Toledo Jeep Fest 2026 – Overland Demo Area

Four overlanders drive into a convention center… Sounds like the start of a joke, but it was reality earlier this month. Walt (@M4Expeditions), John (@NewHorizonsOverland), Jonathan (@jonathan.blackmon), and I attended the 10th annual Toledo Jeep Festival in Ohio to facilitate another “Overland Demo Area” program.

Past Toledo Jeep Fest write-ups and photos:

• 2019 Toledo Jeep Fest – Post event factory tours with Jeep & Bilstein with Dan Grec of “The Road Chose Me“
• 2021 Toledo Jeep Fest – Jeep – Stage
• 2022 Toledo Jeep Fest – Overland Camping Area
• 2023 Toledo Jeep Fest – Jeep – Stage
• 2024 Toledo Jeep Fest – Writeup
• 2025 Toledo Jeep Fest – Writeup

Like in years past, the idea was to provide a mix of content including display vehicles and trailers, keynote presentations on the main stage, and educational opportunities in the booth. The major change for this year was how we facilitated the educational opportunities. The last few years we offered topical classes throughout the weekend. The downside to that approach is that classes were often missed due all the other great programming going on during the show. So, like we did at the Bantam Jeep Heritage Festival in June, we deployed the self-guided “Overland Adventure Trail.” This series of self-guided posters is based off my popular and wildly successful “10 Essentials for Overland Travel” class and ties in with the third seasons of the Echoes of Adventure podcast which follows the same outline, as well as previous articles on those ten topics.

Another thing that was different this year was Tread Lightly attending the show with their own booth. In years past we represented Tread Lightly with talks on stage, such as Walt’s popular class on what do about gates across the trail. This year his talk on “Jeeping with a purpose” was a great foundation and segue for the new Executive Director of Tread Lightly, James Boyd, to take the stage and give a presentation on Tread Lightly, what he brings to the organization, and why the organization’s mission and its members are so essential for preserving access to public lands.

With the LS swapped LJ still on the sidelines I resorted to borrowing my dad’s Hemi Grand Cherokee, again. I got everything loaded Wednesday with plans to depart by 6am Thursday. The goal was to get to Toledo mid-day on Thursday and rendezvous with the guys from Tread Lightly, then head to the pre-festival bash at Monroe Jeep just over the boarder in Michigan. While parking lot parties aren’t exactly the realm of overland adventure travelers or stewards of public lands, it was still a fun opportunity to see that part of the Jeep life culture and see some of the Toledo Jeep Festival staff before the full chaos of the show started Friday. Sadly impending rain scared us off and we headed back to Toledo. Our decision to head back was none-too-soon as we spent the bulk of the time driving through torrential rain storms.

Friday is always a long day with load-in at the convention center starting at 8am. I wanted to get in early so I could dump my gear for the booth and then get the Grand Cherokee out of everyone else’s way and down into the parking garage for the weekend. Once Walt, his wife, John, and Jonathan showed up we went about getting everything set up. When dinner time rolled around we were all beat and ready for food and a show.

Dinner Friday night was at Maumee Brewing Company. This has become a bit of a tradition for our time in Toledo. After that we swung by the overland camping area under the bridge. I had camped there the first year and was glad to hear the area had sold out this year. I was also glad to see some familiar faces camping down there from years past. After that we headed to the Promenade Park for some life music, more drinks, and a Jeep festival themed drone show. Having never seen a drone show in person before I will say it was more impressive that I initially thought. With musical accompanying the drones they cycled through a series of three dimensional displays that, at times, blew my mind. Now, keep in mind I have a background in production and have done my time behind a lighting control panel. However there is a huge difference between lighting a stage for live music or theater, which although is a three dimensional place, it’s honestly not that complex when you get down to it. With the drones you have a lot more to consider. They move. They change color. They can move in all three dimensions. They can also move, change colors, or even go dark, providing multiple layers of lighting, physical motion, and pusedo-motion. I’m not sure I have the brain capacity to think about all those variables. I’ll stick to stagecraft.

While Friday is long for its own reasons, Saturday is the long day of the show. On our end the convention center opens at 10am and we go hard and fast till 5pm. This year we had the most foot traffic through our booth area. The posters were great because it allowed people to engage with the content at their leisure. We’d do our part to see if people had questions and engage them accordingly. There were also countless photos taken of the QR codes on the posters. A noticeable spike in site traffic can be seen in my analytics. I can also see where some people clicked-through to other pages on the site. Needless to say, the posters work and I am very pleased with how they were received.

Friday evening was another fun night of socializing and bar-hoping our way through town. We started off at Ye’ Ol’ Dirty Bird which has become another tradition of sorts. I first remember going there with Dan “The Real Deal” Grec of The Road Chose Me back in 2019 during my first trip to Toledo. A fellow Unlimited LJ Adventure mate of mine stopped by with a coworker and joined our little rabble for dinner before heading back to Maumee Brewing Company for an official after-party with Dirt Road Cred and Brad from Trail Recon. It was in an old warehouse adjacent to the brewing company’s main building. Obvious speakeasy vibes were everywhere since that seems to be all the rage right now. After that we bounced back down to the Overland Camping under the bridge with the guys from the Jeep Show Podcast. At this point I split off from the group to head back to the hotel. Two very long days and some other stuff going on in my personal life had wiped me out. From the stories I head the next day, and the associated shenanigans, I’m honestly kinda glad I tucked in early.

Sundays at the Toledo Jeep Fest are a lot slower paced. We still had a fair amount of traffic come through the booth, but by the time the show ended at noon you could tell everyone was ready to head home. Once packed up the crew headed over to the iconic JEEP sign at the factory for a group photo. Having already gotten my photo there a few times, and not having my LJ with me, I opted to play cameraman for the group. Once we said our goodbyes Jonathan and I convoyed up and set our sights east.w

Thoughts on the Poster Trail

When I first started ECOA back in 2015 I had a vision in mind that the website would be a repository of knowledge. I also wanted ECOA to be a hub that networked likeminded people together. As stated in the ECOA Mission Statement, I wanted the focus of ECOA to be on Education, Encouragement, and Inspiration. Noticeably absent from that was entertainment. While I do hope to be entertaining in what I do, I don’t want that to overshadow the cornerstone principle of education. As such everything I do as ECOA is centered on, or pivoting off, that cornerstone.

For those that don’t know I have a formal background in education. I spent years working in outdoor education before obtaining my master’s degree in Higher Education. For a while I worked at a university up until my program lost its grant funding. Ironically I was working with student entrepreneurs while neglecting my own business. So I walked away from formal education to go back to work for myself. Tapping into my background in education I applied many of the learning theories I had studied while working on my degrees and some I had used while working in outdoor education. One of those learning theories I latched onto what creating curriculum that hit each of the main three learning styles: Visual, Auditory, and Kinesthetic. Basically learning by seeing, learning by hearing, and learning by doing. This blog is a manifestation of visual learning. It’s a lot of writing, but also pictures. People can move at their own pace and follow along with the supporting photos. The Echoes of Adventure podcast is a manifestation of auditory learning. People can listen to the conversations and soak in the information passively while they do something else. The final component is hands-on learning which checks off the kinesthetic box. I am a huge proponent of experiential learning and firmly believe it is the best way to learn. However, kinesthetic learning doesn’t happen in a vacuum and still requires support from the other forms.

With those learning theories in mind, I set out from the very start to structure my content in a way that not only hit all three learning styles but also reinforced each other. The first phase was to build a collection of articles on the blog. Next was to create podcast episodes that tied into those articles. That’s why every podcast episodes has a post with show notes and links to related resources. The next phase is the poster trail. Each poster corresponds to a podcast episode on the same topic which in turn has links in the show notes to other resources. This is of course all reinforced by the classes and workshops I facilitate. The next phase is to add videos on each topic as a way to round out and further reinforce the content. Each medium — blog, podcast, vides, and in-person classes — has their advantages and disadvantages. And while content may be repeated it’s often done in different ways. Blog, show without telling. Podcast, tell without showing. Videos, showing and telling. In-person classes also show and tell, but do so in a more direct and personal way than videos. The first there are also rather fixed and do not change once produced. In-person classes are more dynamic and can be tailored to the audience and can subtly change during delivery.

I sometimes wear a snarky t-shirt when I teach at events that says, “TRUST ME, I’M AN eXPERT.” The lowercase “e” is very intentional. My definition of an expert isn’t the person that knows, or thinks they know, everything. My definition of an expert is someone who can admit when they don’t know something, but has the skills and resources to find the answer. As such, I often joke that a true expert doesn’t have the answer to every question, but they are one phone call away from someone that does. With that in mind I’d like to thank John, Jonathan, Walt, and a few others that helped behind the scenes for their input into the poster series. There is still some work to be done on them and one idea I have is to do a small panel under the poster that features related gear. Right now the gear display part is haphazard and doesn’t work as planned. I know the gear draws people to the poster. That was something I experimented with at the Bantam show in June. One day was just the posters on their own. On the second day I put out gear related to each poster. The second day drew a lot more attention and a lot more engagement. However, the gear is loose, unlabeled, and their importance isn’t exactly clear. So that is a winter project for me to work on and prep for next year’s shows.

Final Thoughts

Jeep shows aren’t everyone’s cup of tea, I get that. Urban shows like the Toledo one are a bit quirky. That said, I really think every Jeep owner should make the trip to the home of the Jeep factory and attend the Toledo Jeep Festival at least once. It’s a great show put on by great people and it’s a unique enough experience that it sticks out compared to the dozens of other Jeep shows out there. It’s those people that keep me coming back every year.

Also, if you aren’t a member of Tread Lightly you really should be. The breath of fresh air that James Boyd is breathing into the organization gives me hope for great things coming over the horizon. With memberships as low as $10 a month there really isn’t an excuse to not be a member. That’s only $120 a year and equates to a fraction of the cost we enthusiasts spend on our vehicles. Without organizations like Tread Lightly fighting to keep public lands open for motorized recreation the only thing we’ll have left are parking lot parties. No one wants that. Additionally, make sure to check out their events page for upcoming projects. I know I’ll be in Monongahela National Forest in West Virginia next month for a Tread Lightly project prior to Adventure X Fest with Mountain State Overland. Still not sure it’s worth it? Check out past projects we’ve helped out with. That’s where your membership fees end up (see last year’s AXFest project report here). Right back here in the hands of volunteers doing projects on public lands.

BECOME A TREAD LIGHTLY! MEMBER HERE