Nate Buchanan's van-life trip hits snags on day three: a broken awning, unexpected September snow, and a scramble for waterproof boots. They still make it to Kelowna to meet a friend for dinner.
Oh, we're going to wine country today. It's gonna be flat. It won't be that cold.
You can tell we have four people from Texas. From Texas and Tennessee because we're all so excited to see the snow.
How's it going?
Yeah, I'm think if we just take off the whole awning, that that might probably be our best option.
What do you think?
Yeah.
Morning's off to a bit of a rough start. The awning couldn't really hold up to the pouring rain last night.
It wasn't even raining that hard. Was not even raining that hard. We woke up with a loud clang, and I came outside to see, like, pieces of our awning on the ground, and I was trying to hold it up and get it in and fix it, and I realized I couldn't, so I texted Nate. I was like, dude, I'm sorry. I know it's 7am but can you come help me?
So this is how we're starting day three of van life. It's not necessarily, like, a big deal that the awning broke. The real problem that we're running into right now is that we can't go anywhere because we can't get the awning.
To go back in, and we can't.
Just drive down the road with it just flapping off the side of the van.
What was that? It was just hollow water that was building up on top.
It's all.
Haven't even had coffee yet.
This is the cold. This is what snapped last night.
Seems to be working.
Don't jinx it yet.
Please don't break.
I'm trying to guide it in. Come on, little fella.
No.
I can't see.
My hood's in the way.
We did it.
Yes, it's definitely broken, but at least it's in. Oh, man.
Yes.
Good plan, Nate.
This broken joint snapped in the middle of the night.
I can't believe y' all did it.
Here are all the screws that are missing and whatever these pieces are. What did you do last night?
I was trying to reach Heath and Alyssa's WI FI router, and they're in the camping spot across from us. And so to upload the vlog, I set my computer on the ground at the front of our van to be as close as possible to their van. And then I didn't close our door all the way, and it rained, and it dripped through our door onto my computer. We woke up to a very wet keyboard, so my computer's taking a little nap right now. Van life.
It's Been a crazy morning.
My feet are cold and dirty.
Wow. So we got the awning back in, which means that our road trip can continue and we're not going to be stuck here in Vancouver for the next two weeks. Not necessarily my ideal way to start the morning, but I do feel more productive than I usually feel at 10am.
We had all intentions of doing a full van tour this morning, but since the weather is kind of gross, I think we're just gonna hit the road and wait until a prettier, sunshinier, picturesque place.
This is gonna be like our first big road trip. We have five hours to Kelowna. We were supposed to stop on the way and like do a cool hike, but we'll see what happens with the weather. We're hoping there's more sunshine in Kelowna and we.
Still raining. Okay, we've made it about an hour outside of Vancouver and we are making a quick pit stop at Walmart because that's where everybody wants to go when they come to Canada. Walmart.
Are we about to get matching shoes?
I'm going to get the black version.
It's like have no ankle support whatsoever.
These are not comfortable. I think they're the only waterproof option.
So we looked up the weather in Banff this morning, which is where heading in a couple days and apparently it's going to be snowing, so the all birds aren't going to cut it. So we're shopping for some hiking boots, the cheapest ones possible because we're going to throw them away.
Hello.
Okay, quick stop at Walmart turned into two new pairs of hiking boots and $100 of groceries. We won't go hungry in the mountains. Nope. I want to eat all of this right now. Okay, let's go to Kelowna.
We just ate about half of the groceries that we bought at the store for lunch and got huge coffees for the road.
Now we have three hours until we get to Kelowna. Keep my eyes road not on the camp.
All right, we're about an hour outside of Kelowna, but we are running out of gas. Even though it's been gross and wet outside, the drive has still been absolutely beautiful. The clouds are hanging down in the mountains. You have the like bright yellow fall trees that are contrasting with the evergreen trees. For a day of bad weather, it's been a good drive. This trip could get expensive. That was $75 of gas and it didn't even fill it all the way up and it wasn't even empty. Okay, back on the road, let's see how he.
Ah.
It was close to both.
Snow.
Everywhere.
Alyssa just wanted to pull over because this is crazy.
This is nuts.
I was like, oh, there's a couple flurries. That's nice. Oh, wait, this is getting serious. And I exited, and I was like, I don't know where this road goes.
You can't see anything. This snow just came out of nowhere. Like, it's been, like, raining, raining, raining. And then it was like, boom. Everything is white everywhere. So we just pulled over at a random stop, and we're getting out. Are you so excited?
I think we're making snowballs.
Wow, it's cold. This is crazy. I was hoping we were gonna see snow when we got to Banff. I did not expect to see it today. I can't believe this. It's September.
This is so cool.
Unexpected.
You're lucky your wife was in front of you.
This is crazy.
I did not expect to use these waterproof boots so soon.
It's a good day.
We bought them.
Oh, man.
It was a great time.
I was like, I'm probably not gonna need gloves.
You can tell we have four people from Texas. From Texas and Tennessee because we're all so excited to see the snow.
Gloves were a good choice.
Oh, my gosh. It's so cold. And I didn't get gloves.
That was fun. I'm freezing. Getting a bit worried that we don't have snow tires.
Nate gave me the cool job of fetching the camera. Bye, guys.
Let me in. Nate, that's not funny. Let me in.
My hand.
Is frozen heat on.
We made.
Is about 7pm we have finally made it to Kelowna, and we drove straight to a restaurant to eat some dinner. And we are meeting a friend who lives here.
Cheers.
Oh.
Oops. Oh, gosh.
So it's all gonna be okay. Everything's fine. Okay, here we go. It's so cold. I literally have, like, two pairs of pants and two jackets and the new Walmart boots that I'm gonna wear every day for the next two weeks.
But I don't even care, because if it's gonna be this cold, it needs to be snowing.
Sam.
