Overland Rally in Marion NC

Long day of driving from Destin to NC...about 10 hours all together. Drove a couple hundred miles on small country highways up through Florida & Alabama until we hit I-85 near Tuskegee. Wasn't too much to see - couple of small towns along the way, but mostly trees & open fields. We had another few hundred miles once on 85, up through Atlanta, then Highway 441 to I-40. Once we got through Atlanta, the rest seemed to cruise by.

We made a couple of pit stops along the way, including one at a Puma outlet store near Atlanta...I got a new pair that I love!

Our destination of Marion NC was determined by an event that David had researched and wanted to attend - Overland Rally. Overland is an outdoors travel publication that has a pretty extensive social network of people who do overland travel (lots of off-road capable vehicles like Land Cruisers, Land Rovers, etc) and a variety of camping set-ups. The rally offered workshops on topics like how to financially plan for extended duration travel, how to pack cargo effectively & tie-down techniques, cartography & GPS, etc...they also had classes on 4wd techniques. We signed up for the beginners one - pretty interesting stuff & got to do some scaling & driving down drops...however, I am having an issue with 4low not engaging, so we had to duck out of the class early once they moved on to more challenging hills. All-in-all, it was a great weekend and we met lots of cool people. Below are a few pics...

We arrived fairly late on Thursday evening - just enough daylight left to set up the 4Runner for sleeping. Here is what our set up looked like for the weekend:

(like I mentioned in an earlier post, we set up the back seat & cargo area with a platform for bedding, so that is where we slept).

The next morning, we woke up fairly early and were able to see the sunrise - beautiful coming up over the valley nearby.

Here's David making coffee:

After breakfast, we walked around a bit to check out some of the other camping set ups. The campsite for the rally was held on a flat hill top (called "The Flats") - there were trails & mud holes all around us.
Here are a few pictures:

 The area in the bottom right of this next picture is called "The Playground"...color-coded green and considered easy off-road driving.

This hill was a yellow path...considered moderately difficult...

David & I did a little hiking to peek at some of the red / difficult trails. We climbed/slid down one...neither of us can imagine trying to drive down these things. Sorry that pics of some of these aren't great, but we were shooting with iPhones.

(just behind me, there is a path called "Superman" that descends at about a 40 - 45 degree angle over  rocks, sticks, and mudspots...crazy!) PS - see those good looking shoes I'm wearing? =)

One more pic...here's David letting air out of my tires for my 4x4 class :D

So, now we are off to the next stop...we are heading to Washington DC but aren't trying to be there until tomorrow (Monday) morning, so we plan to stop in Richmond VA for the night. Should be just over 5 hours of driving and we left at 8:30 this morning so we should be there just after lunch.