Beast
I guess we should thank Gary and Paula for asking us to take a long photography trip with them though Utah, and to drive an RV during that vacation. We also need to thank them for mentioning the name Sportsmobile (almost in awe). After we returned from that October 2015 trip, we promptly looked up Sportsmobile, Ann contacted them, and we had our deposit down for a vehicle by early December. Then came the year-plus wait.
Beast was a beauty. I can’t tell you how many people would give us a thumbs-up on the road; the gazes and dropped jaws were simply amusing. My favorite saying was, “She’s way cooler than we are!” Beast earned her name on the first off-road trip we took with her. Just look up the “Misadventure” blog post; the photo below with the snow-capped Sierra Mountains in the background was from that trip.
And once we outfitter her with a winch, additional underplaying and a better set of shocks, she was ready to go anywhere.
And while the misadventure trip made me extra careful to verify road conditions as much as possible, it still meant we could go pretty much anywhere, and were able to handle those instances where we had gone somewhere we shouldn’t have (How did we ever wind up on an ATV trail?).
I’ll never forget our post-pickup trip to Overland Expo West. When the Off-Road driving instructor said, “Who wants to help out on the demonstration . . . “ and her partner said, “Who has the Mercedes Sprinter?” I happily raised my hand. “You willing to show us what it can do?” “Why do you think I brought it this morning?” Or, an hour later when we were driving Beast on the Land Rover test course. Classmates from the previous session told us that folks in line to drive Land Rovers were gawking at us taking the course in Beast, amazed at what she was doing!
And I must say, we took her places where we wanted to go, and she duly complied!
Of course, we could have gotten just any 4x4 to do that; what we wanted is something we could also live inside of. Thus, the Sportsmobile pop top. So live in it we would. Like this trip to the Santiam River. Head up to the Santiam on a Friday after work, find a small logging road to camp for the night, and then we’re a 5 minute drive from where we want to photograph the next morning. Was that Santiam trip worth it? Just check out Dan’s Santiam Portfolio and you be the judge.
Our preference always was to find public lands to spend the night. It’s hard to beat the views from your home that way.
That’s one of the wonders of US Forest Service and BLM land. If your vehicle can get you there, you have some really great spots to call home . . . if even for just one night.
And even if you have to be in a camp ground, you can be far away from services and still keep yourselves warm at night. Unlike our experiences in a tent a few years earlier in Yellowstone.
What made Beast special in some ways was the ability we had to customize it. The Bimobil was not so flexible in that respect - you pretty much have to go with a set floor plan, but they will supplement it in certain ways (but not others - they believe in the tried and true, and experimentation can hurt on rough roads). The Sportsmobile was different. We merged three different floor plans and designed cabinetry in the rear to suit our needs (the height of the center box below is tall enough for our camera bags and tripods, as is the L-Track railing used to secure the bags. When we picked up Beast (before she was so-named), one of the cabinet guys came up to us and thanked us for giving him something different to work on, he said he enjoyed figuring it all out.
Something we didn’t add, but truly came to love was the drop down shelf in the side door. I can’t tell you how many times we stopped on the side of the road and I just dropped the shelf to make a pot of coffee!
And our roof platform was not for carrying anything, as the Aluminess guys found out at the Overland Expo. Two of them came up to us and started talking about it (it was an Aluminess Rack). One of them had actually designed the Sportsmobile electronic lifts for the roof (downscaled from the ones on the Ford vehicle). “So how much weight do you put up there to carry?” “Oh, nothing. Jonathan told us it was totally maxed out for the lift. If we do, we have to unload it before we raise the top. That’s not what it’s for, it’s a platform for photography!” They laughed, because they were going to tell us that it was maxed out and they were surprised we knew it. Then again, they might have been laughing about what we used it for.
The accessory we didn’t use nearly as much as we thought we would was the awning. But the couple of times we used it, we needed it.
Beast was a capable rig, albeit a bit small for long trips. Which is why our bimobil is going to be substantially larger.
We’ll still be able to go down many of the types of roads we did with Beast, and if we ever ship the bimobil to the US we certainly will. But we won’t be able to go everywhere she could. She was relatively small for a live-in rig, and that allowed us to do some things a larger vehicle just won’t be able to do.
Beast wasn’t perfect, having a few interior construction and build flaws, but with a vehicle that goes off road and is actually used for its intended purpose (which she was), that is not unexpected. With the number of times we absolutely had to put her in 4WD, there is no way a regular car would have gotten us to some of the places she did.
She confirmed in us the notion that having a vehicle that can get you where you want to be to photograph, and then let you live in it, was the way to go.
Thus, part of our Portugal planning was looking for a replacement rig (it would have cost too much to have Beast converted to EU specs, and filled with a lot of uncertainty that it would get certified). And as a result of that research, when we made our exploratory trip to Porto, we made a side trip to order the bimobil (which had a 2-year build-time wait).
Thanks Beast! May the bimobil take us to as many wonderful places as you did!