One of the best things about attending an Overland Expo is meeting fellow travelers and drawing inspiration from their adventures. We are fortunate to have a large cadre of such people teaching classes throughout our events, sharing their stories, how they made their travel dreams a reality, and providing guidance on how we can follow in their footsteps. Brad St. Clair and Sheri Troftgruben are two such people and we are excited to have them join us at Overland Expo East, which is just around the corner.
Here’s a little about what they will be teaching and some background on their adventures:
Saturday, October 4th
11:00 am in the Oasis: Overlanding in Latin America: “Fair Blossoms Found in Every Climate, on Every Soil”
Brad and Sheri spent the last couple years exploring the cultural, biological, and landscape diversity of Latin America in their Jeep Gladiator named Hank. They will share information about the places they traveled to and their experiences along the way, including the beautiful, the challenging, and the uneventful, with tips and recommendations for overlanding there. And they will share about some of the best experiences about travel: the discovery of the many good, kind people there are in the world, molded by their different cultures but sharing the same “fundamental common values.”
1:00 pm in the Oasis: Rewarding Side-Trips from the Pan-American Highway
Heading south on the Pan-American Highway, one may find it rewarding to take a detour east, west, or further south. Brad and Sheri had the good fortune to travel by road, water, or air to Brazil, the Galapagos, Rapa Nui, and Antarctica, often deciding to go to these places at the last minute. Join them as they share their experiences and provide some insight into traveling to these unique natural and cultural worlds.
Sunday, October 5th
10:00 am at the Showcase & DIY Area: Show & Tell – Brad and Sheri’s 2022 Jeep Gladiator “Hank”
Come by the Showcase and DIY Area to get a tour of Brad and Sheri’s 2022 Jeep Gladiator “Hank” to see in the ins and outs of their current adventure rig.
Getting to Know Your Instructors
Brad St. Clair’s Bio
After climbing Mt. Stanley in the Rwenzoris in 1993, Brad decided to head down to the southwest corner of Uganda because he heard that you could cross the border into Zaire to see mountain gorillas in the Virungas. As he prepared to walk across the border, two Land Rovers pulled up with two European couples. They had just driven across the Congo, and he thought “How cool is that! That’s what I want to do.” Now, after a fulfilling career as a forest geneticist and raising a family, it was time to embark on his dream with his best friend and travel companion, his wife, Sheri. He had spent a career studying the biological diversity in nature. Now was the time to further explore the landscape and cultural diversity of the world. Having never visited South America, they prepared their Jeep Gladiator named Hank, and headed south.
Sheri Troftgruben’s Bio
Growing up in Oregon, Sheri often went tent camping with her family, later a camp trailer, then graduating to a full-sized camper. Her youth was filled with many summer road trips including long drives back to North Dakota to visit grandparents. The drives were hot without air conditioning, and her brother and she would make up games to pass the time. Thus began her love of road trips. As an adult, she traveled in North America and Europe including visits to Norway to explore her family heritage. Not long after they started dating, Brad asked her out on a date – to Southeast Asia. After hiking and ziplining to stay in tree houses and look for gibbons in the jungle in Laos, they found themselves at the side of lonely highway attempting to hitchhike to a town in the north. After little luck, a man approached and offered to give them a ride for a small price. Sheri in the front seat in his Toyota Hilux and Brad in the back seat with the man’s two kids, helping with their schoolwork (despite the language barrier), they made it to town by dark. Thus began their travels together. Now retired from a rewarding but stressful career as a social worker, it is time to further explore the world.
READ MORE: A Newcomer’s Guide to Overland Expo
A Q&A with Brad
Overland Expo: Tell us about your rigs:
Brad: We’re driving a 2022 Jeep Gladiator named Hank (named after my dad’s favorite singer-songwriter, Hank Williams, and the song “Ramblin’ Man”). We chose Hank based on being small enough to fit into a shipping container and drive through the narrow, crowded streets of the cities, but tough enough to get us to the more remote corners of the world. We upgraded the suspension and front bumper and added a winch and off-road lights (only used once to help recover a friend that had slipped a wheel off a narrow backroad in Costa Rica). Although we did not intend to go “rock-crawling,” we did not want to get stuck somewhere as we explored.
Our living quarters are an Alu-Cab canopy camper with two important additions: a wonderfully comfortable mattress and a large fridge with a freezer (we love our ice cream and ice for drinks). The fridge is powered by a 200 Ah battery charged by a 200W solar panel, so no worries about food going bad. Although the living area is small given that the fridge is in the back, we consider it a good thing since it forced us to spend more time outside, which is where we want to be. Although we could have put the fridge in the back of the cab, we wanted room for four people so that our family or friends could join us along the way. The addition of a wrap-around awning helps keep us comfortable outside, rain or shine.
Overland Expo: What is your all-time favorite campsite?
Brad: That’s a difficult one. We have enjoyed so many wonderful places along the way. One of Sheri’s favorite campsites was on the southern coast of Peru near Paracas National Reserve. It has some beautiful coastal desert scenery with nearby lagoons full of flamingos, a few local fishermen, and great sunsets. I (Brad) really enjoyed the campsites in the altiplano of southern Bolivia and northwest Argentina, both for their remoteness and the spectacular landscapes and wildlife. It’s difficult to beat sleeping in the middle of the world’s largest salt flat, Salar de Uyuni, with no other people nearby. Also very special, but for different reasons, was camping with my son and his friend after skiing at Valle Nevado in Chile and enjoying a good meal at sunset.
Overland Expo: What’s your go-to overlanding meal?
Brad: Our go-to overlanding meal, when not sampling the local cuisine (which was quite often), is stir-fry or fajitas. It is an easy and delicious meal to prepare, and we enjoy going to the local markets for fruits and veggies and chicken or beef. Admittedly, we also ate plenty of salami, cheese and crackers or peanut butter sandwiches when feeling less inclined to cook.
Overland Expo: What is your best silver-lining story?
Brad: Both the low point and high point of my travels came in Northwest Argentina. First the “high” point: 17,156 feet at an abandoned sulfur mine, Mina Julia, on the border with Chile. The low point came on the drive back to my camp at Cono de Arita when my tire blew apart. Sheri was not with me at the time, and I had seen very few people on my way to the mine and back, only a few trucks at some working gold mines. When the tire blew, I was only a few miles from one of those mines, so I knew that I could probably get help there. I changed the tire and made it back to camp, but I had 280 miles and more than 8 hours driving on rough roads to make it back to Salta to get a new spare tire, with only a few small towns along the way. Needless to say, I was a bit stressed. The good that came out of it was, first, I made it back to Salta and was able to find a spare tire (although expensive and not exactly the right size). And although I was unable to continue on through this beautiful corner of the world, I did get to spend a few days exploring the area.
Overland Expo: What is an area of overland travel that you think you have nailed? And what is an area of overland travel that you feel you could use some improvement in?
Brad: I think one of the most important aspects of travel is opening yourself up to others. One of the joys of travel is exploring our cultural differences while at the same time appreciating all that we have in common as human beings. As Marcel Proust said: “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.” I feel that I am good at being open to others and interacting with people. That includes talking with locals as well as other travelers. That said, one area of overland travel that I could benefit from is learning to speak Spanish better. I could get by just fine, but when it came to deeper conversations with those who did not speak English, I wished my Spanish was better.
On a more practical level, I could probably use more training in remote travel including recovery and navigation. Although it is not often that you need to recover a vehicle, when it is needed, it is important. I think I could learn more or at least review what I have learned in the past.
Sheri says that an area of overland travel that she has nailed is patience with me. I am probably more adventurous while Sheri is more cautious at times. So, we balance each other out. But I am also impressed by how relaxed Sheri has become about some of the more remote places that we have traveled to, especially some of the windy roads with steep drop-offs that used to make her so nervous. I am also more ambitious than Sheri about the distances that we travel. I agree with Sheri that I need to slow down a bit and take some time to relax and “smell the roses.”
An area of overland travel that we learned from was to be careful about going up in elevation too quickly. We went from the coast of Peru to the Cordillera Blanca in one day. As we crested the pass above Huaraz, a spectacular vista of snow-capped mountains opened up in front of us, and we thought “What a beautiful place to camp!” Only problem was that it was at 14,000 feet. Unfortunately, Sheri got altitude sickness in the middle of the night, so after cleaning up, we ended up driving down to Huaraz before sunrise. After that night we would take our time going from the coast to the highlands of the Andes.
Overland Expo: What does your division of labor look like while traveling?
Brad: I am the one that does the planning, route-finding, driving, and keeping track of our travels (including writing in our travel blog). One of the reasons that I do this is that Sheri is not always with me. Indeed, one of our “divisions of labor” is that Sheri spends more time at home helping with family including with our aging parents and tending our wonderful three-year-old grandson while his parents are at work. We have probably spent more time at home than many international overlanders since we do not want to miss too much of our grandson growing up or time with our parents. When Sheri is with me, she does most of the cooking and helps as my co-pilot finding our way (especially through cities) and getting through borders. I am grateful that Sheri helps so much at home with family while encouraging me to travel on my own, and that we treasure our time when we are together.
Overland Expo: All great answers! Thanks for chatting, and we can’t wait to see you in Virginia!
If you haven’t secured your tickets for Overland Expo East, don’t delay.
