The Best Fall Overland Adventures

Between cooler weather, incredible colors, and fewer crowds (and bugs!), fall is the perfect time of year to get outside and explore. The only catch? Shorter daylight hours—especially after daylight saving time—can make it harder to fit in big adventures.

But just because sunlight is in limited supply doesn’t mean you need to cancel your plans—you just need to upgrade your kit with the right tools. In fact, exploring after dark can be one of the highlights of an overlanding trip if you have the right lights.

Adding SYLVANIA LED Off Road Lights to your adventure rig is a great way to get the best visibility after the sun sets. The company engineered its lights to be extra durable and have superior optical design. Its brightest light, the Ultra 50-Inch LED Light Bar Combo, puts out an astounding 19,440 lumens, which means you’ll have no trouble lighting up the trail home or finding a campsite in the dark. Plus, the lights are backed by a lifetime limited warranty and built by a company with more than 100 years of lighting expertise.

Once you’re fully equipped, head to one of these top fall overlanding destinations.

Baja California, Mexico

Welcome to the overlanding and off-road racing capital of the world. Featuring lonely highways, rugged back roads, and isolated beach campsites, Baja is a wall-to-wall adventure, and a good set of off-road lights goes a long way here. John Meek, owner of Voyager Motorsports and one of SYLVANIA’s race team drivers, first used SYLVANIA LED Off Road Lights in the Baja 1000 off-road race.

“I raced our entire night section, so I was in the car for eight hours with SYLVANIA lights leading the way. I went through some of the most dusty and remote areas of the course,” he said. “Your lights are your lifeline out there—your race is dependent on your ability to see, and you can only go as fast and as far as you can see in front of you.”

The mark of a great piece of gear is that it does its job and you don’t think about it. That’s the kind of greatness SYLVANIA had in mind while designing its line of off-road lights: Drivers should forget they’re even using the lights and are free to embrace the experience.

When it came time for Meek’s turn behind the wheel during this year’s Baja 500 race, he was 180 miles from the finish line and five miles behind their closest competitor. The team was in ninth place, but Meek credits his rig’s 50,000 lumens’ worth of SYLVANIA LED Off Road Lights with being able to catch them. “I was going 80 miles an hour, drifting turns, because I was able to see around the turns and far ahead of us,” he said.

Ready to explore Baja? A good place to start is Naranjas Road, which is full of incredible scenery, great camping, and, as a bonus, lots of taco stands.

San Juan Mountains, Colorado

You don’t have to be racing across the desert to benefit from good off-road lights. Overlanders simply looking to extend their drive time or find an epic campsite will appreciate SYLVANIA LED Off Road Lights—and they could even run the same setup Meek and his race team do in Baja. “The lights we run are their recreational light bars and light pods. You can pick them up at Advance Auto Parts, AutoZone, and O’Reilly, so you could have the same light setup that we have on our race car by tonight,” he said.

Colorado’s San Juan Mountains are another overlanding hub, and if you’re going to venture there in the fall, you’d be wise to add some extra lights to your rig. While the Alpine Loop is a classic, if you base out of Silverton, Colorado, there are hundreds of miles of old logging and mining roads worth exploring. If you time it right, you’ll be rewarded with incredible views of changing aspens.

While you may not need 50,000 lumens on the front of your overlander like Meek, a SYLVANIA ULTRA 20-Inch LED Light Bar Combo on the front bumper and a set of SYLVANIA ULTRA 3-Inch LED Pod Cubes as ditch lights can help you see obstacles on the trail and light up your campsite for an easy post-sunset setup. SYLVANIA offers lightbars from 10 to 50 inches, along with various Pods, so choosing the right setup for your rig is easy.

Yukon and Northwest Territories, Canada

Head farther north to drive one of Canada’s most famous overland routes, the Dempster Highway, during the fall and you’ll definitely need some auxiliary lighting. The mostly gravel highway stretches about 458 miles from near Dawson City, Yukon, to Inuvik, Northwest Territories. It’s extremely remote and the only public road in Canada that crosses the Arctic Circle. You’ll get picture-perfect views of the Richardson Mountains and traverse stunning arctic tundra. If you’re feeling extra adventurous, you can continue your journey right up to the Arctic Ocean in Tuktoyaktuk. By the end of October, Inuvik will see only seven hours of daylight, so you’ll likely be traveling after dark. Chances are also good that you’ll experience some precipitation and wet conditions on the back roads of Canada’s northern provinces, a perfect opportunity to try out the SYLVANIA Rugged series of lightbars and pods.

While the ULTRA series is the brightest in the SYLVANIA Off Road lineup, the Rugged series is specifically designed to withstand the most challenging conditions drivers will encounter. It even earned an IP69K certification, meaning they’re superbly waterproof. Chris Apkarian, senior applications engineer at SYLVANIA, says these lights are great for ATVs, side by sides, or serious off-road rigs that will cross creeks and ford deep puddles. “You can submerge one up to several feet and it will never take on water,” Apkarian says. “Everything will work as intended, and that’s really important, especially for some of these vehicles that have the capability of going into remote areas.”

Johnson Valley, California

With cooler temperatures, Johnson Valley, California, becomes an especially appealing off-roading destination. During summer, daytime temperatures regularly hover around 100 degrees—and can climb even higher—so fall and winter are ideal for camping and outdoor adventure. The 96,000-acre OHV riding area has something for everyone, from hardcore rock crawling in the “Hammers” area to desert-racing-style roads and more traditional overlanding trails like Rattlesnake Canyon.

There’s so much variety in Johnson Valley that Ohio-native Meek now calls the area home and says he’s still flabbergasted by the miles of trails he has access to. “You could go exploring for months and never ride in the same place. There’s hundreds and thousands of acres you can go ride—Johnson Valley is just an amazing place.”

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