Ahhh…Fall…there’s much to love – changing leaves, crisp nights, tasty seasonal beers, and the Vermont Overland Rally! In its fifth year now, the 2015 VOR was the best yet (I’m an authority, having been to all 5), combining near peak foliage, a great crowd, class 4 roads to suit every taste, and guest speakers/vendors to inspire and help lighten your wallet.
On the tail end of several weeks of near-continuous travel for both Alex and I, we rolled in a little late to the event, and despite the rain on Friday afternoon, both old friends and people we’d never met before helped us set up camp.
We’ve learned long ago that you want to camp in near proximity to our close friend Pat Lambert, who, with his homebuilt ROAM camper and 5th gen 4Runner is the master of the basecamp and life of the party (yea, we like to party a little bit!). Our DRT basecamp combined with Pat’s setup become the social epicenter for late-night shenanigans.
One of the key selling points of the Vermont Overland Rally is the off-roading. Peter Vollers, event organizer, does a great job of providing downloadable route maps to attendees with multiple trail options of varying length and difficulty – everything from graded road to “I didn’t need that fender anyways”. We had a blast on some challenging sections, giving both the Jeep and 4Runner a good workout and putting our new Cooper STT Pro tires to the test.
Per usual, there were no shortage of interesting vehicles and camp setups on the grounds of the Lillie Brook Farm, which served as base camp for the weekend. Some of our favorites were the unusual stuff…a Forward Control Land Rover, our friend Jonathan Rutherford’s pop-top 70-series Land Cruiser, and of course Peter Voller’s own series Rover. Of course there were also plenty of modern Jeeps, Toyotas, Land Rovers, and ADV bikes hanging around.
Thanks again to Peter Vollers and the Vermont Overland staff, as well as the Lillie Brook Farm for putting on another great Vermont Overland Rally – you continue to make this event a highlight of the year for us and we’re already counting down to our next Vermont adventure.
The trails in Vermont were fantastic and I will have to make it back to explore more. The tree colors were great as well!
We had a great time also, the trails in VT are second to none and Peter time’s the event perfectly with the changing leaves.