Overland & Fly Fishing

Same country, same trucks — just a lot of roads nobody talks about.

“How is this the same country?” my wife asked, looking at a photo on my phone from a trip eight months earlier — different truck load-out, different dog in the back seat, a coastline instead of a desert. “Same country,” I said. “Same trucks. Just a lot of roads nobody talks about.”

That's the part of this that doesn't get said enough. Overlanding in the U.S. isn't really about any single destination — it's about the fact that the destinations are all connected by an absurd amount of dirt. The U.S. Forest Service alone maintains more than 265,000 miles of roads, and that's before you count BLM two-tracks, old mining roads, and the thousands of unmarked spurs that show up on nobody's map but the one in some rancher's head.

We've followed that network from a moose crossing a river in Alaska to a blue-lined creek in upstate New York that a local swore wasn't worth the walk in, and was completely wrong about. The gear doesn't change much between those trips. The landscape changes completely. That's the whole appeal.

Some of this is planned. Most of it isn't. Olive has now overlanded in California, Utah, and everywhere between, usually without much warning beyond the sound of gear getting loaded, and she has strong opinions about none of it that she's ever bothered to share.

The destinations get the postcards. The roads between them are where you actually learn a place.

Montana's Madison River trip happened almost by accident — a work thing that ended early, a truck that was already loaded, and a decision made somewhere around a gas station that the extra six hours of driving was worth it. It usually is. The Madison doesn't need an introduction to anyone who fishes, but driving into it on back roads instead of the highway changes the whole feel of arriving.

The Madison doesn't need an introduction, but the back roads change the whole feel of arriving.

New York surprised us the most, honestly. Blue-lining — chasing the thin blue threads on a map that most people drive straight past — turned up small wild trout in water that had no business being that good that close to towns most people have actually heard of. It's not a landscape anyone associates with overlanding, and that's exactly why it was worth doing.

Blue-lining turned up small wild trout in water that had no business being that good.

Mexico's Baja peninsula runs on a completely different rulebook — different permits, different fuel logistics, different everything — and it rewards the same instinct that works everywhere else: follow the road, talk to the people who actually live along it, and let them tell you where the water and the good camp spots actually are.

Baja rewards the same instinct that works everywhere else — follow the road and ask the people who live along it.

Washington's lakes came by way of a friend and his dog Hugo, who apparently considers any body of water within barking distance to be personally his. Hugo was, in this instance, correct about the water being worth the stop.

Hugo, who considers any body of water within barking distance to be personally his.

What ties all of it together isn't the fish or the scenery, honestly — it's the driving in between. The washboard, the water crossings, the moments the GPS gives up and you're reading terrain instead of a screen. That's the actual product this country has more of than almost anywhere else: room to get lost on purpose and a network of roads dense enough that getting lost rarely means getting stuck.

A truck that can handle a bad road, a dog who doesn't mind six states in a year, and a spur road worth following.

You don't need a bucket list of destinations to make this work. You need a truck that can handle a bad road, a dog who doesn't mind being in six states in a year, and the willingness to follow a spur road just to see where it goes. The country will supply the rest.