The Northwest Overland Rally (N.W.O.R.) is the largest gathering of 4×4 and overland vehicles, enthusiasts and vendors in this corner of the continent. The rally is held annually in June, down in Plain, WA, a beautiful setting only a short drive south of the friendly CAN / USA border.
If you’re not familiar with these types of events, it’s basically a family-friendly organized camp-fest with hundreds of other like-minded vehicle adventurers. There’s food trucks, vendor booths/displays, guided trail runs, big prizes (bumpers, winches, RTT’s etc.) and a multitude of professionally taught classes/courses ranging from back-country cooking and travel presentations to off road driving courses and vehicle recovery classes.
We signed up for the full weekend pass, loaded up the family and towed the Evo2 trailer down to the rally for our first time. We attended many classes, participated in a trail run to up to Sugarloaf Peak (pictured above), and enjoyed the group campfire/prize giveaways each night. The highlight for me was walking around the camping area and seeing the hundreds of different overland setups and talking with the owners/drivers. Normally the idea is to find an area to camp away from everyone else, however at the rally you are given a 20ft x 20ft space with others setup next to you – and for the rally, it worked well. We enjoyed getting to know our neighbours over the weekend and hearing their adventure stories from different parts of North America. Everyone was friendly and overall the great atmosphere lasted all weekend.
This year the N.W.O.R. is taking place June 15-18 and we’ll be there with our Kakadu Bushranger trailer this time around. Feel free to come and say hi! Also this year, the first annual BC Overland Rally is being held June 22-25 in the Hemlock Valley. The BC event is organized by the same great people and the vendor/course lineup is looking to be as solid as the N.W.O.R. too.
After last year’s rally finished, we drove parts of the northern sections of the Washington Backcountry Discovery Route (also known as the W.A.B.D.R.) and took an extra week to make our way home along the back roads…. but that’s another blog post in itself :).
EXPEDITION BC 