Story and Photos by Tonya Mercer
The term “domestic housewife” implies that there are feral housewives, and now I have a new goal.
Registration for the 2024 Nomad Overland Virtual Adventure Rally opened at 10:00 am on November 1st. It took me until about 10:05 to text my husband.
“Registration just opened. I signed us up. Do you want a hat or a shirt?”
“OK. Might not be able to hit it as hard next year as we did this year, but I’m game,” he replied.
In 2023, I signed up for the Nomad Overland Virtual Adventure Rally, fully prepared to go alone if I had to. JoMarie Fecci, founder of the Nomad, had invited me to the inaugural rally in 2022. I had seen the invite and never circled back to it. By the time I’d realized what I was missing, it was too late. A friend messaged me when the 2023 registration opened and encouraged me to try it. My husband wasn’t sold on the idea. I signed up anyway. I didn’t exactly have a plan, but I figured I had all winter to figure one out.
Early on, I decided that I was going to commandeer my husband’s 2002 Toyota Tacoma. He was already planning a trip to Baja, so he had started modifying the truck. The way I saw it, the bed rack he was building as a spare tire carrier was perfect for adding a rooftop tent. Except we didn’t have one, and he wasn’t about to buy one. I started scrolling through Marketplace. It turns out there are a lot of different rooftop tents, so I messaged an overlanding friend for advice. I was looking at durability and price point; the last thing I wanted was to be stuck with a tent at the end of the season that I didn’t like. I started showing ads to my husband. Shortly after the new year, he spent his Christmas money on a rooftop tent for me.
In early May, we took the Tacoma on a shakedown run, picking up supplies for our son’s graduation party. We spent our first night in the tent in the desert; I think it was the first time I’d slept in a tent in almost ten years. We stayed relatively comfortable and warm. After picking up supplies, we took a back road home for fun. Snow-closed roads and flooding thwarted us, but we found some new areas to explore. Toward the middle of May, our competitor packet arrived. We were filled with a false sense of confidence. In a practice drive, we spotted over sixty of the 150 items on our photo quest list in just five hours. At the end of the month, I drove our son to Montana for a friend’s graduation. I lamented that none of the animals I saw on the way would count yet, as all of the pictures had to be taken during the rally, not one day before or after.
On Monday, June 5th, the rally officially started. I was at work without a plan, and I wasn’t sure how I would finish all the activities in ten weeks. I drove the back roads home that night in an attempt to at least get some pictures checked off of my list. Feeding my horses later, I wrenched my back. The Chiropractor said it would probably take eight weeks to heal; I felt defeated before I had even begun. My husband had to make a trip to pick up a snow plow the following weekend. I suggested we modify the drive and try to get in our first stage. We got a late start due to some mechanical issues; it was raining and nearly dark by the time we got up on the mountain. I tried to get a picture of some elk, but they took off running, and I ended up with blurry photos of the trees and something remotely elk colored in the background. We arrived at our planned camp area somewhere around midnight, cooked our dinner, and huddled in the truck, trying to stay warm as we ate – not a promising start.
The following week, we packed up the vintage camper and went on vacation. With no plans to complete any stages, I planned our family vacation around activities. We went to National Parks, toured mines, visited a historic fort, and even went to an alligator farm where I could take a picture with an alligator, even if he wouldn’t count (animals have to be in the wild.) During the week, my family started to get involved. My sister found some bats at the fort and was eager to point them out, hoping they would help with my points. We cooked meals outside and went on hikes. My husband helped take pictures of our activities and started looking for items on the photo quest, even taking a side trip on vacation to find a waterfall. My nephew bought s’more supplies so we could roast marshmallows. We finished our family vacation competing at a W.E. Rock event, where I continued to work on my activities and pictures. I kicked myself a couple of times for missing out on photos of people using a winch.
By week four, I had loaded up the dog and taken myself on some drives. I had signed up for a “Bonus Mission,” thinking that I would be able to work on it while we were at W.E. Rock. I had been wrong. While it was a good opportunity to gain points, there was also a penalty if you didn’t complete it once you signed up. It was this trip that made us a team. Until this trip, I was doing this rally. While we worked on figuring out headings and waypoints, we began to see a lot of really cool stuff that we had never seen before. We decided to build two more stages into the trip, and what should have been only a ninety-mile trip home became closer to three hundred. Suddenly, plans for the rest of the stages started to come together. Our son commented one day about us bickering like a little old couple about how long a desired route might take.
Somewhere along the way, I decided I wanted to do all the activities in the competitor guidebook, regardless of points. I talked a friend into taking me paddleboarding; I had my son take me fishing. I got nostalgic and recreated a family moment from 18 years before and climbed a tree I had climbed while pregnant with our son. I even made jelly with berries I had foraged. I knew that I would not be able to get all of the photos on the list, but I wanted as many as I could get. Even though I see a lot of wildlife daily, getting a picture of it was different. I saw blue herons almost daily throughout the rally but struggled to get a picture of them. On the flip side, the beaver living in the creek near the house hadn’t been seen at all. Elk, seen frequently in the Spring, had moved up the mountain and weren’t standing still for pictures. Although I had been to nearly every place I had ever seen a moose, I had yet to find a single one.
By the last weekend of the rally, I had completed every activity, but I was still missing a moose. I planned a “moose hunt”. We were going to go all out and find a moose to photograph. We were only two hours from the house before I found one. Shortly after, we found two more. The next day, we found three more. In total, we came across six large bull moose. Mission accomplished. On our last night, I felt a little sad that the whole thing was over. I posted about all that we had done and accomplished. It was pretty incredible, and I was proud of us.
When all the points were tallied, we had come in first place. I was a little overcome with emotion. I had never set out to win; I had just wanted to try something new and see if I could find a little piece of me that I had felt was missing. I found so much more.
P.S. Thank you, honey, for giving up your Christmas present so I could have a rooftop tent.
