Back to the Van - My #Vanlife Story

[Music] hey guys it's darwin so originally i was supposed to be going to new mexico to do a bike packing trip with a friend but he had to cancel so those plans are out the window snuggles has to work all weekend and i have nothing else to do so i decided to pack the van up and i'm going to go out on a solo van life trip this weekend i think that i'm just going to hit the road and drive until i get out of all this snowy windy cold weather maybe find a nice little blm spot to camp at for the night and uh do some training for this hike that i have coming up so i decided to head down south from flagstaff to just outside of the superstition mountains right before superior arizona tomorrow i'm going to go out onto the arizona trail do a little bit of hiking and some training and tonight i'm just kind of camped off in this random little blm spot gonna fix some food and just relax and peep at the stars really nice weather down here though hence the shorts as most of you that have followed my videos for a while know my wife snuggles and i have lived van life off and on for quite some time in 2014 when we got rid of our house and everything we owned we moved into a 2006 chrysler minivan that i had converted into a home along with my wife and my dog bowie i traveled around for about a year living in various national parks and on public lands then there came a time where we basically ran out of funds decided to park ourselves in albuquerque new mexico get an apartment and work for a while to save up another travel fund at the beginning of 2017 we decided it was time yet again to hit the road and go full-time travel there was actually a small stint where i got this hair brained idea to restore a vintage camper that we could live out of while working for the national park service which ended up not really working out as planned and we basically scrapped that idea after making a last-minute decision to instead convert a 5x8 cargo trailer into a mini camper to pull behind our van we hit the road full time in august of 2017. sadly at the end of 2017 our beloved minivan the black stallion pooped out on us we decided to buy another larger van that could be converted into a living space without the need of our trailer so we sold the trailer and completely built out the new van right before i headed off to through like the pct in 2018 after spending about two years living full time out of the new van we were ready for a break and decided to get a place in flagstaff arizona at the end of 2019. even though i still spend at least three to four months out of the year traveling around and living out of the van i miss doing it full time i miss having a new beautiful place to call home every couple of days isn't that pretty now don't get me wrong i like having the small conveniences of an apartment like a real flushing toilet and a hot shower every day if i want it but i do miss falling asleep in places like this every night i picked up a bunch of trash last night around this campsite so [Music] oh man so nice to be back out on this section of the arizona trail so i've been wanting to make this video for quite some time because i still do get a lot of questions and inquiries about the five to six years that i lived an alternative lifestyle or van life whether it was the minivan or the cargo trailer or this guy and just to get myself psyched because i'm about to go back to living part-time van life in 2021 i'm going to hit the road here in about a week and head out east and i guess down south a little bit to through hike the bent makai trail but to also start production back up on my public lands film and i'm going to be doing that a lot in 2021 i have a lot of different national parks and national forests and national scenic trails to visit to shoot for the film and i figure instead of flying out to all these locations why not drive why not live back out of the van and while i'm doing it put in all these little bitty thru hikes and micro adventures along with those trips plus i just really miss traveling full time over the years i've done a few different tours of my setups here on youtube in 2016 i did a full tour of my minivan the black stallion right before heading back out onto the at in 2018 i did a full tour of this right after i built it before starting the pct there's even a time in 2017 where i had a travel series here on the channel called travel and trail where i was living out of that cargo trailer that nobody watched so if you guys want to check out any of those videos i'll leave some links down below but ever since doing that last video i get a lot of requests people wanting to see my setup and how i live or lived fan life plus i've done a lot of different updates ever since that last video i installed a fridge i installed a fan a bunch of new lights i kind of changed my setup so because i'm going to be living part-time van life in 2021 because i'm about to go hit the road and because i literally have nothing else going on right now i figured i would give you guys an updated tour of my 2021 part-time van life setup all right so first off my van is a 2002 ford e150 hey guys future darwin here so when i shot this segment i was actually using my gopro which i never filmed with anymore and i had all of my settings wrong so the little black bars on the side i had it on the wrong aspect ratio it's also kind of shaky because i forgot to turn on the hyper smooth stabilization and it's sort of grainy because i forgot to upgrade the quality to 4k but bear with me hopefully this video is good enough for a van life tour we bought this guy and it had really really low miles on it like crazy low miles on it um to show you the top real quick i have two solar panels up here 200 watt solar panels flat panels and i also have a max air vent and a top box where we just kind of store extra stuff so coming down into the van obviously up front here we just have the regular old cab nothing really special about the cab just where i sit and where snuggle sits but here in the middle you can actually see my dometic fridge so this is a full solar powered fridge it's actually off right now because i didn't want to have it make any noise kick on while i was filming this so to start off um it's a pretty simple build as you can see i put down a nice laminate wood floor i have these storage containers over here that i can put various things in i usually keep my food in here different supplies i have these cabinets that i installed um inside of these cabinets let me go ahead and crawl in here real quick and this first one is all of my solar stuff so as you can see in there that is my full solar setup my battery my charger my fuse box everything and that's all that lives in there um again here is my dometic fridge it is a full on fridge again it's off right now got some veggies in there some juice a couple beers but this is amazing this i didn't have this whenever i first did the build we had like a cooler i got so tired of hearing ice kind of swash back and forth so i finally installed this guy which i love as you can see we have a curtain that goes across the front two black out curtains so at night we can completely close those to where people can't see in and we can get total darkness in this cabinet right here it's mainly just storage so i do have my propane tank in there to be able to use with my heater or my stove my stove is actually sitting right here it is a coleman two burner stove i have this countertop that i can put it on but i don't ever put it on the countertop usually we just kind of set it right here on the floor or we will use it outside we kind of have this little table that will set up outside right outside the van that way it's ventilating well we're not getting anything sticky and gross with food so if we shut this again the last cabinet is again nothing but storage right now i just have a jerry can in there with some extra water um back here is my bed uh ooh i smacked my head on the ceiling so it is kind of between a queen size and a full-size bed um but it's big enough for both snuggles and i i do usually sleep a little diagonally and then she kind of sleeps straight on up here i have a small storage bin the two holes there uh one of those is for my stuff and one is for my wife's stuff right now i think i just have some various articles of clothing in there i was probably wearing when i started off making this video um again my little storage bin thing here this is a visor that i can put over my big sliding window that is a push out window so we can get good ventilation and then i have my remote for my max air fan i've actually never used that remote um i think it's kind of silly it has a remote honestly but as you can see it's totally solar powered it opens up by itself and it does have a rain sensor on there but that thing pushes out so much air and pulls in so much air that's all running off the battery along with these led recessed lights so these are something that i installed after i did the original build and i actually have a dimmer switch over here so this is the main switch for the lights and then if i want to i can switch them on and then actually dim them to whatever lighting that i want so if we're trying to stay stealthy and we don't want a whole lot of light that's pretty easy to do and right here i have a little charging port where i can charge my laptop and other electronics and really guys that's it i mean it is a very simple build oh one last thing i'll show you in the back real quick around here to the back i have these two big pull out drawers and mainly we keep supplies and gear in those so i built these unlock it as you can see i just kind of keep gear in there like my pack is in there right now i do actually have a little camp chair a little folding camp chair that a lot of people use for backpacking i just use it as i'm sitting outside of my van all right guys that's it that is my full van life setup as you can see i went with something pretty simple some people put a lot of bells and whistles into their van builds but when i did this back in 2018 i just wanted something that was really simple and efficient and it's worked out great for snuggles and i for years and it's what will hopefully work great for me all of 2021 on my part-time van life i cannot wait to hit the road again get back out at east and kind of pick up where i left off at the beginning of 2021 when i had to get off the at i'm really excited to go out and through hike the benton mackay trail and get back to making this film i'll be sharing some of my travels over on instagram but i will actually be putting out a van life travel vlog over on patreon if that's something you guys are interested in i'll leave a link down below if you found any value in this video go ahead and hit that like button subscribe to my channel if you haven't already and as always guys thanks for watching [Music] you

Channel: Darwin onthetrail

Views: 67,621

Rating: 4.9804082 out of 5

Keywords: #VanLife, Van Tour, Van Life, UL Backpacking, UL Hiking, UL Hiking Gear, Pacific Crest Trail, PCT Thru Hike, AT Thru Hike, Appalachian Trail, Backpacking, Hiking, Adventure, Hiker Trash, Long Distance Hiking

Id: bg3AK-2PaIQ

Length: 13min 51sec (831 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 20 2021