Our scariest day of van life. (winter in Yellowstone)

When we woke up this morning, we planned to make what we thought would be a long and boring 13 hour drive from Nebraska to our 25th state of Wyoming to experience the beauty and wonder of Yellowstone national park in the wintertime. However, what are we gonna do? Today was anything but boring.

It was like one minute the road was completely fine and the next minute it was frozen. The tops.

There are two giant beautiful eagles just sitting in this snow covered field.

It was 75 and sunny yesterday. Ow, it hurts. I really hope we don't get trapped in South Dakota. So today we were supposed to be driving 13 hours to the western entrance of Yellowstone, which would probably be the most driving we had ever done in a day. But now we found ourselves snowstorm in South Dakota, surrounded by nothing. Our odds of making it are not looking good. So in case this gets interesting, we thought we'd turn on the camera.

It's crazy how we can't see anything past like 100 yards.

So we've just made it off of the back country road and we're getting on to what we hope is an interstate that has either been plowed or at least has a lot more cars on it to knock some of the snow off. Oh, it's black.

Woo.

Oh, there's still some ice. This is terrifying. 13 hours is already a lot of driving. You have to do 13 hours through this. Gonna be mentally exhausted.

You did so good.

I'm just gonna try to get past these. This is what I'm scared of. Yeah.

You did so good, Nate. I don't know how you stayed so calm.

It was like one minute the road was completely fine and the next minute it was frozen. I'm in way over my head being a Dr. Tennessee but at this point I feel like it's probably more dangerous to pull off the road and take the risk of sitting there and someone else hitting us than it is just to keep going at a slow speed as far as we can. Whoa, look at that. Oh no. The 18 wheeler completely flipped.

I think this is the most nervous I've ever been in my life. We're still five miles from the next exit, but even then we don't know if we're going to be able to get off.

Like I just feel trapped right now. There's no good option.

The next five miles were painfully slow and felt like an eternity. After that close call, it felt like our van was going to slide off the road or into another car at any second. This was without a doubt the most scared we had been since moving into the van. This is an exit.

All right. I think we're going to go for it. There's actually a nicely parked out path here. It is a hill, though, so hopefully we make it out. Come on, van. Go up the hill.

Keep going.

Truck in front of me.

Go, go.

Keep going, Keep going.

There's not a car.

Just keep cruising on to the sign. Right in front of a police officer. Sorry about that. You waved at me. I just ran a stop sign right in front of the police officer and he just waved at me and completely understood. We've almost made it.

That guy's wearing shorts.

No one was prepared.

Oh.

We didn't even capture the most exciting moment on camera. When I was careening towards two 18 wheelers that had already wrecked on the side of the road. It was like there was a magnet attracting me to him. As we were sliding in the last second, we started going the other way.

It was really scary.

Now that we're here, even though I have no idea what we're gonna do, I just feel safe.

I'm just so thankful that we're here.

I'm sorry. That was so scary.

I'm just so glad you were driving.

You okay?

Yeah. We were so close to hitting that truck.

I think I just kicked into survival mode. I don't even think I had emotions.

I don't think I did either. And then they all hit me at once. I feel like in my mind, we were like five inches away. I don't think it was quite like it was happening. And you were saying out loud, I'm losing control. I'm losing control. I'm gone, I'm gone, I'm gone. And I was just like. Like I was embracing the hit. Like I thought we were gonna hit him.

We were sliding straight into the truck.

The good news is we're in our home. So if we do end up in the pilot parking lot for the next 24 hours, we have bed and food and water and Subway. Is there a subway?

Yeah.

Yes. Food makes everything better.

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Look at these wicked icicles.

You driving? No. All right. It looks like they've plowed the roads. The snow has really slowed down and we're gonna attempt to drive through the night and save this trip to Old Faithful. You're on board for this?

Don't do that. We agreed to this.

I'll decide when I see the interstate.

I'm not forcing her to do this.

You're right. No, I agree to it.

Look at these beautiful snow free roads.

Woo hoo.

The ultra only thing that concerns me is how few cars there are on the road.

But maybe that's just South Dakota. We're in the middle of nowhere. Is that an 18 wheeler in the ditch?

Oh, there's a car too. Wow.

No more snow.

Grass has never looked more beautiful. This is the first time since we pulled out of the gas station that I actually thought we had a chance making it to Yellowstone. GPS currently says our estimated time of arrival is 2:06am Tour starts at 8.

We're going to need a lot of caffeine.

Today was very stressful and I was a hot mess for a little while but it could have been so much worse. I'm so thankful that like the only bad thing that's coming of today is we're gonna lose a few hours of sleep. Let's go to Yellowstone.

All right. We have about three hours to sleep before we get up and do the tour in the morning. Also it's negative 2 degrees which is by far the coldest we have ever attempted to sleep in this van.

Turn on the heater.

We'll see you in the morning.

Hey Siri, what's the weather?

It's currently clear and minus 4 degrees. Today's high will be 32 degrees.

It wasn't exactly warm, but we survived. Wow. Negative 4 is cold.

I am surprisingly awake this morning after three hours of sleep.

Look at the size of these tires. That's crazy. That's huge.

It.

Wow. What a start to the day. That was so cool.

We've never been here in the summer, but I cannot imagine that it gets any more beautiful than this. You're definitely more restricted on where you can go in the winter and how you can get there. Like, the only way you can make it this deep into the park is on a snow coach or on a snowmobile. But I don't think I would trade it. This morning has been incredible. We've only been out here for 2 and 12 hours and I cannot believe how much we've already gotten to see.

Looks like it wanted to come check us out.

What a morning. The bison with their frosty hair standing by the misty, majestic Missouri River. It doesn't get much better than that.

It does get better. They have hot chocolate.

Cheers.

You know, it's been a weird 24 hours when I order hot chocolate instead of coffee. I don't know if I've ever done that.

Are you sick?

Just had so much coffee.

Look. Look, they're fighting. I feel like I'm living in a National Geographic documentary. I cannot believe I'm seeing this in real life. Right?

I think last night's drives catching up with her. I told her I'd see way more of Yellowstone than she would today.

We have just arrived at the upper Geyser Basin, which is home to Old Faithful. I'm pretty sure the most popular geyser in the entire world.

So Old Faithful used to erupt every hour on the hour. Hence the name Old Faithful. But there was a big earthquake in 1959 that somehow threw that off. And now it erupts every 70 minutes, give or take 10 minutes on either side, which equals out to about 20 times a day. We have somewhere between 10 or 30 minutes to sit here and watch it steam as we wait to see one of the world's most famous geysers erupt over 100ft into the air. I'm so excited. Me too.

The anticipation. I just saw some.

Starting to bubble. Here it go.

That's incredible. Wow.

I'm not going to say that Old Faithful was underwhelming, but it was definitely less powerful than I expected. But we got super lucky. There's another geyser that's going off right now and it only goes off once per day. They've told us it's completely unpredictable. It's called Beehive. And it actually goes almost twice as high into the air as Old Faithful.

I feel like we're acting super spoiled here. It is absolutely mind blowing that these things are happening naturally. Water spewing from the earth.

I feel so fortunate that we're getting to see beehive.

Yes.

For a picnic.

No. Our guide told us that in the summertime, there are three to 5,000 people who come here to watch old geyser go off.

No geyser.

Old Faithful. And if you want to get a front row seat, you have to get here an hour before. And we just rolled up 10 minutes before it went off. Got a front row seat, no problem. And we had maybe 100 other people here. And now we're pretty much all alone, enjoying our lunch with the perfect view of old Faithful.

There's a small group of like 20 people way over there, but we pretty much have Old Faithful all to ourselves.

Yellowstone in the winter. Highly recommend. I'm not even cold.

And you're not asleep.

And I'm awake.

So. We are currently hiking through a geyser field called Biscuit Basin. And we just learned something that I think is super fascinating. There are only 900 geysers located in the entire world. And 500 of those geysers are located here in Yellowstone. So over half the world's geysers are located on these 2 million acres.

And they don't even stink.

Getting about 47.3 on this section right here. This water as it's rolling down the hill is cooling each one of those bacterias we call thermophiles. They all reflect a little different color back to our eye. And so kind of the takeaway is when you see different colors, you're seeing different forms of life. Let's try this right here. We're a little closer. 72.1 right there. So it's risen over 20 degrees Fahrenheit just a little bit away.

Doesn't he have the best guide voice? Kara said he should pick up a second career reading audiobooks.

All this insect larvae down here, all those little black specks. Those little flies are amazing. If they fly more than 2 inches off the surface, they'll freeze to death.

No way.

You guys want to take a guess on how hot this is? We just temped. What was it? 49 and 75. What do you guys think? 95, 95, 100, 100. Let's give it a try. Let's see which one of you is closest here. That settled on.

Whoa.

126.

So I won. That's crazy.

Don't jump off into the temperature.

I've temped this runoff up to 155 before. Where we're standing right here is the most common place in the whole park where people can get burned, because that water's just right there. And so people, they come up and they think they want.

I can't say anything.

I'm gonna fall in the hot pool.

Oh. It is actually really hard to see.

But I've checked the this out. We're getting up here to Sapphire Pool.

Our guide told us if it's blue, it's not for you. The reason it's blue is because it's so hot that not even bacteria can survive in it.

Here.

The shade that we're in right now has nothing to do with clouds. We are standing in the shadow of the steam from the largest hot springs in the United States and the third largest in the world. It's called Grand Prismatic. And it's actually really hard to see in the winter because of how hot it is and all the steam that's coming up from it. But apparently, if you're here during the summer, the colors are absolutely beautiful. We're getting just a taste of that on the edges.

Get out of here. We have been trapped on this boardwalk for the last hour, waiting for the bison to move, and they finally just took off running. Freedom. Wow. We're at our last stop of the day, and we have gotten super lucky once again. Fountain Geyser, which goes off every six to eight hours, started erupting as soon as we got here. What a day.

We are completely surrounded right now.

This is awesome.

Four are going off at the same time. There's two here. Fountain Geyser and then Jet geyser right here just started erupting. That makes eight total for the day.

This one's getting me wet.

It's almost like kissing under a waterfall. Yeah, kissing under a geyser. Kissing under a waterfall that smells like rotten eggs.

It really feels like Yellowstone just put on a grand finale for us. I am just so grateful that we were able to make it here yesterday. But thankfully, this is not the end of the trip. It's only the first half. In the next video, we'll explain how we're able to film in national parks again. Because if you've been following our channel for a while now, you know that last year, that privilege got taken away from us. But thankfully, some things have changed.

All right, let me show you how we made it through yesterday's drive 1, 2, 3, 4. Five cups of coffee. We are so close. Five minutes away according to the GPS. And it is 2:43am.

To work.

So close.

Thanks for driving.