Seven years is a long time. A lot of life can happen in that time—massive life-changing milestones or smaller, less important memories that we hold onto for the many years following.
The smell of a certain city, the excited vibe of traveling abroad, the taste of a never-had fruit, or the gentle smile of someone you just met that could potentially turn into something more… But it’s the big milestones that mark our lives in a significant way.
In seven years some of us find love, get married and have kids. For others, seven years could be a whole upward trajectory of a person’s career growth, or even multiple career changes. Seven years of milestones. Seven years of moments that you’ll never forget. Two thousand five hundred and fifty-five days. Seven years.
Now, imagine living seven years not in a house or apartment or in a town or city. Instead, you spent seven years constantly moving while living on the road and exploring all that the North American wilderness has to offer in various vehicles.
That’s seven years of worrying about every little thing all us non-nomads take for granted. That’s seven years of finding where to sleep every night, where to find water, where to find places to go to the bathroom, where to find a cell phone signal to get work done, where to do laundry, and worrying about power. The list goes on and on.
That’s exactly what MAK and Owen of @bound.for.nowhere have been doing the last seven years. They’re full-time creative professionals. They’re filmmakers, photographers, writers, designers that share their story with the world in any way they creatively can. They’ve called the road their home full-time for the past seven years and have no current plans to stop.
If you’ve ever spent any amount of time traveling, you’ll know that a day on the road might feel like a week, and a week may feel like a month. So much life happens in so little time. Every waking second is dedicated to being one hundred percent present at all times. Daily chores take a little more careful thought, and meals become waypoints to mark the passage of time during the course of a day.
For seven years MAK and Owen have witnessed just about every sunrise and every sunset. They’ve experienced multiple solar and lunar eclipses, and a thousand or so moonrises. All from different beautiful viewpoints throughout the Baja Peninsula of Mexico, in Canada and in the United States.
They’ve gone on multiple long-distance through-hike backpacking trips, surfed at every break they came across, learned about the countless flora and fauna that this continent has to offer. They’ve experienced cultures they weren’t familiar with, met and connected with a plethora of different travelers, had hundreds of life-changing conversations around campfires with those fellow travelers, and explored the West’s vast wilderness from the comfort—and occasionally discomfort—of their various rigs.
The past seven years for the two of them must feel like a thousand lifetimes.
They started traveling the country in a Honda Element, then called a VW Vanagon their full-time home for a few years before the famed unreliability of the VW broke the camel’s back and they eventually decided to go where many recovering VW addicts land: Toyota.
They picked up an old Toyota Sunrader 4x4 camper which they spent nine months completely rebuilding. They quickly sold it, realizing the Sunrader wasn’t for them. Then they bought a second-gen Toyota Tacoma, with which they fell in love with the road again.
Desiring to be on the road longer and more comfortably, they sold the Tacoma and picked up a second-gen Toyota Tundra that they outfitted with a flatbed camper. That particular truck served them for well over four years and helped them experience the complete lower 48 states, the complete peninsula of Baja California multiple times, and even all the way up north to Alaska.
And now they have this third-gen Tundra, their newest home and a home that they plan on going very far with.
Their new rig started off as an Ice Cap White 2023 Toyota Tundra TRD Off-Road package double cab, with an electronic rear locker and extended-range fuel tank, that they’ve affectionately called “Jolene.” Almost every aspect of the truck has been touched since it was driven fresh off the dealer’s lot in Virginia.
From there they took it to Main Line Overland in Philadelphia, where two mad-scientist brothers took the knife to a barely broken-in, brand spankin’ new truck. They removed and threw out the stock truck bed and replaced it with a Norweld Weekender Deluxe tray with painted side boxes and a rear pull-out drawer.
In one of the flat bed tray’s storage boxes they had an ARB Twin compressor mounted for quick access. The rear seats in the front cab were removed for an 80/20 extruded aluminum locking cabinet from Terra Quest Offroad.
The original suspension was completely replaced with a whole new suite from Dobinsons: new front and rear IMS shocks, a new front coil spring, an adjustable panhard bar, adjustable upper and lower rear control arms, adjustable sway bar links, and a new rear coil spring (which is for an 80 Series Land Cruiser since the third-gen Tundra had very little aftermarket support since it was so new when they were building it out). Air Lift Load Lifter 5000 rear air bags with internal bump stops were also installed.
Main Line Overland also switched out the stock wheels and tires for a set of Evo Corse DakarZero 18x8.5 +47 wheels which were wrapped in a set of 35” Toyo Open Country RT Trail tires. They also upgraded the brakes with a stage two big-brake kit from PowerBrake.
All that suspension and chassis work was done in preparation for the weight the truck would soon take on. With all the coming weight comes the great responsibility to manage, and more importantly stop, said weight.
MAK and Owen drove across the country to Sacramento, California, after finishing most of the truck’s major modifications in Philly, to get their camper installed onto the flatbed. They went with a Four Wheel Campers Hawk flatbed camper—exactly like their previous Tundra.
Their thought was that if there was nothing wrong, why change? They loved the living space that the Hawk camper gave them. There’s plenty of space inside for the two of them to have their own separate place whenever they both are working inside the camper.
The power needs for two full-time digital creatives are large. They completely revamped the power system inside their camper to suit their needs, starting with adding in 405 amp-hours of lithium-ion batteries from Dakota Lithium that power a full Redarc Rogue Redvision system and a 1,500-watt Redarc inverter.
They charge their batteries through DC charging via the alternator whenever they’re driving, or if they’re stationary there’s 180 watts of Redarc hard-mounted solar panels on the camper’s roof. They also have an additional 120-watt folding panel which can supplement if they feel their panels on the roof need more help charging the batteries. If they get sun every day, they never have to worry about leaving camp other than when they run out of food and water.
There’s plenty of media these days depicting what the “perfect” setup is. But there’s no one perfect formula for remote vehicle-based travel. Each person has their own specific needs. One person’s perfect could be another person’s nightmare.
MAK and Owen have had seven years and six rigs to get to the point where they feel they’re pretty darn close to their perfect balance of meeting each of their needs while maintaining a minimalist lifestyle. And after years of searching, they’ve found their equation for what is home for them.
Soon they’ll be shipping their new home-on-wheels internationally.
Home is a word that has a different meaning for everyone. For some, it’s a single physical place in the world—a place to drop your keys, slump onto a couch and zone out on some TV before bedtime. And for others, home is a state of mind. We’re continually bombarded with the romantic concept of home. Be it through books, movies, TV shows, or at gas station gift shops that have slogans plastered on all kinds of knick-knacks for sale.
Home is where the heart is. There’s no place like home. Home is my happy place.
But for MAK and Owen, home is anywhere they can park on our beautiful planet.
And for them, seven more years will be just a blip.
Follow MAK and Owen on their latest adventures on Instagram at @bound.for.nowhere and their website at https://www.boundfornowhere.com/
| Vehicle Specs | Bound for Nowhere 2023 Tundra |
|---|---|
| Base Vehicle | 2023 Toyota Tundra TRD Off-Road |
| Engine | Toyota i-FORCE MAX 3.4L Twin-Turbo V6 Hybrid |
| Suspension | Front— Dobinsons Front Coil Spring, Dobinsons IMS Shocks, Rear— Dobinson Rear Coil Spring 80 Series rear spring, Dobinsons IMS Shocks, Dobinsons Adjustable Panhard Bar, Dobinsons Adjustable Rear Lower Control Arm, Dobinsons Adjustable Rear Upper Control Arm, Dobinsons Adjustable Rear Sway Bar Links, Air Lift Load Lifter 5000 Ultimate Rear Air Bags with internal bump stops, Daystar Cradles |
| Wheels & Tires | Evo Corse DakarZero Wheels (18”x8.5” ET:47); Toyo Open Country R/T Trail Tires (35”) |
| Armor & Racks | Addictive Desert Designs Stealth Fighter Winch Front Bumper |
| Recovery | Comeup Seal Gen2 12.5rs winch, Factor 55 Flatlink |
| Storage | Norweld Weekender Deluxe Tray with painted side boxes and pullout draw, Prinsu Cab Rack |
| Lighting | 40” Baja Designs OnX6 Arc Amber Light Bar, Baja Designs Squadron Sport Combo Pattern Amber Fog Lights |
| Upgrades & Accessories | TRD Pro grill swap, Paint-matched chrome grill surround, PowerBrake Stage 2 Big Brake Kit, ARB Twin Compressor mounted in tray box |
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This article originally appeared in OVR Issue 08. For more informative articles like this, consider subscribing to OVR Magazine in print or digital versions here. You can also find the print edition of OVR at your local newsstand by using our Magazine Finder.
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