Putting our life back together (aftermath of the bike trip)

So Yesterday it was 70 degrees outside and now look at this. It's September. This is crazy. Oh, snow makes me so happy.

We're Karen Nate, and we've spent the last four years traveling to 100 countries. But 2020 brought us back to our home country of the United States of America, where we bought a converted sprinter van and transitioned from living out of suitcases to full van life. If you missed our last video, Nate just finished mountain biking 570 miles across Colorado, which turned out to be without a doubt the hardest physical challenge of his life.

I did it.

And after reaching the finish line in Durango, we drove back to our friend's house in Leadville to spend the better part of a week recuperating from that intense adventure.

This Colorado trail trip really put the van to the test. Kara took it down some super rough dirt roads. We spent most of the time camping off the grid and we slept three full size adults in a van that's built for two people. After arriving here at Leadville, we pretty much moved into our friend's bed and breakfast. And we've just been ignoring the fact that our van is a complete wreck. Just look at this. We've at least put all of our clothes into a bag now, minus all of the shoes and bike stuff. This area hasn't been used in days.

I'm embarrassed. We've had a dirty van before, but it is past dirty. Like it is absolutely filthy.

Still for the bike trip.

And then the shower is turned into a storage unit. I think I was tired from the bike trip. Kara was tired of being in the van for 17 days. Plus she's having to edit all the footage. So this is just a mess. That's the only way to describe it.

So we were planning on just taking the week off to knock all of this stuff out, but we thought it would be good to show more of a complete picture of van life instead of just the fun adventures.

Why won't it come off?

Plus, we have some super fun upgrades that we're making to the van this week that we wanted to share too. Good luck.

It doesn't get much better than free access to a washer and dryer when you live in a van and we have a lot of dirty clothes.

Found some cool stickers in Nate's pocket. I almost washed these and my chopstick he stole.

So when we first moved into this van two and a half months ago, everything had a place perfectly in the drawers and in the cabinets. But now they look like this and this and this and this one's. So before I put all of these dishes away, I think it's time to just take everything out and reorganize all of it.

Ew. Literally dirty paper plates. Like trash in our dishes drawer.

I found our gopro.

Hello.

We thought we lost it.

Hello.

Who goes there?

Me.

Hi, Frankie.

What are you.

I found myself some helpers.

What is it?

This?

Ah, it's our security system.

Security system?

That's right.

What if someone else.

Somehow I've made even more of a mess than I had before.

Hello?

Okay, I've only done three drawers so far, but I. I already feel so much better. This one has bowls, plates, smoothie cups, and my blender mugs. Cups, drink stuff.

We're not the only ones doing work on our van today.

Yep, we had a little fuel leak, so I got the manly hair dryer out, also known as a heat gun. And we just plugged the hole with, like, a hex. It's gotta be better than duct tape, right?

Rick's doing real manly work on his van today.

What are you doing on yours?

So far, the plastic bucket is the best system that we've come up with.

It takes a while, but it's pretty easy.

This is, like, the worst design on the sprinter van. You have to fill this up, but there's no way of knowing when it's full. And the liquid is super corrosive. I think it's just a recipe for disaster. Oh, I think I hear it.

Wow.

I guess we really needed that, huh?

The first week we were on the road, I hit a tree, and this thing bent all the way back and hasn't worked ever since. So if the weboost is working, this. This light right here should be on. I'm going with the unplug it and plug it back in strategy, huh?

Set your multimeter to volts. D.C. you shouldn't have to have.

R and I fix things very similarly. It always starts with watching a video on YouTube and then.

Yeah, so it is getting power.

So I think that there's a chance that I may have figured this out. I've been staring at this thing for 30 minutes now, and I think I may have just fixed the weboost replacement. Go in there. All right, the new fuse is in. Now I hook it back to the fuse box, plug it in, and we see if it works. Okay, the moment of truth.

The real moment of.

Okay, if the light turns green when I plug this cord in, I fixed it. Is it green? I can't see it.

Oh, I was sure I'd fixed it.

I have not missed this part of van life.

After posting our bike series, we realized how many people were interested in how a family of four can travel in a sprinter van. So Ray's gonna give us a quick tour.

So we got the 170 wheelbase. The extended one adds about a foot and a half at the back. That's allowed us to have a little more space in the rear, which allowed us to put the second row seats in without being too cramped. When we bought this thing, it was just like a standard cargo van. The cargo model of the Sprinter just has the front seats. But because we have a family of four, we needed to add a second row of seats to fit the kids. We got the swivel seats to make like a second living space. I know what a lot of people are probably interested in is how we fit a family of four in a. In a van. To be honest, it hasn't been too difficult. Our kids are still small. They're 4 and 8, so that helps. Once Evie gets to be about 12, we'll have to either pull a trailer or strap it to the roof or something. I'm not sure what we're going to do just yet. You know, our van's still a work in progress. Like a lot of sprinter van owners that diyers, you know, we, we're always balancing. Do we put the kitchen in, which we desperately need to do. This is where it'll go. Or do we go on that raft trip or go on that bike trip or go on that climbing trip or do any of the other amazing, adventurous things you can do in Colorado. So we found ourselves in this kind of position where it works. We can sleep.

This is my kitchen, the fridge, which is amazing. It can hold food for five days.

For us or four cases of beer.

And I have my cab kitchen. So this is like my plates and dishes and knives and full fresh food, my washing up sink and anything else that when we're on jolty roads, I just put in here because it actually seems to stay pretty.

Hasn't fallen down before.

But cooking in here right now is kind of tricky. So that's why we're lucky. It's summer. I just use our car camping stove, which is like our Coleman 2 burner, and I just pull this out.

But you don't actually cook in the.

Van really like you guys saw me, I cook maybe in the garage, but I like walk outside to cook in the garage. This is upstairs, downstairs in the garage.

This is our informal lounge.

That's the informal lounge.

This Is the formal.

This is the formal lounge.

And we have company when we have company. These are pretty nifty, these. We Rick built these boxes and I keep extra toilet paper. Just stuff that I don't need access to, a toolbox, blanket, and a ton of storage.

And then you have tons of storage.

Our wheel wells still in there too. And so in here I keep emergency sleeping bags, a tent, our camp chairs.

To put this in perspective, we almost have the exact same van. It's a 170 wheelbase, it's a high roof. Their van is just about a foot and a half longer than ours. But for some reason, every time I'm in here, I feel like they have so much space.

I think the main difference is that your van is like a New York City apartment and ours is like a Colorado garage.

Okay, bottom bed.

350 for the top bed and then for the bottom bed.

Pretty good.

Is that it?

Time. That's it.

Time, Time, time, time. Oh, the bottom bed was so much faster.

So this is where we sleep. And this is where I sleep on this side the septums. And when it super crooked, we either put our hand on this end or this end. Our clothes are up there when I wake up. And we have to step on the fridge to get up there. And they're hanging on the carabiners. Oh, this is my sock and undies. And these are my shirts and pants. These are my shirts and pants. And mom and dad sleep up here. And they have a fan and they turn it on every night. This is how they, they turn it up. Then press this button.

And last but not least, the bathroom tour.

So for the bathroom for our family, we, we only wanted the best. We went with like a real top of the line bathroom. We were actually at Walmart looking for toothbrushes and we found this thing for $49.99.

I think we also bought battleship at the same time.

And. And we just put it in here.

Oh, we had to take it out of the box.

Yeah. I would say less than 10 seconds, you do your business and then that's a flush. But to be honest, we don't even use that.

We use the high pressure flush.

This is a high pressure flush. So this is the eco flush. Because we're very environmentally conscious. You just do one of those.

Squirt that in there.

All right, last question. Where is everybody else when you're, you know.

Oh, this is the best part about this toilet. So it's a family affair. We have conversations, we play board games. Sometimes that doubles as a Chair. You basically just sit there and do your business and wave hi to people sleeping up here. Even Frankie playing down here. As you can tell, the kitchen and the bathroom are almost the same thing.

Kitchen, bathroom, More kitchen. Well, thank you for the van tour.

You're welcome. Bye. Bye.

Well done.

Good job, girls.

So up to this point, we've been pretty content with everything in the van. But after caravanning with Rick and Beck for 17 days down the Colorado trail, we realized there were a few upgrades that we wanted to make. The biggest one being.

We would all get in this van on those cold mountain nights and just snuggle up with each other in this warm van. And then we'd have to get out in the freezing cold and go back to our van.

It was that, and last week it snowed 8 inches in September. This is also why we're getting a heater. We just want the flexibility to not have to run away from this. We're also super excited to install an alternator charger, which essentially lets the batteries that are in the back of the van charge while we drive. We usually end up having to find a place to plug in, which means paying for a campground for the night, when, realistically, there's plenty of good free camping spots in most places. So it'd be super nice just to be able to get in the van, start up the car, go for a little drive, and let everything charge back up. Last but not least, this is one of those things that's more of a preference than an actual need. But we realized just how clean an in dash backup camera looks instead of this thing right here that's just kind of an eyesore on the dashboard and only works about 50% of the time.

Most of you will probably be happy to hear that Nate is not doing these upgrades himself. We are hiring a professional, and it's the same guy who did Rickett Beck's van, and he lives two hours away in Steamboat Springs. So that's where we're heading now. But I'm very sad that we're leaving Leadville. When we first came here, we thought we were just staying for the weekend. It has now been six weeks.

And it really started to feel like home. We'll be back one day.

I'm just sad I'm going to lose this acclimation. My body's used to living at 10,000ft right now. I feel like that's a rare thing to happen in life.

I think we're a little lost. Supposed to be spending the night in a parking lot or something. I Don't know where he's trying to go right now.

I'm not real sure where we're going.

So we are planning on putting the van upgrades in this video, but the guys ended up uncovering some pretty serious safety issues.

So this wire is going to start on fire before that's gonna ever blow.

And things got a little more interesting than we were expecting. So since our last few videos were over an hour long, we'll give you a little break. And part two we'll post on Sunday.

This is toothpaste for how to brush my teeth. And.

What was this?

What is that.

Toothpaste? Oh, no, it's cheese from our charcuterie board.

So that was wet.

Why is everything in here wet? I should probably just throw that away.

Where's all that mess coming from? This drawer.

Isn't it amazing that all this fits in that tiny drawer?

Why do you have so many cutting boards?

I love cutting boards.

I'm gonna be the narrator in our YouTube channel.

You are?

Yes. You know how you say we're Karen and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah? I'm gonna do that. Great. Because my mom thinks I should do it.

I can't wait to see y'.

All.

She's too scared to talk to the camera. Really? Can I come in?

Of course. Did you wash this spoon?

Hello.

Did you even wash it even?

There's literally vegetables still on the spoon.

What the heck?

Nate was supposed to clean it.

He was supposed to clean it. I want to hop on the bed. Do it.

Can you hop over the drawer or do you need to close it?

I can hop over the drawer. What? This is the one you did there. Your smoothie.

That is how I make my smoothies.

Yep.

I'm sorry. So much stuff is on the bed. Whoa.

Is that on?

Yeah.

Oh, good. This is the cup that Kayla used for his smoothie. How do I look?

Good.

Tired.

I look tired?

Kinda. When you looked up, you were just.

Yeah.

That's not good. I am tired, though.

Is tired. How is she tired? I don't know. Why? Oh, hello. What are you doing?

Which old avocado in here?

You guys without children don't.

I feel like tying home find things like that.

Avocados.

If you scrape the brown off, there's still a meal there.

Frankie would probably eat that.

She would eat that.