MOVING BACK INTO THE VAN (preparing for winter van life!)

This week is the start of what I expect to be the best trip we've ever taken in this van. The plan is to spend the next two months driving over 3,000 miles from Dallas through the Rocky Mountains for ski season. And then we'll trade our skis for a surfboard as we drive all the way to the tip of the Baja Peninsula. But before we take off, we need to make some modifications to the van to get it ready for winter.

We got down to negative six last.

Night, and if all goes to plan, by the end of this video, we'll be sleeping by the slopes in New Mexico.

I feel like this is the dreamy van life picture that everybody takes, except that's real life right now.

I can't see where I'm going.

Is that everything? There's no way this is all fitting in there, huh?

Hey, your helmet came with, like, no padding. Whoa. Look at that. Ew. This is what happens when you just leave a van sitting for two months. It's all mo.

Good morning from the Lowe's parking lot. You're punching me in the face on purpose. Okay.

Sorry.

Well, as you can see, we just threw everything in the car and started driving yesterday. We drove for about six hours until it got to Amarillo at midnight and slept here in this parking lot. And if I had to guess, this is where we're going to be spending most of the day.

I'm typically, typically like Monica when it comes to living in the van.

Everything Monica from Friends.

She's like, super ocd. If only there were a smaller one to clean this one. But there just comes a time when the van gets so messy that it doesn't even bother me anymore. I could barely get to the toilet this morning.

In addition to organizing our lives, I also have three projects that I have to tackle today in order to get this van ready for winter. Although last night it was kind of already winter because when we woke up this morning, it was 27 degrees. It's actually worse than it looks. It's not just the stuff on the bed. It's the stuff on the stove, the stuff in the floor. We even have stuff in the passenger floorboard. The shower can't even get to the toilet. There's a shirt. And the sink. Where do we start?

Let's do this.

Okay, so I think the first project on this list is going to be the most important and the most complicated right now. All of the water that drains down out of our sink, it all flows into this 5 gallon, gray water tank right here. And because we're going to be living in below freezing temperatures for the next few weeks. This is just going to turn into one giant ice block, making it completely useless. So I have to bring our gray water inside, which is why I bought this blue bucket. This is going to be our new gray water tank. The original plan was just to put it here where the fridge used to be, and then I would divert the water from the sink into the blue bucket. But this morning, as I was staring at things, I realized I was going to try to reroute all the space under here, and there's nowhere to run. The body drilled a hole through the bottom of this. It's going to be easy. And now I'm not even sure I can do it. This is the propane box that just takes up this entire cabinet. And this is where the water drains out of our sink. So because of where the box sits, there's no way that gravity would let water go that way. The plan is to start by moving this box here.

All right. Don't drill a hole. That was easy enough. Hanging out with Eamon and seeing his willingness just to start ripp apart our van and figuring it out as he went, gave me a little extra confidence to try to do some work on it by myself.

Not sure how I feel about that.

Wow. I love it when a plan actually works. No problem.

I cannot believe that works. I mean, not that I didn't believe in you.

So we've moved the propane box over here. The blue jug fits underneath the sink. Now all we need to do is figure out how to run this tube into this jug.

Okay. We haven't actually lived out of this van in almost two months. For Nate, it's been like three. I'm gonna start by putting away all of our normal stuff that we've moved back in here, like our clothes and shoes and toiletries that already have a spot. Then I'll tackle all the extra stuff and figure out where that goes. I still don't even know where to start.

I'm overwhelmed.

I don't even know what I'm looking for, much less where to find it in the store.

Oh, this is crazy.

There's a chance I'm going to be able to knock out one of these projects with just a six dollar pipe.

These are all of Nate's shirts. He is the definition of minimalist. 6985 60. Insert cash for select payment. Thank you for using Lowe's self check.

How's it going in here?

Um.

It looks about the same.

I know.

I think this is all we need.

Really?

I don't know.

Okay.

Don't seem so confident.

Basically, what I ended up doing was I unscrewed the original sink plumbing, screwed a new flexible tube thing onto the bottom of the sink, and then I'm just gonna let the flexible tube thing drain direct our new gray water bucket. So I think I'm finished with project number one. I didn't get near as fancy as I had planned, but this is only a temporary solution, and I think it's going to work for now. There's two hours of daylight left. I've marked one thing off my list.

Good job. Quick snack break. We're getting hangry.

Shoot.

I believe we may have too much stuff in this.

What?

I just thought when I opened it up, it was gonna be obvious what I needed to do. The goal is to shut off all the water going to the shower, because the plan is to turn the shower into a ski locker because we don't have any way to store the skis on the outside of the van, which means the only place we can store them is in the shower. So my goal is to disconnect the plumbing going to the shower so that nothing could freeze and burst inside the walls. Oh, what is this? So these definitely go to the. I don't understand how plumbing works. Here's what we know so far. This is a water tank. This is a water pump. This is a water heater, and somehow they're all connected.

If this knob turns both of these pipes off and we think both of these pipes go to the shower, then let's just turn them off and then turn the sink on and see what happens.

The sink seems be to this to work.

All right, you ready? So if water stops coming out of the shower in just a second, that means we've broken it on purpose.

Oh. Oh, that's good. Is that it, really? Yeah.

The pump is still pumping, but no water is coming out.

Whoa. It turns out the guy who built this van installed a ball valve right here. And just by flipping this little lever. Whoa. Just by flipping this little lever, it cuts off the water to the shower. That went a lot faster than project number one.

Do you remember whose idea that was?

That was my idea.

You know.

Remember?

We were both looking at it? No.

You're like, I don't know where any of this goes. And I said, let's just turn them off and then turn the sink on and see what happens real quick. I want to say a big thank you to athletic greens for sponsoring this video. AG1 has been a part of our daily routine for almost two years now. I'm not just saying that. I don't only drink it when they're sponsoring a video. My dad is not complete without a ju one. If we're living in the van, we have this jar that we keep in the fridge. But if we're traveling on an airplane, we always bring plenty of these travel packs in our suitcase. Just one scoop of this contains 75 vitamins, minerals, and whole food source ingredients. So instead of having 75 different jars in my cabinet, I just have this one. Even though we've been way more intentional about eating healthy lately, just because we're always on the road or in the air, it's still really hard to get all the vitamins and nutrients we need from our diet alone. Which is why we consider AG1 our nutritional insurance. It's the first thing I drink every single day after my morning coffee, of course. Because then I know no matter what happens the rest of the day, my body got the nutrients it needs. So if you could use some nutritional insurance of your own, or if you made a New Year's resolution to be healthier in 2022, click the link in the description below to get the AG1 immunity bundle. It comes with a one year supply of these vitamin D drops.

Open up. Thanks.

We actually do that every day.

Kind of feel like a baby bird when she does that.

And it comes with five of these individual travel packs. Plus you'll get this jar and the shaker with your first purchase.

Okay, back to the video.

This morning, Kara filled my suitcase up with our wetsuits, warm clothes, bathing suits, all the things that we aren't planning on needing. It's all going to go on this hole, never to be seen again. Boom.

Like a glove.

And now for the most exciting project of the day, and hopefully the last one that we're going to knock out before pulling out of this parking lot. And that is converting our current shower slash toilet into a ski locker. And the plan for doing that is first to take this mat that we bought and pad the bottom of the shower so that way we can just throw our ski boots in there and they won't tear everything up. Then I bought these pads. I'm going to try to hang these on the back wall so that our skis, when they're hanging there, they don't bang against everything as we're dropping down. Everything wet that you wouldn't want just like dripping on the floor of the van. We're going to try to store that in the shower so that when it drips, it all just drains out the shower drain. We'll probably use the ski locker way more than we ever actually use our shower anyway, for sure.

So I feel like if we just push it in, and then we'll just cut it out when it's already in place. No, it's cut a hole around the. I feel lazy saying this, but the other question is, do we even need to cut it? I don't think so, because it kind of. It just adds some extra protection to this side of the wall over here.

Thanks.

That was so easy.

I kind of nailed that. I can't believe how well this is working. Cutting and pushing foam pieces into the shower fits my construction ability perfectly.

I mean, it kind of worked.

It totally works.

So the wall's done for now. All right, so here's where we've ended up. It's not complete yet, but eventually, once we get our skis and we can measure it appropriately, we'll install the ski hangers. Okay, we're gonna mark it off because it's almost done.

More than halfway there.

So we've decided to add one more project to the list. I ordered way too much of this padding stuff, plus, it's super cheap. So we've decided we're just going to go ahead and pad the entire floor. One, it's going to help protect the vinyl wood stuff that we have going on down there. And two, the floor gets really cold. So this will just give us an added layer of insulation and make it nicer to stand on the floor in socks in the morning.

This is the best thing we've done all day.

I haven't heard that enthusiasm all day.

This took it from, like, New York penthouse apartment vibes to ski locker. Whose coin could change so much? And it took, like, 30 minutes. And when I take my shoes off, my feet aren't cold. I mean, it looks like it's always been there and goes all the way back to under the bed.

And I feel like I'm not gonna care as much if it gets dirty. Like, it's just supposed to be. It's, like, rugged. Let's write it on the list and then mark it off.

Let's do it.

Oh, yeah. I should also write, put away everything we own. I mean, look, nothing else is. Oh, never mind.

Just do it. If you think we're done, this is what's happening up front. Honestly, getting that floor installed makes me feel so much better about what we accomplished today.

I haven't even taken my pajamas off.

We have officially spent sunup to sundown in the lowest parking lot. We need to get at least a few hours of driving in tonight. The goal is to to sleep somewhere in New Mexico.

What a bragging day.

Good work.

Come on new mexico.

It is 12:32am all we want to do is go to sleep en suite home.

Well, this is a first. We are sleeping at a casino. Normally on long drives like this we just plan on sleeping at Walmarts because they're usually conveniently located and it normally works out. But every once in a while you encounter a Walmart that has no overnight parking signs. In Santa Fe, the Walmart had no overnight parking signs and a security guard circle in the parking lot which meant that it was midnight and we had nowhere to sleep. So I have a few apps on my phone that help us find free places to sleep. One of them said there was a casino 20 minutes down the road. And here we are. We went inside and asked. They were super nice. And this is home for the night.

And now we're going gambling.

You can. I'm going to sleep.

Hey Siri, what's the weather?

It's currently clear at 19 degrees.

It's actually pretty comfortable in here right now. But it is a good thing that we got the gray water situation taken care of yesterday. I feel like after living in the van for two years, waking up in random places has started to feel almost routine. But for some reason this morning it just hit me like how cool it is that we could just wake up anywhere. But it kind of feels the same. This could be a national park. This could be. This could be a beach. This could be a mountain. It really doesn't matter until we take down the window covers.

Let us pretend like it's the beach.

Throw it out. No, throw it out.

Anybody else? Fiance. Treat them like a six year old.

Start in the morning watching our friends.

We gotta be productive today.

Yeah, we got it tonight. We'll finish it tonight. We've got to be productive.

I agree with you Aan.

Okay, the plan for today is to find a ski jacket because we don't have one of those yet. And then fill up the van with water before we head into the mountains. And hopefully we'll be able to do both of those things and get to the ski resort where we're spending the night before it gets dark. I do have some business calls that I have to take and somehow it takes us all day to do anything we put on our to do list. What are you doing back there?

I have to pee. And we're totally out of water. I can't even brush my teeth.

You want to know what Kara stares at on our long drives? This is what the view from her perspective looks like.

Lucky me.

When I left home in the van, it was to drive it to Mexico, which means I only packed bathing suits and flip flops. Not only that, but I was feeling extra minimalist that day too. So I brought no warm clothes. This.

Wow.

This is cute. I think you need that.

This will be the most money I've ever spent on clothes in my life.

It looks great. Wow, hottie.

This is too long for skiing. It's so cute.

Huh?

That one hurt. But we will be warm. I'm hoping that this is like a life investment. Like having all this stuff make us want to do cool things so that we have to wear it. I think that's how that works.

Time standpoint, product change. If we move. I. I don't think having text.

Don't. Oh, yeah. Smell. Yes. I'm scared. Your face.

That's not the right one.

Oh.

I was turning the wrong knob. For the month of January, Nate and I are doing this thing called beganuary, which means for the whole month, we're only eating vegan plant based foods. And some of our best friends, Eminem, Beck, just happened to release their second plant based cookbook last week, which was perfect timing for us. Thanks, guys. We spent a week in Canada with them and ate some of the best food of our lives. Not just the best vegan food, just the best food. So I'm super excited to try some of the recipes this week. For lunch, I'm attempting to make a crunchy ramen salad. The grocery store we went to didn't have a whole purple cabbage. Sorry, Eamon and Beck. I cheated on the salad portion of it.

Yeah, I love it.

Like, it was the highest opportunity and I was really excited. Even just like these weekly calls being able to fully cook.

I forgot the ramen. It's called a crunchy ramen salad and I forgot it. The best part. Oh, now it's not pretty. It's just all on top. I really feel like I'm letting Eamonn it back down here. The next meal is gonna be better white.

What distinguishes anytime a user.

Might be the best salad I've ever had. Definitely the best salad I've ever made personally.

Thank you.

Having a bit. Love ya.

In case you were curious, I just took three business calls and Kara cooked lunch from this spot right here on the side of the road. Van life is weird, but time to Hit the road. Because we've only marked one thing off our list today.

Hey, can I fill up my van's tank with gas or. Sorry, with water?

Yeah.

Oh, thank you.

Where did you learn about this place?

So there's this app called Ioverlander that I don't use very often, but I probably should use it more because last night I found the casino on it, and today I found the water on it. It's just a community of people that live in their RVs or campers or vans or whatever it is, leaving helpful tips. Now that we figured out how to get water for free, we pretty much have no reason to ever go to a campground ever again.

What happened?

That's the most powerful hose pipe I've ever used in my life.

This little cord that holds the gas cap on broke, and I'm for sure gonna lose that one day. All right. We are full of diesel. We're full of water. It's time to head into the mountains. Whoa. The sun's bright.

We made it.

Oh, my gosh.

I see one of the the. What are they? Groomers.

Groomers.

We did not hit our goal of getting here before sunset. But it is only 6:44, not midnight. I'm pretty proud of that.

Are we level enough?

Yeah, totally. Put it in park. At least we weren't rolling towards the cliff. I'm turning our heater all the way up.

Why?

It is currently 14 degrees, and the low tonight is negative 4.

4.

Yes.

This is quite the test for night one of winter Van life.

I'm gonna take this as a time to take off the tags. The outfit I bought today, I wasn't sure if I liked it.

Also, this padded floor that we installed on a whim yesterday, it's adding so much happiness to my life. It is a night and day difference between how cold my feet used to be living in the van. Also, I have a confession to make.

Before we installed the padded floor and I knew I was gonna have to be walking around in here, I bought a pair of Crocs. But not just any pair of crocs. A knockoff pair of crocs from Walmart that's lined with fuzz on the inside. This might be the best purchase of the year. This is how you can tell they're off brand from Walmart.

There was no way I was letting Nate walk out of the store with those crocs without me getting a pair, too.

Crocs are, like, expensive. Now we're chatting with a friend, Charlie, from Australia, and there's such a Delay that. We're ending all of our sentences with over. So we don't take.

Over. You are 100% invited. We just are not 100% committed yet. Over. Is it on the flat? Over. Probably when I was 10. Over. This looks great. Thanks. Kara made us avo toast and salad for dinner. And we're going to finish the eminent back video that we started this morning. The van is so cozy right now.

Good morning.

According to my phone, it got down to negative six last night.

That's a record.

The van passed the test. We stayed nice and toasty.

I even woke up hot at 4 in the morning. I had to rip this jacket off.

And check out the view that we woke up to this morning. Look at that. I feel like this is the dreamy van life picture that everybody takes. Except it's real life right now.

This ice is on the inside.

That's crazy.

And the fun part is these condos right down here. I looked up online how much those condos cost to rent. $500 a night. And we're parked here for 25. Wow. I've become less cheap since we started this travel journey. But I still just get so much joy out of getting a good deal.

I'm reminding myself how to ski.

Got it, Bruce. It really is hard if you keep it too wide. This is the first I've never had to scrape ice off the inside of the windshield.

There's a hole that you can look through. Thanks.

Over here.

We're here.

That little drive saved us a long, cold walk from the overnight lot. And it's free. The lift is like two steps that way.

Oh, I can wear my tie dye hoodie.

It's a crop top.

Okay, fair enough. And last but not least, my coat.

Ready to go.

Do this? All right. So for reference, so you'll see that I'm not exaggerating how close we are. Our van is parked right here. And that building right there. The chairlift is right behind that building.

Yeah, that feels good.

We sure are going high up for a green.

All right, let's see if we remember how to do this. You ready?

Man, this is amazing. We literally got to sleep in the parking lot. Wake up. Drive two seconds. Go. Rent our skis. We were on the slope within an hour of waking up. This is incredible.

Looking good. This is everything I hoped it would be. Nice job. Proud of you.

The lift is starting.

I have so many feelings right now. I don't think it's coming back as quickly as I thought it would. I'm feeling like a newbie you kind.

Of look like a newbie. So we've ridden the lift almost to the top of the mountain. And the plan for run two is to take the longest green on the entire mountain all the way back down to the base.

Woohoo.

Whoa. 100% improvement. Yay.

It clicked.

She's killing it. I'm so proud of you.

Oh, wow. It's like an oven in here. So nice just to be able to come back to the van.

I am starving.

I can't believe we're doing this, but I'm turning off the heater already.

Didn't put your helmet on?

The helmet. This is going to be my life for the next month.

You can't do it again.

Did you turn the propane on?

Oh my gosh, no. I'm so rusty.

My work here is done.

The January continues. For lunch, I'm making three cheese paninis. Or as the Italians may or may not say, Tre Bormaggio paninis. Probably not with an S. All these cheeses are plant based and I think they're delicious.

Vegan cheese only tastes good if you've been a vegan for a long time and you've forgotten what cheese tastes like. To be fair, it looks really good.

Is the red red pepper.

Oh my goodness.

I'm sorry.

That is delicious. Could we get any more cozy right now?

You love it. It's undeniably good and you know it.

Surprisingly good. 7 out of 10.

45 minutes later, we are back on the lift and we're going to make the most of the final two hours before they close. Oh, cuz. All the bras and panties? No, that's the first time seeing the panty tree.

I'll bring mine tomorrow.

Got to try our first bull of the day. We're not going left. We're going. We're going right.

Congress.

That was the best one yet. Just so open and smooth.

Woo. And the most improved award of the day goes to. My beautiful wife. I love you so much. I'd walk up a hill for you.

I am so proud of you.

Thanks. I think I put a lot of pressure on myself this morning.

I think we caught the last chair to the top. What a fun start.

All right, last run of the day. I'm following you.

Gracious.

I waited on her all morning and now I can barely keep up. Man, this is amazing. We had the whole slope all to ourselves.

Ah, home sweet home. I think while we're in Taos, the ski locker is going to be more of a coat closet. They give you free Overnight storage for your skis and for your boots.

My hands are too cold to work. Needed unbuck my boot.

And while I'm really ready to finish getting the ski locker set up, I just don't think it's worth lugging that stuff over here, getting the van wet. We've got plenty of time for that later. I have had this clothesline in the back of the van ever since we bought it two years ago, and we have never used it. And now for our small, damp stuff, like our buffs, gloves.

And our socks, we can just hang them all right here. It's gonna be.

I'm exhausted, but I'm also super hungry, so I'm gonna make another delicious meal from Amn's cookbook, Becca's favorite tortilla soup. And hopefully it only takes me 20 minutes, like it's says on the book. Five garlic cloves. My kind of girl.

Like this.

It smells really spicy. I can't do it.

Think I can do it. First try.

Yeah.

I don't know why I've been able to use that all day. Guess what?

What? Whoa, baby, I'm warm.

Three hours later.

That last run really got me.

Thank you. Oh, gosh. That was way too much for me. What's my time, Nate?

I'm pretty sure you started at 6:04, in case you can't see that. It's 6. 46.

20 minutes, they said. What are you. Just melted part of the spatula.

Nothing like a little spatula in your soup.

The time has finally come.

What could possibly go wrong? One hour and 14 minutes.

That was not my fault. This tiny burner does not boil fast.

Thanks for dinner. Cheers. Mmm. Nailed it. If you do say so yourself.

It's amazing.

Oh, it hurts.

That's up here, isn't it? Okay, we're gonna clean up the kitchen, attempt to hold our eyes open, and get a little work done on the computer, and then wake up tomorrow and do it all over again. Oh, before you go, Carrie, you're gonna have some opinions about this. The people have spoken.

No, no. It has 9.7.

In the YouTube video that we posted last week. I said if it got 50,000 likes, I would shave my mustache. The video currently has 90,000 likes.

Recount.

I'm gonna shave it in the next video. No, still, sometimes when I look in the mirror, I'm like, huh. Well, I feel like this has been a little bit of a slow ending to the video, but. But a slow ending to our day as well. So you're just right there with us.