Heading: EAST - Our New Helicopter Travel Series

 
 
 

In 2019 we took one of our most demanding cross country helicopter trips from Buffalo, NY to our home province of Newfoundland, Canada, and produced a 6 part docu-series for our YouTube channel called Cold Island. While a ton of fun, the trip was definitely mentally taxing. With no radar coverage or weather information for the majority of the trip, the rural and rugged coast of Quebec brought challenges we had never encountered before. When we returned from that trip, I said I would NEVER do a trip like that again… but two years later here we are.

After over a year and a half of being stuck at home, we found ourselves looking for another physical and creative challenge. We decided to take on another helicopter trip, but this time exploring neighboring states of New England.

This past year and a half taught me more than ever the importance of being outdoors, creating unique experiences, and pushing yourself beyond your comfort zone. So during a front yard renovation in the spring of 2021, over a bottle of room temperature Gatorade on a hot spring day, I asked Chris if he had an interest in doing a trip like Cold Island again. He looked quite shocked I had asked him that, due to my dismay after our grueling trip to Newfoundland. After over a year of hunkering down at home, I knew he was looking for any excuse to fly and we had a surplus of hours budgeted. I was getting antsy to put some new camera gear to the test so I suggested going somewhere a little closer to home this time. Within a few hours we decided the New England area would be our next destination. We had been tossing around Vermont as a vacation spot for the last few years so it was time to finally make it happen. From there we got to work planning.

At the end of August we took off towards the east coast of the US to explore Vermont, Maine, and New Hampshire over a two week period in the Millennial Falcon, and produced our newest travel series Heading: EAST!

Series Trailer

Episode 1 goes live on our YouTube channel on Oct 31st, 2021 at 10am ET. We will be releasing two episodes weekly from Oct 31st to Nov 14th.

You can follow the entire series here:

Follow us on Instagram or Twitter for episode updates and behind the scenes content.

The Concept

After Living in Vancouver for one year and traveling almost every weekend, we felt like we had a good handle on what BC had to offer. When we moved to Buffalo and settled into our new life, local travel fell by the wayside. Weekend adventures to the mountains turned into commercial flights anywhere but around our new home. After over a year and a half of staying home, we we’re looking for a physical and creative challenge. We realized we've been in New York for 4 years and haven't seen any of our neighboring states.

The Name

After brainstorming with our talented writer friend who helped us craft pitch documents for our lovely sponsors, we landed on a name for the series: Heading: EAST.

The word “Heading” has a double meaning. In aviation, your heading is the direction you are navigating, so to say “heading: 090” means you are going eastbound. Then there is the literal meaning, where we were actually heading east towards New England. On top of that, the term “down east” refers to Maine’s eastern coastal region, which was a destination on our list. So when we landed on Heading: EAST, we thought it was a fun play on aviation terminology and the east coast reference. It stuck!

The Route

As with any helicopter trip we take the planned route ALWAYS changes. We started off the trip with a flight to Latrobe for some unexpected maintenance which pushed our trip back a couple of days and ended up heading east on Monday afternoon instead of our original Friday departure. The proposed route looked like this:

Our Partners

Doing long format series like this gives us the opportunity to practice our skills and learn more about filmmaking. It also allows us to push our gear to the limits which helps us recommend gear to you guys!

We want to give a special thanks to our sponsors for supporting the series and helping our vision come to life.

Guides and Lists

Over the coming weeks as we release the series we will be sharing some more in depth guides on the blog from all the camera gear we took on the trip, where we stayed, and a detailed gear list of everything we packed for camping! I’ll be updating this post with links as we publish these articles.

 
Photo & Video, TravelBecki and Chris