feedback so it's really cool to come out here and
35:10
enjoy talking about your cars enjoy the outdoors
35:13
enjoy some camping you know sharing some great food
35:17
and I'm sure stories with each other so it's been nice
35:20
yeah so yeah yeah well thanks for hopping on the mic
35:25
oh you're welcome all right thank you for having me thank you're welcome
35:30
okay I have my next guest here why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself
35:34
hi my name is Kimberly Haskins I'm from Centennial Colorado
35:37
all right and what Subaru do you drive um I drive a 2016 hyper blue
35:43
uh cross track oh so that sure is over there very nice so what has your
35:46
experience been like here at Camp Subaru this has
35:50
been the best camping trip of my life I came out here
35:53
I'm a little introverted but I have an introverted side but
35:57
I had moved up to Centennial March had not made any new friends and
36:01
um I got this email from Subaru requesting like hey like we got this
36:05
camping opportunity up in Loveland tell us what you love about Subaru
36:08
and I spoke about the insurance institute of highway safety crash test
36:13
um IIHS I talked about how much um it mattered me that I was driving a
36:17
safe vehicle because I was hit by a drunk driver years ago lost my father in
36:21
accident so um I spoke passionately about that and
36:26
their environmentalism and all their other um pro initiatives when it comes
36:31
to like taking care of the environment being good stewards of our neighbors
36:35
so um I've never came across a coming that had
36:38
as close similar values as I do and it's just been a great time it made
36:42
so many friends out here so when you before you came to Camp
36:46
Subaru had you connected with any of these people in any way
36:50
there were a couple of people that I knew indirectly from the
36:53
Colorado Springs Subaru community okay so yeah so that's good so it's probably
36:57
a little bit easier to come out here knowing at least a couple of people
37:00
yeah everyone uh bought the Subaru for similar values that
37:04
you do that they're all outdoors they probably love camping and
37:08
they love dogs yeah yeah so it was really easy to make friends
37:12
okay so what has been your like favorite part of being part of Camp
37:15
Subaru here so a couple of days ago um when we all kind of checked in
37:19
Thursday night to the campsite we had a giant giant
37:23
windstorm blow-through it was knocking everyone's it was knocking our
37:26
Subaru banners down and you saw like all the all the
37:30
Subaru Camp Subaru campers running around with
37:33
um the little like stay cameras or an extra stakes extra guidelines so we're
37:38
checking on our neighbor's tests making sure they're secure and the
37:41
snakes are fleshed around it's really awesome seeing everyone helping
37:44
you chill her out in here yeah it's it's such a great community and like
37:48
I know I've talked to so many people on the podcast who bought their Subaru and
37:52
didn't know that there was a community and then they find out that there's the
37:54
community and then I've had so many people say like
37:58
so many of my best friends now are my best friends because I bought a Subaru
38:02
and I could connect to all these people so but it's nice for them to
38:06
bring people together that don't know each other already
38:09
and put this together and you know bring them all
38:12
and you know into something that they're all passionate about which is the car
38:17
and then to company and then to be able to put this together for them I think
38:21
was pretty cool so yeah well thanks for hopping on the
38:25
mic for a bit thank you so much you're welcome all right thanks
38:29
do you want to hop on the mic or why not all right let's see you want to go a
38:32
little farther away yeah let's do that
38:36
all right I'm here with my next guest why don't you go ahead and
38:40
introduce yourself my name is Benjamin Carrier
38:43
and I'm here from Durango Colorado all right at
38:47
the Boyd Lake State Park for the Overland Expo Mountain West
38:51
all right so how did you find out about Camp Subaru
38:56
I know Rob with Off-Road Roos yeah and um he
39:02
he came down in July to Durango and um did
39:08
off-roading event and camp out for the night okay and then he
39:12
asked if I wanted to help volunteer and help run the
39:17
run a trail one run on Friday and he said you can come up and you can have
39:21
admission to this event and stuff and so I said sure why not I've never
39:25
been to the expo and so I kind of I didn't
39:29
like have to take a survey or anything I kind of was just told about it
39:33
and then offered it and so I decided to come on up and camp out and it's
39:37
been really great nice nice yeah so what has your
39:39
experience been at the camp here it's been really great met a lot of
39:44
really nice people um met a buddy Chris Ingram that's
39:48
Silver Rue Off-Road yeah great guy yeah we camped together last night
39:54
and we went trailing me him and Ken Aldrich um
40:01
in our Subaru's on Friday in the Switzerland trail
40:04
nice and then the camp's just been great it's really nice spot
40:07
um and it's really fun coming together every night to have
40:11
have a campfire and get to chat with everyone yeah so what's Subaru do you
40:16
drive I have a 2010 um Outback 25 and it's
40:21
lifted about three inches oh nice and I've just finished
40:25
installing the print suerack on it okay sweet yeah yeah yeah and it's
40:29
same color as my son so that's cool yeah I like that yeah
40:34
so what what do you think is like your biggest takeaway from camp Subaru
40:38
this weekend um probably say just all the cool connections all the
40:44
companies I've talked to um and all the new people I've met is
40:48
always great it's really neat being able to um come out here and we all
40:52
have a commonality for just getting out and enjoying
40:56
enjoying camping or off-roading or the love for the cars
40:59
and getting to meet a bunch of um cool people and
41:03
check out some new companies has been really neat yeah and then here at the
41:07
camp having some good food and being provided and
41:10
you know it's yoga breakfast and everything so
41:14
it's uh I'm sure it's been a really fun experience and did did you know
41:18
anybody here at the camp before you got here
41:22
so I didn't like I guess not really like I had talked to Chris and Ken
41:29
online um and I had I had vaguely heard about some
41:35
people online but I had really not met anyone else like I kind of
41:39
chatted with them online so it was pretty much a new experience getting to
41:43
meet everyone yeah yeah I can't for the most part
41:46
nice nice so I'm glad that they were able to put this together and
41:49
you know get all the Subaru owners together and and just have a good time
41:54
and camp out and stuff but you know before the event and during the event
41:58
yep totally I really hope they do it um continue to do this
42:02
because yeah you know it's a really awesome thing to do and especially in
42:05
Colorado it gets a lot of a lot of people um out that don't
42:09
know about it too yeah absolutely it's more community
42:12
yeah yeah cool thanks for hopping on the mic for a bit yeah thanks for
42:16
having me on you're welcome yeah all right
42:19
I've got another victim I mean another guest here on the podcast for Camp
42:24
Subaru uh yeah because I just I wanted to I hadn't
42:26
done this before at the previous uh Overland Expos where I talked to people
42:30
at Camp Sob like when I was here last night we were all
42:33
everybody was talking and I was like you know this would be a good opportunity
42:36
to talk to people about the actual camp yeah so yeah so go ahead and
42:40
introduce yourself yeah hey I'm Jessica Swift um I'm a Subaru owner
42:50
uh Forester Wilderness very nice um it is yeah but I'm gonna I'm gonna ruin your
42:56
podcast a little bit the 2026 Subaru Forester Wilderness
43:01
um I saw it today and it has the cool console
43:06
in the middle so like the bigger screen yeah um so I have car envy already
43:11
and I've only owned my car for a month so
43:16
I don't know maybe there might be a three Subaru family
43:19
hey yeah you never know yeah so what has your experience been like here at
43:23
Camp Subaru and then how did you find out about it
43:26
okay so I'm gonna flip flop your question how did I find out about it
43:32
I got a random email I think you've heard that a lot
43:35
yes uh and so I read my emails that's good it's important sometimes uh and I
43:43
responded so some dude asked me some questions
43:47
about about my Subaru and I answered the questions
43:52
and then a couple of weeks days weeks I don't I can't remember uh later he
43:58
said congratulations you've been selected as you know one of the
44:02
owners to come and and hang out with us and here's the deets
44:06
let me know if you really are interested because this is
44:10
for real for real yeah and it's only a select number of people yeah
44:13
25 people yeah right out of hundreds of applicants so I was like well
44:18
I never win anything that's so cool oh like if you're like a winner
44:22
right yeah um so then I'm like well how did I get selected and that's a big
44:26
mystery and we won't get into that um but
44:30
yeah so we're here and it's it's been really really groovy to get to know all
44:36
the other Subaru owners to see the cool things that they can do with
44:41
their cars if they have done with their cars oh yeah um I learned how to use the
44:45
paddles on my steering wheel which I hadn't done for um the ascent or
44:50
descent and on any of the things that I'm doing so like
44:54
just super smart stuff and and silliness but also how to soup up
44:58
your Subaru oh yeah yeah so were you here Thursday night
45:02
for oh yeah we've been here the whole time okay so what has been your favorite
45:06
part about being here at the campsite for Camp Subaru
45:09
honestly it's and this is going to sound really weird
45:12
because the C word cult isn't isn't normally something that one embraces
45:19
but a Subaru cult it's kind of it's kind of wild like
45:23
spread the love right um so it's it's been just seeing all these
45:28
Subaru owners and and how cool they are and you can almost
45:32
just feel the the energy like the the the aura and I don't want to get too
45:38
like metaphysical yeah that's great um but
45:41
yeah just you know that there's an aura that people give off
45:45
um that that are Subaru owners and it's it's a chill vibe it's fun
45:51
community camaraderie yeah and like now we're gathered out of
45:55
fire sharing a playlist and just talking about all the cool
45:58
things we can do with our cars and you didn't know anybody
46:02
before you came out here like that's at the camp I didn't
46:05
okay so were you kind of like nervous meeting a bunch of new people
46:08
or were you also like well they all in Subaru's so that makes it a little
46:12
bit easier no I was totally weirded out I'm
46:14
an introvert okay um and very very shy
46:20
but they all made it very easy to become an extrovert
46:24
or to get to know everyone um and we actually have started
46:30
I don't know I'm gonna go live now and make my manifest
46:35
um a reality um we started a Subaru Colorado camping group for girls
46:42
but dudes are invited yeah but you just have to know one of the chicks that's
46:46
going yeah just can't be some random so our first trip is
46:48
gonna be to um Grand Junction and we're probably gonna do it in the
46:52
next three months which is awesome pretty fire yeah and
46:55
it all stemmed because of this it all started here and I have thank you camp
46:59
Subaru I have new best friends like honest to God
47:01
for life so thank you yeah yeah that's great that's
47:04
seeing I'm glad I came over here because it's these are the kind of
47:07
stories that we want to hear and I think these are the kinds of stories
47:09
that it's good for Subaru to hear yeah it's wild
47:12
yeah so that's that's why I wanted to come over here and talk to some people and
47:16
see what their experience is like and that's a really great experience and
47:19
what a great story it really is and and we're so excited and we're talking
47:22
about like how can we make our subarus
47:25
match right like so we live in different cities different
47:28
different states even how can we like show some sort of like
47:32
even more just not just the Subaru but like do we get special Subaru
47:37
emblems do we like what do we do a decal made or show how that we're doing
47:40
these different things yeah so the sky's the limit we're super excited and
47:44
and it would not have happened without this experience
47:48
yeah super cool yeah glad to hear it yeah thank you for hopping on the mic for
47:51
a little bit absolutely love it all right thank you thanks
47:55
you're welcome all right I'm here with my next
47:59
guest and why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself
48:02
I'm Jason all right welcome Jason I talked to you earlier today at
48:06
overland expo but I wanted to come chat with people here at camp Subaru so
48:10
have you been here since Thursday night no I got here Friday afternoon
48:14
okay all right that pesky job you know oh yeah yeah
48:18
so how did did you get a random email about this for Camp Subaru
48:22
yeah got a random email I thought it was a scam at first
48:25
and you know so I was actually from Subaru
48:28
putting the application was like ah there's no way I'll get picked and
48:32
here I am all right so and you did you happen to know anybody here at the camp
48:37
before you came out nope not a soul okay and so what has your
48:41
experience been like so far here at the campsite and meeting all these people
48:45
it's been great everyone's wicked friendly food's been great
48:49
great community had tons of fun at the expo
48:52
it's been a great time all around good mom glad that
48:56
I'm glad that Subaru did this and you know got people together for the camp
48:59
I mean we've got a campfire going and so what would you say has been like your
49:03
favorite part about the camping experience here
49:08
ooh that's a good one um I love that everyone's loving my dog buddy
49:13
yeah nice he's kind of been the star of the show which has been great
49:17
he loves the attention um I mean it's been great to see everyone out
49:21
see all the different camping styles you know you have some people in tents
49:25
some people in fully decked out Subaru's some people with trailers
49:29
so it's great to see all the different ways that people use their Subaru
49:33
yeah very nice yeah so it's been uh and I know they they brought some they've had
49:37
breakfast have you been doing the yoga in the morning
49:40
I am not really a yoga person so I've been skipping those
49:43
yeah now how you haven't been skipping breakfast have you
49:47
no breakfast was fantastic good yeah I've heard they've had some good
49:50
food here so it's nice to hear get your day going right
49:54
out to go out to the expo yeah I always love when someone cooks for me
49:58
yeah that's really nice too well thank you so much for hopping on the mic for a
50:02
little bit yeah for sure all right thank you
50:06
all right I've got my next guest here why don't you go ahead and introduce
50:09
yourself hi my name is Don I know Don what
50:13
what's Subaru do you drive I just traded in a 2020
50:17
Outback Onyx for a 2025 Wilderness Outback very nice good upgrade there
50:24
third Subaru oh very good very good nice so
50:29
I'm guessing you got a random email about this camp Subaru and
50:33
decided to apply and and here you are correct I did
50:37
it was very random yes and I was excited to
50:40
get to join this group of folks all right and have you been out here since
50:44
Thursday night yes okay all right so what was your like
50:48
thoughts before coming into Camp Subaru like did you have any expectations
50:52
about it or are you just like I'm just going to see how it goes
50:55
I didn't really have any expectations of course we met
50:59
at um out and had breakfast on a mountain
51:02
oh nice west of Boulder I can't remember the name of the mountain
51:06
was this Thursday afternoon or Thursday morning oh Thursday morning okay
51:10
nice and we had breakfast and then we took off on different excursions
51:14
okay yeah a hike off-road drive and then a drive
51:19
Rocky Mountain I believe a trail ridge so we all got to choose our own little
51:22
excursion which was we broke off into groups and then we all
51:26
ended up here for dinner yeah so did you happen to know anybody
51:32
by chance before you met up with all these people
51:35
no okay nobody at all all right and were you like
51:38
a little nervous about meeting a bunch of new people
51:42
not really I was kind of excited because it was we all had
51:46
something in common yeah yeah and we're all going to be camping so it's going to
51:50
be a I was looking forward to a great experience of
51:53
community yeah no new people yeah absolutely so
51:57
what has your experience been like now that you've been at the camp for a
52:01
couple of nights it's been amazing we've had
52:04
great food we've had great camaraderie
52:09
everybody's kind of from different areas yeah of Colorado I believe
52:14
oh nice yeah and and it looks like we built a great friendship so now we're
52:19
planning on a group and hoping to get together and do other
52:23
trips yeah it's really cool because like it's nice that Subaru brought
52:27
random people together to do this I think that's like a really smart move
52:31
because it gives you an opportunity to meet other
52:34
people that are passionate about something that you're passionate
52:37
about which is your Subaru and then it gives you the
52:39
opportunity to meet new people and make new friends
52:43
that's always a good thing and we were um invited to bring
52:47
a family man family members or friends or guests so
52:50
nice did you bring anybody with you I brought a friend of mine who lives here
52:54
and she lives in Jonestown okay each other
52:58
in Louisiana nice and I live here in loveland
53:02
okay yeah so and it was her first camping trip
53:05
oh very nice now got the camping bug she also has a Subaru
53:09
okay good so it's just been a great time I'm glad I was invited
53:14
yeah so what would you say is like gonna be your biggest takeaway from this
53:19
we got to learn to change out a CBT axle I guess
53:23
yes that was really cool the demonstration there yeah that was cool
53:27
the just the fellowship that we in the friendships I
53:31
hope will be lasting so it's yeah and the camping
53:34
so it's been great to camp here yeah it has been nice so
53:38
well thank you so much for hopping on the mic real quick you are so welcome
53:41
thank you for having us out here you're welcome thank you
53:46
I'm here with my next guest why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself my
53:49
name is Carolyn hello Carolyn nice to meet you
53:53
so what has been your experience like here at Camp Subaru
53:59
well this is an odd group of people but they're nice
54:03
okay good well that's good and we all drive Subaru's
54:07
that's the best part and the most important part
54:10
so I'm guessing you also got a random email about a random email yes
54:14
okay about coming to camp and I live in loveland
54:17
oh very nice that's very convenient very convenient
54:21
so what Subaru do you drive a 2017 outback very nice nice 128,000 miles
54:28
oh good good you're catching up to me I have 132,000 miles on my
54:34
21 cross track oh yeah but they're fun I have so many miles because I love
54:39
driving it so when you got the email and you
54:44
decided or you were picked to come here were you like a little nervous about
54:48
meeting people you hadn't met before no
54:51
okay well that's good that's good when I started researching
54:55
what style of overlanding camping was I go
54:59
this is probably out of my league yeah yeah
55:03
so I'm guessing you've had a good time here at Camp Subaru yes
55:07
what would you say has been your favorite part of it
55:12
the weather has been very good the weather has been very nice it got a
55:15
little warm today but like in the east like right now it feels
55:18
so good and the get-togethers in the evenings are nice
55:22
yeah and then I've heard there's been really good breakfast here too
55:27
I've been sleeping at home so I haven't really been here for breakfast
55:30
gotcha okay okay so you just here in the evening
55:33
part-time camper I'm a day camper gotcha okay well that's good that's fine
55:38
so yeah you think you would do this again if they decided to do it next year
55:42
oh yes but I understand it's going to be in Virginia
55:45
oh yeah well they're so that's they're continuing on
55:49
with Virginia is the next stop but for 2026 if they come back
55:53
to Loveland to do Overland Expo again and Subaru comes again
55:57
sure they sent me an email and I was free yeah okay
56:00
all right sounds good is there anything else you want to share about
56:02
like what your like what your takeaway from all this is
56:08
it was it was very nice it was interesting seeing all these
56:12
monster mobiles that people camp in yeah absolutely yeah I know there's some
56:19
pretty big rigs out here my style is more vintage okay yeah campers
56:24
all right nice well thank you so much for hopping on the mic
56:28
well thank you you're welcome nice to meet you
56:31
okay ready one two three camp Subaru all right cool thank you thank you
56:41
there you have it day two and as I was recording those
56:45
conversations there at Camp Subaru about halfway through I was thinking it
56:49
would be fun to do the camp Subaru at the
56:52
very end so got everybody to agree to do that so
56:56
that was pretty cool but anyway here we go with the third day of conversations
57:01
at Overland Expo Mountain West and this first guest I had on I was
57:05
trying to be really cool so I lowered my voice some as you can hear
57:09
actually I was just I think I was really tired but uh yeah I was listening
57:13
to it when I was editing and I was like what was going on was I like
57:16
trying to be cool or something but no I was just
57:19
tired but uh it's totally worth it so here we go
57:23
all right we're here at Overland Expo Mountain West day three and I'm here at
57:27
the Sherpa tent and booth I'm sitting here with Alex how's it going man
57:31
I'm doing really well yeah it's been an awesome weekend good good
57:34
how many uh Overland Expo's have y'all participated in like how many years have
57:39
y'all been doing this so we probably went to our first
57:42
Overland Expo in 2019 so we've been at it for a little while nice
57:45
yeah and how long has the company been in business we started in 2017
57:49
okay and so I heard that y'all are now getting into the Subaru
57:53
Subaru market which is really cool yeah we've had a lot of requests
57:57
and excitement from the Subaru space to offer some products for the
58:01
Subaru's we've had employees who have Subaru's asking for it so
58:06
um we made it a priority and this summer we've been doing a ton of
58:10
prototyping and a ton of fitments um for a lot of the
58:13
current generation and previous generation Subaru's so come in October
58:17
first we're launching eight fitments in the Subaru space
58:20
very nice very nice so I saw the Forester hybrid that Kerry and Milton
58:26
have built out over there with the Sherpa rack it looks really good on there
58:30
so that was the first time I'd seen one and then I saw
58:33
Chris's Forester this morning with his rack so it's looking good it's nice
58:37
to see y'all come into the Subaru market I think that's pretty good
58:40
yeah we're really excited there's a lot of opportunity in the Subaru space so
58:45
many people have expressed the need for additional storage on the Subaru's it's
58:49
already a relatively small platform and yeah
58:52
everyone that has Subaru's is into so many hobbies so being able to
58:56
carry all that with you and not have to be so
58:59
picky with what you bring with you on a trip being able to bring a lot more
59:02
of it your bikes to your stand-up paddle boards
59:05
more camp here get heavier rooftop tents up on top of the Subaru
59:08
they're really excited to see it yeah so I'm sure that y'all are
59:12
going through and looking at all different types of
59:15
I guess racks and systems and accessories for
59:19
different things that people are doing yeah just getting like feedback from
59:22
people on what they want to see yeah exactly so the nice thing is we have a
59:28
really good understanding of how to make a good rack system what people are
59:32
usually trying to carry on the racks the Subaru space we've tried to get a
59:36
lot more consumer feedback to see what they are bringing out on trips and
59:39
what they want to mount on their rigs yeah we kind of come from the off-road
59:43
space where people are carrying recovery equipment
59:46
they have a lot of their camp gear up there we started in that more like
59:50
hardcore rock crawling space okay and the Subaru
59:53
space is surprisingly closer to that than we had
59:56
anticipated people are taking these things down a lot
00:00
more technical roads than we had anticipated we thought it would more
00:03
so be like people trying to go up to the mountains and go skiing
00:06
you know a little bit more ability on in those adverse weather conditions on roads
00:12
but we've been really surprised by how many folks are taking these all the
00:15
same places we're bringing our built Toyotas and Jeeps and stuff like that
00:19
so it's a relatively similar crossover to that
00:22
that market than we had anticipated when you've got these two crazy people
00:25
over here doing all the stuff they're doing
00:28
they're uh yeah they're definitely helping out with that yeah and maybe
00:30
they're skewing our perception a little bit they might be on the more
00:33
hardcore end but no it's cool to see that that's all
00:36
happening in the Subaru world yeah and it's cool to see what they're doing with
00:39
their rigs and what's capable of how you can
00:43
build out a Subaru and what it's capable of and yeah of course they're doing
00:46
more extreme things that than a lot of other people will be doing but
00:50
there's still people that are doing some pretty
00:53
more than typical stuff with their Subaru's which is really exciting
00:56
yeah it's it's been really cool and we're excited to continue to dive
01:00
into it I feel like we're just dipping our toe into the water and
01:02
we have so much more to learn about the Subaru market and so many more people
01:06
to meet and probably a lot more events to attend but
01:10
we've been doing Overland Expo for a long time now and it's been really cool to
01:13
just see the reception in the Expo world here
01:17
with the Subaru stuff a lot of the people who already have our racks on other
01:20
rigs at home are excited to be able to put it on their
01:23
Subaru's yeah or have been thinking about switching to the Subaru
01:26
platform nice so I would really love to get
01:29
y'all and do a full episode to find out more about the history of the brand
01:34
and then like how you guys all met and got started the name
01:37
you know where the name came from and all that kind of stuff would you want to
01:40
try to do something around October where you're going to be releasing all
01:43
these these versions of it yeah we would absolutely love to sit down and
01:47
talk about it there's a pretty cool history with our company
01:50
we're all pretty young we started back in high school in college and we
01:53
just love tinkering and it started from a love of the hobby
01:57
and being outdoors and we've just turned it into a job and
02:01
growing a lot of people with us so it's been really rad that's awesome yeah well
02:04
I look forward to it and sharing your story
02:06
and getting more recognition out there for Sherpa and the Subaru community
02:09
well we appreciate it thank you so much you're welcome thank you
02:13
so we're here at Overland Expo Mountain West day three and I'm sitting here
02:17
with Tiana Tiana nice to meet you Dom
02:19
Dom nice to meet you both so I understand you drive it's a 2023
02:25
Forrester wilderness that's correct okay and you said that you've only owned
02:28
Subarus or you will only own Subarus for both yes okay
02:32
so how many have you had so far this is my third one actually
02:36
yeah so what'd you have before this one I had a 2008 Outback so I'd had a pretty
02:40
big upgrade I love that body style though
02:43
yes it's like that's my favorite generation of Outback yeah it was like
02:47
perfect for everything that I was doing I had it all throughout grad school
02:50
and like great for camping and like storage and stuff and then before that
02:53
I had a Outback again or not an Outback of Forrester but I
02:56
don't remember what year it was like an old boxy yeah I loved it
03:00
Tram was penny she was great yeah I on the way here I saw a
03:03
gold Forrester like that boxy body style and I'm like
03:07
I was just like oh my gosh I love it so much she she did me good for a long
03:11
time also through college was she was it manual or automatic automatic
03:15
I've never learned he's never taught me no but I have a manual
03:19
in Prezza and I love it yeah yeah my cross-track is manual yeah
03:23
it's it's you're still more connected to the to the car to the road and I
03:28
really like it but I haven't taught her how to drive manual yet
03:33
yeah it's so fun I taught my son how to drive it because he was
03:36
he was turning 16 like when I had my cross-track
03:40
and so I'm like you know it's a it's a dying skill
03:43
and so I'm like I want him to learn how to drive
03:47
you know it's manual yeah my parents my first car was a
03:51
manual my parents were like you have to learn how to drive a manual first
03:54
because if you can drive a manual that you can drive anything right exactly and
03:57
then they were like if you're in Europe ever because a lot of cars in Europe
04:00
manual um you're renting a car anywhere so that's a good point I never really
04:05
thought about that yeah yeah my parents my parents made us me and my
04:09
brother yeah no that's good that's good that's great
04:12
I it's funny because like whenever I because like I'm renting a car here
04:15
because I live in Houston so I flew out here and so
04:19
whenever like especially all of these roundabouts when I'm going
04:22
through the roundabouts and all this kind of stuff as I'm driving the automatic
04:26
that I have I'm thinking about how I would be
04:29
shifting gears as I'm going through these turns and wishing that I could be
04:32
shifting gears yeah as I'm going through the turns
04:34
because you know it's like you you get the timing right with your
04:37
shifting and what gear you're in everything through certain turns
04:40
and stuff and it just makes it more fun it does
04:43
what year is your in prezzo that's uh 2015 oh right yeah just the the base
04:48
in prezzo yeah that's what I have the base cross right yeah
04:51
it's great I love it yeah I've had it for six years now something like that
04:55
okay yeah she's great all right yeah is this your first time coming to
04:59
Overland Expo yeah this is our both of our first
05:02
times coming to Overland Expo yeah okay so did y'all know that Subaru was
05:05
gonna be here or did you just happen to see them as you are coming through
05:08
here no we were we were wondering if they'd be
05:10
here because we love super is more like a super family and then my brother was
05:13
like oh yeah super is over here and we're like oh let's go check it out and this
05:16
is a nice setup yeah yeah yeah that's because oh
05:19
that was one of one of the questions I wanted to ask is like what do you think
05:21
about this whole setup and the way that they've got it laid out
05:25
I think this is wonderful I feel like they've got a really good kind of
05:28
view of some of the different models I got a chance to like talk to a
05:31
couple people who were like looking at the most recent Forester and they
05:33
were asking about the version I had so I really like it I think it's
05:37
really nice they have a little guest lounge and snacks and drinks I don't
05:40
think I've seen any other vendor have anything like that set up
05:44
yeah and yesterday when it was raining we were all huddled under here and I was
05:47
like I'll bet none of the other booths have a little spot for their owners to
05:50
huddle huddle under yeah it was super nice
05:54
no it's nice that y'all I mean there are people that come here
05:58
this year for Overland Expo because they're you know several different
06:01
locations and there are people that knew that Subaru was going to be here
06:05
so they intentionally came by but it's nice to hear
06:08
people that didn't know that Subaru is going to be here and then they discover
06:11
that so that's really cool yeah absolutely it was a nice surprise
06:14
yeah yeah so and and so like last year Subaru did a
06:18
little test run at the one in California and so they did a lot of
06:23
data gathering with that and they decided let's go ahead and
06:27
do it and take a shot at it and let's do Overland Expo in 2025
06:31
so I'm glad they're here they brought me out here
06:34
they brought some other people out here that I know to do like little
06:37
demonstrations over there with Carrie and Milton so
06:40
it's been such a great venue and I think it's a perfect spot for Subaru
06:45
absolutely I feel like a lot of people in the outdoor space
06:48
own Subaru's and so I'm glad to see that they're represented here because I
06:51
know there's a lot of other options like the vans and other things but we
06:55
we wanted to get the wilderness edition so that we could
06:58
tow a trailer with like something like a
07:01
like a bean or something like that on the back end and
07:04
yeah and that's why we ended up getting the wilderness it's got a little bit more
07:06
of that towing capacity so now that we've had it for a little bit
07:10
we're in the market and so this is like the perfect place for Subaru to be and
07:13
to like look at things that you can add on to it oh yeah you've got plenty of
07:16
accessories here that you can go look at and see what you want to do with it
07:20
have you done any modifications to your impresa or is it just it's just
07:23
it's pretty stock yeah it's just a commuter car for me mostly okay the
07:26
four-wheel drive you know in the snow here
07:29
helps and stuff like that yeah but yeah nothing to mind
07:32
and we haven't done anything to yours yet either I mean with the wilderness stuff
07:35
you don't really need to do all that much we've taken it
07:38
in some pretty crazy places honestly we took your outback
07:41
in some pretty crazy places too um and it just yeah they just go
07:45
I know yeah yeah we we don't get snow in Houston but
07:50
we do occasionally but we get when we get some heavy rains there's mud
07:54
there's some spots that I know where there's some mud
07:56
and one of the things that I like to do is just get out in the middle of the mud
08:00
and just stop and then just start driving and I'm like
08:03
I'm just so amazed that it just goes right through it like it's nothing
08:07
you know unless you get in like the really really thick mucky mud
08:11
other than that it just goes right through you know but I have had the
08:15
opportunity to drive some Subaru's in the snow because I've traveled and
08:18
gone to some other places and so I've driven an outback
08:22
through some snow and I've driven a first-gen cross-track that was
08:25
lifted through some snow in a Lake Tahoe area and it was
08:29
so fun and my son got to drive it through the snow too so it was really really cool
08:33
yeah we've been in some pretty gnarly situations like we lived out in Grand
08:38
Junction for a while and now we live on the front range but
08:40
when we were in school we would have to come back for like Christmas breaks
08:43
or other things you're driving in like pretty pretty gnarly whether they'd
08:46
close the highways down and I've never felt unsafe in the cars
08:49
that we've had which is why we keep buying them
08:51
like I feel like we've always been in in a pretty safe safe situation yeah
08:57
yeah yeah and what's your name oh hi I'm Grant
09:00
Grant and do you have a Subaru I do not okay I currently own a Nissan XTERRA
09:06
okay those are nice too yeah I've always liked those those are super cool but
09:09
um I've been out here this is my first time at Overland and my best friend
09:13
Tanyin has a second gen 2019 cross-track that he's built out
09:19
I think he's been on your guys's podcast before for a full breakdown on his build
09:23
as well oh nice what was his name uh his name's Tanyin
09:26
but his Instagram handles NASA Trek oh okay yeah cool yeah cool yeah yeah
09:31
yeah it's uh it's this is a fun venue I'm really glad to see that Subaru is here
09:35
yeah it's been really great I on day one met up with Milton and Kerry
09:40
they're awesome yeah their builds are really cool
09:43
yeah so yeah it's been pretty exciting to like see
09:46
how customizable they've made all of their vehicles and
09:50
yeah the the Forrester hybrid that they're building out over here is really cool
09:55
the new Forrester and I really like the Sherpa wings that they have on the
10:01
side yeah that they're about to come out with
10:03
because the the Orvis wings are just so wide
10:09
on on this one and yeah it's really cool to see
10:12
the companies like making it more like slim sleek
10:15
yeah yeah it's good well thank you guys for stopping by and
10:20
checking it out thanks for hopping on the mic some people were like a little
10:23
nervous and don't want to do it but y'all seem kind of excited so I figured
10:26
out asking thank you so much you're welcome yeah it was really fun
10:30
yeah I appreciate it thank you for having us you're welcome
10:34
all right so we're here at Overland Expo Mountain West and this is day three
10:39
I'm sitting here with Julie how's it going it's going great thanks for asking
10:44
you're welcome thank you for wandering through the Subaru
10:47
space that we've got here what do you think of the whole setup
10:50
well I think it looks great I love the owner's lounge I honestly was
10:54
surprised to see Subaru here I've been to Overland before and hadn't
10:59
seen it in years past so the setup looks great and
11:03
yeah yeah yeah and we're sitting here in the owner lounge just relaxing and
11:07
having a good time yeah so I like it when people say that they
11:12
didn't know that Subaru is going to be here and that they're surprised because
11:15
so Subaru did a little like pilot last year at Overland Expo in California
11:20
and they just gathered some data you know came up with some ideas of what
11:24
they wanted to do if they were going to do
11:26
Overland Expo in 2025 so they decided to go for it and here we are
11:30
yeah well I think actually I mean I think it's a great
11:33
I think it's a great gathering here Overland Expo and I think it
11:36
makes sense that Subaru is here I know
11:38
just kind of the vibe on adventuring and thinking outside the box and going where
11:43
you want to go it it it makes sense that you guys are
11:46
here yeah and you own a Subaru of course so that's
11:49
great what did you what is it that you own I have an outback
11:52
okay what year is yours it's 2023 okay and we were chatting
11:56
before we got on the mic here but you also owned a cross-track which is
12:00
really exciting to me because I own a cross-track
12:03
and we both had something similar with ours tell them what yours was
12:07
yeah well mine was a manual transmission but and it was orange which is the best
12:14
color so yeah it was a great car I loved it
12:17
what year was that one uh I'm embarrassed to say I don't
12:21
oh remember I think it was a 2016 okay yeah
12:26
so an orange was the very first one that I ever saw
12:29
and then having a manual too just absolutely love it well I just remember
12:33
because there's a hike that I love in outside of where I live in Boulder called
12:37
Fourth of July and I remember the last drive I did
12:40
in that car I took it up the trailhead it was a pretty rutted road
12:44
pretty gnarly out there and just honestly I loved
12:48
driving that car and it got me up to the trailhead had a beautiful hike of
12:51
course with tons of Colorado wildflowers but it was a very
12:55
it's a very positive memory of my bright one yeah
12:59
so did you have any modifications on it at all no
13:02
no so stock tires and everything yeah stock tires it had enough lift to get over
13:06
all the bumps and oh yeah dips and everything it was great
13:08
yeah and and those are like situations like that where
13:12
I've had people on the podcast where they've talked about
13:15
being able to get to further up into places where they want to get to
13:20
trailheads that they couldn't get to before and so having a Subaru has just
13:24
really helped them explore more and you know do more with
13:27
their cars and that's so cool totally I mean we
13:30
artwork we love the mountains obviously well not obviously but we do love the
13:34
mountains we live here we have a son who's a huge skier we're all
13:38
skiers as I mentioned to you before this
13:42
conversation we traveled for a year we were in a 24 foot rig but when we got
13:46
back and wanted to continue with our adventurous
13:49
lifestyle it made sense that we had a Subaru and honestly when we
13:53
go up to the mountains and ski in the winter we don't have a big old truck
13:57
use our Subaru outback and I love the handling and I
14:00
I'm not like a car person I just think cars are a way to get from point A to
14:05
point B safely with what you need and a Subaru is what I drive
14:08
yeah and they're they have very high safety ratings and
14:12
it's like that's one of the big appeals for people too is the safety rating
14:16
yeah so but aside from Subaru's we're here for another reason too
14:20
you have a book you want to talk about it briefly and tell people what it
14:24
is oh thank you for asking yeah so I just did a
14:29
seminar here at the Overland Expo there's a you know there's a whole lineup of
14:34
of talks and panel discussions so I was talking about
14:38
how to make travel when people are out and about
14:42
just a deeper more meaningful experience and there were three different
14:45
ways I talked about how you can do that through finding community through
14:48
volunteer work and through world schooling and world
14:51
schooling is learning through direct interaction with the world
14:54
so my book is all about world schooling my family traveled for
14:58
13 months we took our nine-year-old kid out of school for a year
15:02
and used the world as a classroom and it was just an incredible
15:06
year of adventure and wonder for us and so I co-authored with two other
15:10
women who had traveled with their families at different times
15:13
very nice wonder year it's a guide to long-term family travel and
15:16
world schooling and thank you for asking you're welcome
15:19
so are people able to find this book somewhere right now
15:22
yes they can find it at many rai's across the country
15:27
very nice Barnes & Noble independent bookstores and of course
15:31
amazon okay great well thank you so much thank you yeah it was nice to chat with
15:35
you and great to see this book and great to hear about your
15:40
Subaru journey so far thank you you're welcome
15:44
all right that concludes the bonus episode from Overland Expo Mountain
15:49
thank you so much Subaru for having me out to participate in this awesome event
15:54
and this whole series that you are participating in
15:58
this year for Overland Expo I really really appreciate it I'm
16:02
super grateful for the opportunity I'm very thankful that I was able to see
16:06
some friends again and also meet some people for the
16:10
first time and of course put together these great
16:13
conversations that I've had with people in different parts of the
16:16
country at each of these events and hopefully on this last one we can
16:21
reach our goal again of finding somebody that does not own a Subaru
16:26
and has come into the space so we will try hard to do that I've got
16:30
everybody out there in the space looking out for me they know what I'm
16:35
trying to do so everybody's trying to see if they can
16:38
capture somebody that does not own a Subaru of course that is not my only
16:42
goal of course I'm recording these these conversations
16:45
with people who own Subarus and asking them what they think about the space
16:48
asking them what they think about Overland Expo and Subaru being at
16:52
Overland Expo so we've had some really great conversations and I know
16:56
we'll have some more great conversations in Virginia coming up in
17:01
about a month I also want to give a huge shout out to
17:04
Road for coming up with the Road Wireless Pro because it has
17:08
completely changed my remote podcasting game
17:12
it's so nice that I can move around the space sit in different spots
17:17
go to other vendors that I've had on the podcast before or new vendors and chat
17:21
with them and it just makes the experience so much
17:24
greater when I'm not just stuck in one particular spot
17:29
so I just I think they're great but anyway
17:32
thanks again so much for tuning in really really appreciate it please
17:35
share this episode so that more people can hear it because if Subaru is
17:39
going to be able to go out to Overland Expo in 2026
17:43
it would be great for people to hear what the experience was like so that we
17:47
can try to get more people out next year if that is going to be the case
17:52
and hopefully get some new people into some Subaru's or get
17:57
people that are considering Subaru's into a Subaru
18:00
that's what it's all about isn't it so again thank you so much
18:03
have a wonderful weekend I'll see you later we'll be
18:07
back with the subi scoop on Monday much subi love
18:10
raf the subi new podcast is hosted by Raphael in a closet in Houston produced
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