New Normal
"Without great solitude, no serious work is possible.” – Pablo Picasso
Austin, TX March 2020 - Two days before Texas state shut-down and enacted shelter-in-place.
I recall sitting at the bar, as the news announced that Texas state was following NY & CA’s lead by shutting down all businesses; enacting shelter-in-place. Of all days it could have been, this particular night was Friday the 13th.
COVID-19 didn’t feel serious until this very night. It was just another night in Austin. As a matter of fact, my friends and I went out to get Friday the 13th tattoos. All the bars were poppin’ - mostly from people who decided to stick around despite SXSW getting cancelled a matter of days before.
In one weekend, Austin turned into a post-apocolyptic feeling town with tourist that had nowhere to go but stay in their hotels. Luckily we had a nice AirBnb to enjoy, but eventually we made our way back to Dallas. It felt like a trip headed for long-term hibernation. The optimism was naive indeed. “How long would this last?”, I asked myself. My original estimate was 2-3 weeks. The first week in quarantine felt like a staycation. By the second week I was watching more and more Youtube videos than ever before. I even found myself actually opening my facebook app to shop in the marketplace for random things people might be getting rid of. And this is where I’d say my journey to ‘BAES Camp’ began!
As I was scrolling through Facebook Marketplace, I found a gutted 1976 Airstream listed for sale at $8000 — exactly the amount of savings I had in cash after selling all my stock to avoid the crash. It was just waiting for someone to build it out as they pleased. I asked the owner if I could see it over the weekend - it was a Wednesday - and she agreed. It sold that same day. I found myself on the hunt for another one, extremely depressed about missing out. Hours would go by and all the Airstreams were just getting bought up like crazy. A trend I wish I had been ahead of. Eventually, I convinced myself that building out an airstream to the level I’d want it to be was a huge undertaking that I didn’t think I’d be able to confidently do. And I calculated it’d cost me appx. $30k for all the modifications I wanted to do. It’d take too much time and money. So we scrapped the Airstream idea.
For someone who travels a lot, being at home for this long was starting to get to me. The only interaction I’d get outside of my house was when the UPS or Fedex driver would ring our doorbell. Don’t get me wrong, I know how to have a good time anywhere and anytime. This video I made in quarantine will prove it!
That was fun. But after 5 weeks had gone by, I started to ponder. Everyone was required to quarantine. For some of us, we were lucky enough to be able to still ‘work from home’. So I thought about this ‘new normal’ a lot. I asked myself if I’m ‘working from home’, does it matter where ‘home’ is? Can that actually be on the road? And if National Parks were open, could I work from a campsite? I told myself YES! of course I can.
So I googled “Living out of a Jeep”, knowing full well I can’t afford an RV nor did I have the interest of pulling something across country. To my surprise there are a lot of people who live in their cars, especially Jeeps. I’m not talking about #VANLIFE. I’m saying people actually live in their cars! Some sleep in the back seat, some sleep in rooftop tents, and some just camp out the good old fashioned way. Either way, this excited me so much, I probably spent days just consuming all the Jeep content the internet had to offer. In hindsight, this gave me a project in quarantine. It gave me purpose.
I don’t drive a Jeep Wrangler or Gladiator like most ‘overlanders’ do. Allow me to provide some context. My 2017 Jeep Grand Cherokee Limited was built to order with all the Trailhawk features because I disliked the red trim all the Trailhawk models come with. Marlyn and I bought this Grand Cherokee in Manhattan (NYC) for my 30th bday in May 2017. We made sure it had all the safety features and off-road capabilities because we had the intention to take it upstate often. We ultimately landed on a Grand Cherokee over a Wrangler because it felt more comfortable for long road trips and it felt appropriate as a city car. But after nearly 2 years of owning the car, I only put 9,000 miles on it. We rarely drove it upstate, let alone anywhere else. Life happened - and then moving to Dallas changed all that. And being in quarantine got me thinking. Most people who live out of their jeep live in a Wrangler or a Gladiator. Can’t say I’ve found anyone who lives out of a Grand Cherokee full time, and modifications/ outlander builds for this Jeep was slim to non-existent. So it was a particularly fun project to problem solve. It probably calls for it’s own blog post, but to summarize what I did to my Jeep, here it is:
Installed a Winch (for self-recovery purposes as we assumed less people would be on the trails).
Installed a set of lights for different uses off-road. (yes, they’ve come in handy!)
Installed a rear spare tire mount so I can make space in the trunk area for a second battery.
Installed a Dual Battery System that powers all of my new accessories.
Installed a military-grade 4G LTE WiFi Router typically used by ambulances for off-grid situations.
Installed a Dometic Powered Cooler (rifrigerator/freezer) for longer trips.
Installed body armor on the car (front bumper, skid plates, and rock sliders) for off-roading protection.
Installed a roof top tent.
Proud to say I learned how to do everything above via Youtube and Reddit forums! By the time it was all said and done July had come. We planned two trips immediately. One trip with our friends Lendel & Olga with their two daughters Brooklyn & Caleigh. We wanted to drive to NYC with them, from Dallas, and then camp out in Bar Harbor, ME to check out Acadia National Park.
To read more about our trip to Acadia National Park click here.
The next trip we planned was with Baylor & Frankie, who just bought a new 2020 Toyota 4Runner TRD Pro. Baylor was planning a Southwest road trip with the goal to hit Zion National Park. Frankie set up a Whatsapp group called Base Camp to get us talking about the road trip they were planning to Zion. We had quite a few different routes mapped out and landed on the Dallas-Amarillo-Great Sand Dunes-Moab-Zion-Grand Canyon route. More on that trip here!
Just a few nights before we left for that trip, we were trying to come up with an official name for the trip and for the whatsapp group. We wanted a hashtag to string together our content along the way. Marlyn jokingly said ‘BAES Camp’. We all laughed and agreed that it was pretty good. So we ran with it!
Knowing we’d run into so many people along the way, I immediately ordered decals & stickers. I even started it’s own instagram account with the intention of building an album to look back on. But actually experiencing that - meeting so many people stoked about ‘BAES Camp’ on the road, and the idea that we’re just a band of friends camping, doing the great American road trip - felt like we were on to something.
So that’s how we got here. We don’t think New Normal is going away anytime soon, and the numbers don’t lie. RV sales, Boat sales, Car sales, are all up this year despite the pandemic. Rental cars are nearly impossible to find in big cities like NYC because so many people are hitting the road. We’re building BAES Camp to be a platform for city-dwellers looking find their place in the great outdoors. To choose a road trip over a flight. The campsite over the hotel. That no matter where you find yourself across the country, home is with you.
Over the next few months, we’ll be creating some epic experiences/meet-ups that we hope you’ll join us in. We’ll also be looking for partners along the way, so feel free to reach out if this project speaks to you!
Stay tuned for more! Please subscribe to our newsletter & follow us on Instagram so you don’t miss out on any announcements!