Choosing the Road Anyway

The start of a Colorado summer with This Way Wild, Spirit of 1876, Radica, and a whole lot of uncertainty.

Danielle and I left Arizona for Colorado with a truck full of gear, a loose plan, and a lot more uncertainty than either of us expected to be carrying.

This trip was supposed to be the big summer push for This Way Wild: a month in Colorado, filming, camping, fly fishing, meeting with outdoor brands, shooting client work, and trying to build the channel into something more sustainable.

Then, right before leaving, we found out both of our work situations had changed in a pretty major way.

For me, that meant losing one of my core retainer clients after five years. For Danielle, it meant her school district position ending without a clear place to return to in August.

So we had a choice to make.

Do we cancel the trip, stay in Arizona, and try to piece everything together from home?

Or do we keep moving, follow the work and opportunities already in front of us, and trust that the road might have something to teach us?

There was never really another option.

We packed the truck.

Leaving Arizona

The beginning of this episode is all prep mode. Packing the truck, sorting camera gear, testing the new Sennheiser MKE 400, and getting ready for a long drive toward Pagosa Springs.

The plan was to spend the night near the East Fork of the San Juan River, then continue toward Monte Vista for a photo job at a ranch, and later make our way toward Castle Rock to film with Spirit of 1876.

A lot of this trip is built around the kind of work I want more of: outdoor brands, small businesses, overlanding, camping, travel, and stories connected to real people doing interesting things.

That is one of the strange gifts of This Way Wild.

The channel started as a way to document our own trips, but slowly it has started to create opportunities that fit the life I actually want to build.

I love hospitality work. I love hotels, restaurants, beautiful spaces, and commercial production.

But my heart has always been outside.

Colorado felt like the right place to keep following that thread.

First Camp and First Reset

Our first night was outside Pagosa Springs on the East Fork of the San Juan River.

There is something about that first night out of town that always feels like an exhale. Even when life is uncertain. Even when the truck is overpacked. Even when you have way too much food and no idea how everything is going to unfold.

You make the bed.

You cook something simple.

You start becoming a slightly better version of yourself again.

For us, that first stretch of the trip was not about pretending everything was fine. It was more about admitting that things felt unstable and choosing not to let that instability shrink our lives.

That is probably the real theme of this episode.

Not that everything worked out perfectly.

But that we chose to keep going.

South Fork, Fly Shops, and Road Food

On the way through South Fork, we stopped at Rachel’s food truck, which was one of those perfect road-trip finds that immediately earns a mental pin on the map.

Mac and cheese. Huckleberry sliders. Pulled pork nachos.

The kind of meal that makes you wonder why you ever bother planning food stops ahead of time.

We also popped into a local fly shop, where I found some of my favorite summertime dry flies: hippie stompers, caddis, and purple chubby Chernobyls.

That is not a typo.

Fly fishing has become one of those things that keeps pulling me deeper into places. This Way Wild is not a fishing channel, but fishing is part of how I experience the West. It slows me down. It gets me out of the truck. It gives me a reason to notice water, weather, bugs, wind, access, and small changes in the landscape.

That matters to me.

And I want the channel to have room for those things.

Spirit of 1876

From there, we made our way to Castle Rock to spend time with Mike at Spirit of 1876.

This was one of the first moments where the bigger direction of This Way Wild felt really tangible.

We had lights set up. Cameras rolling. Audio dialed in. A real sit-down interview in a showroom full of gear and overland equipment.

It felt like the channel was starting to cross over into the exact world I want to be working in.

Outdoor brands.

Overland shops.

Real stories.

People building things.

Businesses connected to adventure, travel, camping, and the wild places that make all of this worth it.

I said it in the episode, but it is rare to feel like you get to have your cake and eat it too.

This was one of those moments.

If this all goes according to plan, opportunities like this help push This Way Wild in a direction that connects my creative work with the things I already love doing.

And honestly, I could not think of a better place to start the summer than Colorado.

Fairplay and a Morning Window

After Spirit of 1876, we headed toward our Airbnb near Fairplay.

The winds had been brutal, gusting around 40 miles an hour, which is not exactly ideal if you are trying to cast a fly rod with any dignity.

But one morning, there was a small window of calm.

So I grabbed the rod and walked down to a nearby wildlife area I had read about.

I lost a few flies.

I caught a few fish.

And for a little while, I had the place to myself.

Those are the moments I want more of in This Way Wild. Not necessarily big dramatic adventures. Not always epic peaks or remote trails or some polished version of what outdoor media is supposed to look like.

Sometimes it is just a quiet morning, a buggy little dry fly, and enough calm in the wind to make a decent cast.

The Detour Map

This episode also gave me a chance to talk about something I have been building behind the scenes: the Detour Map.

The Detour Map is a living field guide for paid supporters of This Way Wild. It includes campsites, coffee shops, local food, fly fishing spots, hot springs, hidden drives, viewpoints, outfitters, overlanding shops, and places worth slowing down for across the American West.

Some pins are specific.

Others are intentionally broad.

The goal is not to remove the adventure. It is to give people a better starting point.

I have spent years saving places, road notes, scouting finds, camping areas, and recommendations from real trips. The Detour Map is my way of turning that into something useful for the people who are helping support the channel.

Supporters will also get access to monthly live sessions from the road. Morning coffee, questions, rig talk, trip planning, gear, whatever makes sense from wherever I happen to be.

It is one more way I am trying to make This Way Wild more than just a YouTube channel.

I want it to become a field guide, a story archive, a creative engine, and a way to keep this whole thing moving.

Radica

The second half of the episode takes us to Radica, where the team worked on my Moonlander and gave us a tour of their factory.

They added new weather sealing, replaced the rear badge, and retrofitted some new stops for the camper.

But the real highlight was seeing how their campers are built.

Radica is not just assembling parts. They are welding aluminum frames, hand-cutting trim, sealing every line, wiring, insulating, and building campers with a level of care that feels more like craft than production.

Their aluminum welded frames are the foundation of the whole thing. No bolt-together structure. No riveted-together shell pretending to be rugged. Just a simple, strong, lightweight frame designed for actual off-grid use.

And that word kept coming up:

Simplicity.

Simplicity is reliability.

Especially when you are far from town, far from pavement, and counting on your gear to just work.

That is a big reason I continue to appreciate what Radica is building. Their campers are simple, strong, functional, and made by people who clearly take pride in the details.

It was also just fun to see the factory in motion: welding, cutting, sealing, wiring, finishing, and rows of campers getting ready to head out into the world.

What This Episode Is Really About

On the surface, this episode is about the start of a Colorado road trip.

Packing the truck.

Driving north.

Eating road food.

Fishing.

Meeting friends.

Touring a camper factory.

But underneath all of that, it is about something much more real.

It is about what happens when the plan gets shaky.

It is about choosing not to let uncertainty make your world smaller.

It is about building something while you are still very much in the middle of figuring it out.

That is where This Way Wild lives right now.

Somewhere between the work I have done, the work I am trying to create, and the road that keeps opening up in front of us.

I do not know exactly where all of this goes.

But I know we are not staying still.

And for now, that feels like the right answer.