We Discovered the SECRET to VAN LIFE!

This is where we're sleeping tonight.

I think that last night was our best night of van life yet.

We're Ken. We spent the last four years traveling to 100 countries. But 2020 brought us back to the United States where we bought a converted sprinter van to travel around our home country. We spent the last week exploring the Rockies, where we undertook the hardest sing day fiscal challenge of our entire lives and somehow managed to summit Longs Peak, the tallest mountain in Rocky Mountain National Park. I can't believe. I can't believe.

Got the fresh water tank filled back up.

Our bodies were still recovering from that hike when we hit the road and started driving southwest to meet up with some friends in Montrose, Colorado. We had a pretty chill weekend planned, but then we decided to stop for a short overnight stay in Vail.

So we ended up finding a great free place to park just five minutes outside of downtown Vail. So we decided to take advantage of the flexibility of van life and stay for a couple extra days. We spent yesterday wandering around the downtown area that kind of feels like you're in Europe. And today we're going mountain biking. Kara's never been before.

Pretty sweet setup. In the summer, they actually turn the lifts that usually take skiers up the mountains into lifts that take mountain bikers. Thank you.

You nervous?

So neither one of us are big mountain bikers, but my brother's taken me a couple times recently.

And I'm becoming slightly addicted to the rush that you get going downhill. Plus here you don't have to pedal up. So although the higher we go, the more I'm wondering if we have enough experience for this.

I'm a bit ner.

This is so high.

We're starting here and we're gonna take Sidekick back down.

It's 1.8 miles, 850ft decline. Sounds like a good warm up.

All right, let's go.

No pressure.

Oh.

I feel love.

I'm so proud of you.

Ready?

Let's do it. Round two.

Woohoo.

You're drooling.

It's kind of hard to hold something in your mouth when you can barely breathe when it's happening. I'm like, I hate this. I hate this. I hate this. I hate this. But you really don't have time to think about anything except for surviving. And as soon as it's over, it's like, wow.

Oh my God.

I can't believe.

Did you. Did you not wreck?

No.

I'm so impressed.

I basically went like this.

I cannot believe I just did that. Thanks for pushing me out of my Comfort zone.

Time for some pizza.

Time for pizza.

Okay, we're about to give up this awesome spot and continue the journey to Montrose. It's only about a three hour drive and we could easily make it in a single day. But we're gonna take our time getting there over the next few.

Our first stop is a 45 minute drive away and it's to a dist distillery, which is also where we're sleeping tonight. For free. Kind of. I know it sounds a little weird, but a friend of a friend owns this business where you pay a yearly membership for $80. And if you have a self contained vehicle, you can park for free overnight at over a thousand participating wineries, breweries, distilleries, golf courses, farms, all kinds of cool small businesses across the country. And it's kind of one of those things that sounds too good to be true, but it has come highly recomm to us and we are super excited to try it out tonight.

We are in the middle of nowhere.

Looks like a lumber yard, a brick yard. Stone yard. A stone yard.

The distillery is called Stone yard Distillery. Now that makes sense.

Well, it's for the night.

So the cool thing about harvest hosts is that it's a win win for van lifers and RVers. We get a free place to sleep for the night and we also get a cool local experience. And then for the local businesses, it's a way for them to draw in more customers and generate more revenue. It's kind of an unwritten rule that if you sleep somewhere for the night, you're supposed to go in and support the business. It actually might be a written rule. I'm not exactly sure, but either way, we're going in to do a tasting.

Oh, that's nice. So this is called a beet sugar spirit. That's what makes this place unique. It's made out of beet sugar instead of like corn. It's delicious.

Oh, it does have a little sweetness to it.

This is basically the original spirit that comes right out of the squid.

The person pouring our tastings also happened to be the owner, mad scientist of the distillery. He had all kinds of crazy experiments that he let us try. What?

And we even got a personal tour of the whole place.

We learned a lot that we didn't know about the distilling process. Crazy. And of course, bought a couple of our favorites for the road.

Our first night as harvest host was definitely a success. It was one of the most unique tastings that we've ever had. We had a great quiet place to sleep last Night and we woke up and got a vlog posted this morning. And the view is not too bad. I mean, it's kind of just a parking lot, but like, if you really look into the distance, you can see the mountains.

We have a few more of these stops planned over the next week. Thought in between I'd at least get a little exercise in. Beautiful place to run. Although we are at altitude.

I thought we were in the middle of nowhere. It turns out there's this beautiful greenway that runs right by river.

Not a bad way to start the day.

I'm about to use the shower in our van for the first time. It has been many days since I bathed, as you can probably tell. And to be honest, I haven't been excited to try it because we only have a 2 gallon hot water heater, which means I'm just gonna have to turn on the water really quick, get wet, turn it off, and repeat over and over again. Plus we only have a 5 gallon gray water tank. So the goal is just to get clean as quickly as possible using as little water as possible. Wish me luck. I'm scared.

Oh, it's not hot. It's not hot.

We're really gonna have to figure out this hot water heater thing. We're gonna have to stay at some more campground so I can shower.

Had to switch to an electric razor because it's not really a good place to shave with water in the van.

It feels so good to be clean. We've had such a lovely Sunday and now we are driving down probably the prettiest road this van has ever seen. We're literally driving through the middle of a canyon on this elevated road that follows the river. I just keep thinking that it's going to end, but it just keeps getting better.

This feels a little bit like Christmas day.

We were just driving down the interstate and saw signs for a free dump station. And that might not sound like a big deal, but so far, probably the most annoying part of van life has been trying to figure out where we can dump our gray water tanks. And Colorado just has a dump station for free at a rest area, so.

It'S still going to be a little tricky.

The problem with our van is we don't have like an actual hose hookup like an RV does, but we still have gray tanks that need to be emptied. So I picked this up at Walmart.

It's working. See, it's just like dirty water that could go anywhere but does kind of stink.

Yeah, it does.

You want to rinse it off with this hose pipe.

All right. That was gross.

Oh, I just stepped in it.

Oh, Karen, that's sewage water.

Oh, girls.

There has got to be a better way to do that.

Your destination is on the left. Home sweet home.

We just drove an hour and a half to the town of Palisade, and it's so crazy. We basically went from driving in what felt like the Grand Canyon to being in this green, luscious valley full of vineyards.

This town is known for all of their wineries. And so we just arrived at. At our second harvest host ever. I'm so excited. This is where we're sleeping tonight. This winery specifically is known for their bubbly wine. And he basically just told us it's because nobody else is doing it.

It is amazing.

Perfect for this super hot, sunny day. So good. We accidentally timed our visit to this winery perfectly. They just had their grand opening the day before, and we could just feel the excitement and passion from the team.

But we didn't want to do that. We wanted the bridal characteristics to stay in the bottle and those aromatics to really come through. And that's why we have this tropical, goofy hipster wine that is too cool.

After tasting some unique wines, we were given a full tour. And we even got to try a wine that had been aged in this barrel for 10 years. Thank you. Because whoever put it in there totally forgot about it until it was recently found this beautiful orangey brown color.

So the guy who did our tasting recommended that we buy our favorite bottle and come have a picnic out in the vines. So we reheated some leftover pizza, and that's exactly what we're doing.

Van Life up until this point has been been more difficult than we expected. But it's little moments like this that are making it totally worth it. I feel like that sounds super cheesy, but it's so true. The only way that we're able to do this is because our home is literally parked 50 yards away in the parking lot of this vineyard.

I think that last night was our best night of van life yet. The temperature was absolutely perfect. It was super quiet, and we both slept great. Then the first thing I saw when I opened my eyes this morning were the vines blowing in the breeze. With the mountain in the background, it was lovely.

Tonight we're making our way to our third and final harvest host. But we're taking this super long scenic way there through Colorado National Monument national park. There's this 23 mile road that runs through the park that's supposed to be one of the Most beautiful drives in all of America.

Perfect.

Awesome. Thank you.

Have a great day. All right. We just paid $80 for this pass, which may sound like a lot, but I think it's a great deal, and we owe a lot of people a thank you for this. We had never heard of this, and when we were in Rocky Mountain national park, everybody said this is what we needed to get. It's called the America the Beautiful pass, and it gets us into all the national parks and federal recreational lands for an entire year. Considering that it's $24 to enter the park once, pretty good.

This road that we're on right now is called Rimrock Drive, and from point A to point B, it should only be eight miles. But because of how curvy the road is, it's 23 miles in total, almost three times as long as it should be. This. This turned out to be, like, completely out of the way, but we thought we couldn't pass up the chance to drive on one of the most beautiful roads in all of America.

This road is so stunning. The views seriously make me feel like I'm on another planet. And it's going to take us forever to get to the end because we've literally pulled over at every single viewpoint.

If you blindfolded me and dropped me off right here, I would tell you that we were in the middle of the Grand Canyon. This is incredible.

This is our third and final harvest host before meeting up with Heath and Alyssa. And how can I say this? It didn't really live up to the expectation that the first two set for us.

It's not quite like the one we were at last night. We'll see. It's been very unique so far.

With that said, it is a free place to sleep for the night, and it is literally 100 degrees outside, so having this shade tree to park under is so nice. It's also super quiet, so we'll get a good night's sleep here, and then in the morning, we'll head out to meet up with Heath and Alyssa.

We made it. We're gonna be stationary for a whole week. Look how big their RV is. That's like, five of our vans. Look at that.

It really is. Honey, we're home.

I'm so glad y' all are here. This is so great.

This is so great. This is awesome.

I felt like it was gonna be harder to walk it down than to just be on it and hold the br. Got on and held the brakes for nearly.

There were so many huge rocks.

I don't even know if my tires were spinning. Like, I think I just skidded that whole ideal.

Okay.

Oh.

You good? I put some tough the pedal.

I've never loved Nate more than when he said, do you want to go get ice cream now?

Well deserved by both of us, but especially you.

Also, my hand kind of feels like it's stuck in this position. I think I gripped my handlebars for so long this morning. Mouth biking is no joke.

Huh?

I just figured you had done this wrong, but it's on.

Look how pretty our lights look. We also left our doors just wide open while we were in the vines. Like anybody could have come and driven our van away.

So no trailers, no Fitz Wells, and no RVs allow. I would say we're a van much.

Lighter tasting than what I'm used to.

We're just fine. Love and cheese it.

This shot is totally made up. Kara never holds the camera. She would also never hold it with one hand if she was holding it, but it looked cool.