The Georgia Traverse Part 3 | Jeeps Overlanding North Georgia | Presented by Novsight

The Georgia Traverse series is brought to you by NovSight. NovSight. Adventure is calling. We awoke in a crowded campsite, but we were well rested. An amazing mountain sunrise signaled the beginning of day three. We were motivated and ready to tackle another day on the Georgia Traverse. Sunrise in the mountains is a special time. Something that everyone should experience at some point in their lives. After taking in the sunrise, we finished our morning routines and prepared for the day ahead of us. Well, it's morning. It's about nine o'clock. We're slowly breaking camp down. It was a crowded campsite, but it was a good campsite. It was the best we could come up with. That's what happens when you try to go on the Georgia Traverse on a holiday weekend. But one thing I'll say for the overland dads from Florida, they know how to throw down and make some food. Matt, you're no slouch either when it comes to cooking. Let's take a look real quick at this camp light. This is what's been keeping me lit up for the majority of the trip, but we haven't been able to take a right and proper look at it in the daylight. This is NovSight's camp light. It's pretty cool. They sent it to me a couple months ago, and I've only had a chance to use it here and there. It has white light, which you've seen. It has soft light, which you've seen. And you can actually turn them both on at the same time, which is nifty. And despite how much I've used it, it's still charged. And it also has... where'd that little switch go? Right there. Yeah, so you can do red light. And this is also magnetic, so you can pop it off and put it on your vehicle, which that's a pretty cool little feature. You can just kind of stick it on the side of your vehicle. Or if you have a Jeep, find a part that's actually metal and stick it on there. But it's a pretty cool little feature. And the light is pretty handy. It's been keeping my area of our campsites pretty well lit for the last two nights. And I'm really glad NovSight sent it to me. So check it out. Head over to their website and check out their camp light. And we're going to finish packing up camp and get back on the Traverse because a little issue I had with the Defiant yesterday kind of slowed the whole group down because we had to go into town and find a bolt. So we're going to make up some time today. We're going to get going shortly. We're getting ready to roll out of camp. I'm going to be tailing behind the group for about 10 or 15 minutes, for a few minutes just to get some footage that I need to get, hopefully for this epic video that you're watching right now. And then I'm going to catch up to the group before we get to Helen. So we are about to go wheels up and roll out. With the rest of the team pushing on ahead of me, I made my way down the secluded and winding trail that we had camped off of the night before. I waypointed our campsite. So if you want the coordinates for it, head over to my Patreon, patreon.com slash Defiant Off-Road, and I will post those coordinates up there. It was kind of an impromptu campsite off a side trail, but it worked. It wasn't a bad site at all, especially considering that one of the scout teams that we broke up into yesterday found it by chance. A little crowded for seven rigs, but you take what you can get when you're out on a trail on a holiday weekend and everything is taken up. But we're making our way back down the spur trail to the main Georgia Traverse, and then we're going to catch up with the rest of the guys. After a few minutes, I was back on the Traverse. Now it was time to catch up with the rest of the team. This section of the Georgia Traverse is pretty cool. I mean, it's not hard or technical or anything, but it's a little rockier. The terrain is a little narrower and winding, so you have to slow down a little bit. You have to kind of more take the sights in, whereas when we were further in the western portion, it was more gravel roads and, well, paved roads. So you're really just trying to make time there. If you're liking the Traverse series so far, please go ahead and give the videos a like, and please subscribe to the channel. We're closing in on the 40,000 subscriber mark, which is amazing. And also, if you want to help us out, check out NovSight stuff. Go to their website, NovSight.com, because they really, really came through and stepped up as far as making these videos happen. So shout out to them, and please check out their products. I'll have some links in the description. This section of the Traverse was the type of trail that I enjoyed. Narrow two-track that winds through a forest and forces you to slow down and take in their surroundings. I've been trying to catch up with a group. I cheated a little bit and jumped off the Traverse a little early and got onto some paved roads in an attempt to get ahead of them, and I think I might actually be in front of them right now. I'm hearing them faintly on the radio, but they don't appear to be able to hear me. But we'll find out shortly whether or not my little session of navigational intrepidity pans out or not. Look what I found. I don't feel so special now. I was not ahead of them, but I wasn't far behind, so I'm back in line and now I'm in the tail gunner spot. But we are onward towards Helen, Georgia. With the team reunited, we pushed on through the forest. With this adventure now in its third day, we began to realize that there were fewer miles ahead of us than there were behind. The rest of the gang stopped at the waterfalls back that way. It was a little too packed and crowded for me, so I came on ahead to the water crossing, shot my scene, and now I'm waiting on the rest of the gang. I'm gonna set up and I'm gonna get them crossing the water. Should be fun. The paved sections of the Traverse offer the chance to make up time if you're behind. This section of winding paved roads would be an uneventful opportunity to pick up the pace, or so we thought. Vehicle ran off the road. We're going to try to do a recovery. We got seven jeeps here. We should be able to get them out. We'll see how it goes. You're clear. All right, stop. See somebody stranded on the side of the road, you help them. That's what you do. And it's super simple. You just snatch them out. Didn't even need to use the winch. Well, it was fun. It didn't turn out to be too involved. We just hooked a tow strap up and snatched them out of the ditch and they went on their way. Pretty smooth and pretty easy. Didn't even need to run a winch line. We're going to be back on the road. Having performed our good deed for the day and the occupants of the stuck minivan now merrily on their way, we continued down the Traverse as we would soon realize the minivan recovery would not be the last unexpected complication of the day. Well, that sucked. The gate was closed, so we're turning around and going back out. I got to bypass this section to get back on the trail. The team soon found itself back on pavement and attempting to plot a suitable route to bypass the closed trail section that we'd encountered. Between that gated off trail and bypassing Helen, we are far enough ahead of schedule now that we are actually almost to Charlie's Creek, which is the place we were planning on being tomorrow. So we are way ahead of schedule. The trail was becoming more rugged and winding and we were thoroughly enjoying it. However, the day was growing shorter and we had been driving for nearly eight hours. The team was tired and we soon realized that our focus needed to shift to locating a campsite. That gate that we encountered earlier kind of bummed us a little worse than we realized. That was the most direct route to Charlie's Creek, so it actually ended up taking all of our time surplus that we had, and now we're at a deficit. We had a bunch of tired, grumpy people, understandably so. We're trying to find camp now. I have volunteered to go ahead to scout out a campground to see if it's got enough room to get the whole gang into it. I am now on a trail called Sarah's Creek in the War Woman Wildlife Management Area. We're going to head to the campground here and see what it's all about. So that's going to be a bust. I was going to be on to other options and we are burning daylight, so let's see how this evening turns out. It's all part of the adventure. With an ominous weather forecast coming in, the Overland Dads made the difficult call to go ahead and head back to Florida. After having dinner and saying our goodbyes, Matt, Jessica, and I had to make a judgment call on where to camp. Well, we've set up camp for the evening. Let me show you around the inside of my new rooftop tent. You can stand in it. It has a king-size bed. It's all by Holiday Inn Overland. No, for real. The weather was calling for some very severe storms to roll through the area of the traverse that we were on about 2 to 3 a.m. in the morning. It was using words like damaging winds, frequent lightning, and hail. So Matt and I had a powwow over dinner and made the difficult decision to be mature and responsible and call it and head into Hiawassee and get a hotel room. The guys from Overland Dads, they had like a 15-hour drive ahead of them to get back to Miami, so they went ahead and took off and are on their way back to Florida. So Matt and I are going to wake up early tomorrow morning. Well, Matt and Jessica, he's got his wife with him, and we're going to get back out on the traverse. We're going to pick up where we left off and we're going to finish the traverse. So for tonight, we're going to get comfy. I just had what is probably the longest hot shower that I have taken in months, and we're going to get back at it first thing tomorrow morning. So tune in in the morning because we're going to finish the traverse tomorrow. Day three had taken an unexpected turn, with most of our team having to leave early. With uncertain weather on the horizon, we didn't know what the next day would have in store for us. One thing we did know was that even with a skeleton crew, tomorrow we would finish the Georgia traverse.