Camp Gear Organization: my packing and basic gear plan for vehicular camping

[Music] hello and welcome back to my channel today's video is going to be something a little bit different it's going to be more vlog style there's just a few things on the vehicle and with my setup that i wanted to update you guys on right now here in washington state we're between winter and spring spring has just arrived obviously to many of you it looks like we're in the middle of summer but around here it's just getting started so up in the mountains it's still winter but because it's warmer down below there's a transitionary period of kind of deep slushy wet snow that's very difficult to get through up to the nice powdery stuff so vehicular camping at elevation is sort of hit or miss these days so i've taken kind of a lull and i've got a project that i'm working on right now that i'll show you uh towards the end of the video but for now i just kind of wanted to give you guys a quick run through and tour of what i've been up to with the vehicle and uh my camping setup which has been slowly evolving over time over the years and uh more recently i've worked on repackaging everything rethinking everything uh to try and maximize my efficiency so that i have just as as good of a camp setup as i can in anticipation for the 2021 season so let's uh jump right in and i'll i'll get started showing you what i've got going on [Music] so right off the bat i'll go ahead and show you this little aesthetic mod that i did you know some people are totally form over function and that's fine some people are all function over form uh but me i'm you know i think a lot like a lot of people are a little bit of both so uh this first aesthetic mod that i i did a little while back it was just kind of a day trip thing but i installed the toyota heritage grill so i'll show a picture here uh of what it used to look like i didn't really take any pictures of the process but this one is for a 2019 and earlier 5th gen 4runner so i did have to modify it a bit to fit uh with the core support bit here that supports um the front grille so i did have to do a little bit of modification but it saved me about 40 bucks over the 2020 and up grill so anyway that looks pretty good and uh yeah i'm pretty happy with it let's get into the good stuff so if you've seen any of my previous camping videos you'll remember that i used to load up the roof with a bunch of totes this has been a great option when you have a lot of stuff to bring with you know a larger family for me i didn't don't have a larger family but it's still me my wife baby and dog and to clear the vehicle of some space i put some stuff up on the roof so i had four totes up there it worked great they weren't completely full but it allowed me to get some of the stuff out of the cab which was nice downsides of course are adding weight up on the roof and increased air drag from just the large objects there's no getting around the gazelle tent it's got to go up on the roof for me so it's nice having the basket as an option for that with everything off of the roof it gives me room to stick my table my little cheap walmart fold out table up here as well as my new maxa traction boards so it'll be nice to have those on the trail just in case i need them although i'm sure they'll come in more handy in the winter on the side here i've got some quick fists set up these typically hold my shovel when i'm out winter driving uh in the summer sometimes i'll bring the shovel depending on what i plan on doing other times i'll leave it at home but in the back here i have two that are close together and that allows me to carry my little small shovel if i just need like a little camp shovel or something on this side of the vehicle i have a cheap yes com awning i'll post up some pictures right now of what it looks like when it's fully deployed i've made some good modifications to it i had to flip the bag around and then on the inside of the bag i added some velcro but it's been it's been quite reliable and i upgraded some of the joints of the awning itself with iron man 4x4 awning joints which has really made it pretty much on par in my opinion with some of the more expensive brands it's been a great affordable option for me somebody who doesn't plan on using it a whole lot and had a hard time justifying a couple hundred bucks for it this one was uh 80 bucks so okay so this is the part i really wanted to show you guys go ahead and open this up if you're wondering what this is this is just a limiting strap it keeps the door from opening up too far when i'm in the garage but here it is this is the new setup the new plan let me get you in here all right so the new setup consists of multiple plano totes these plano totes are something that i've been using a lot lately and if you're familiar with four runners you'll know that somebody figured out that three of these suckers can fit side by side which is awesome and it also means that you can fit another row of three on top so using that i packed in two by two and this basically holds all of our gear on the side here i've got enough room for my cooler and then our duffel for clothes and stuff so let me kind of show you what we got going on everyone's favorite little slide out table but yeah now i don't have anything really fully strapped down but i did show that you do have access to the oem d-rings here and here and then in the back corners and that allows me to strap everything and secure it down to the the platform and just make sure that it won't go anywhere in case of an emergency so i'll get more into this here in a second once i unload the vehicle but before we do that let's go up to the front in the back seat here the vehicle has a 60 40 split now i haven't quite decided how i'm going to do this i might do it like this i might end up swapping the side that the baby's on but whichever side i go with having folded down i'm thinking about removing these seats and building in a matching platform that way i can maximize space and then this is where the dog will sit over here i think i'll put the water i like to keep it low low center of gravity and then i have access to multiple points by the where the seats mount that i could potentially strap it down which is nice [Music] all right so here's kind of the whole setup i'm actually pretty proud of this so i'll go through each tote and kind of show you what i keep in each one i'm actually pretty surprised at how much space there is in some of these totes especially the kitchen toe um considering you know what we used to bring so i've really been able to shrink things down quite a bit i guess we'll just go ahead and start right here i've got my trusty fold out walmart cheapo table this thing has been great at camp shout out to the rooted progress they just got one also that they've been using for this year's camping which is cool this right here is just our clothing duffel usually this is as much as my wife and i need for at least three or so days you know we just bring the essentials it packs down pretty small and has come in handy here's my coleman yeti it's obviously not a real yeti uh it's a piece of crap this thing doesn't keep ice for uh more than like six or seven hours on a hot day so all of your stuff gets nasty i did actually just get a new one it's uh i think it's in town already but it hasn't been delivered yet a buddy of mine got me a discount on canyon cooler so i'm really stoked to you know get to try out a higher quality cooler and hopefully it'll serve us well so you'll see that in future videos i measured it out it's about exactly the same size as this so it'll fit with my setup okay tote number one so this tote actually stays with my vehicle most of the time just when i'm daily driving it's got all of my recovery gear in it um so in this bag right here i've got my bungees extra straps and stuff like that just for tie downs i've got my arb snatch strap and tow rope um under here i've got just a bag full of different shackles and stuff like that for different types of recoveries this bow saw was a present uh it's really nice it's super lightweight folds down to nothing when it's packed up like this it's safe to handle so you don't have to worry about cutting yourself or anything like that it's made out of aluminum plastic with a steel blade i think i actually saw it on living the van life at first and that's kind of where i i liked it and then after searching around i decided to go for it very high quality made in america spring creek manufacturing shout out not sponsored definitely not um and then i've got my airing up stuff so i've got my uh iron man air champ pro does great for airing up my tires and then like a cheap deflator x-bowl deflator thing um iron man deflater and a spare tarp so that kind of just stays on the vehicle this is like the heaviest uh tote by far uh in this tote obviously this is all of our sleeping gear right here i've got my wife's mummy bag it's a nice kind of fancy one she got it at an rei garage sale but it's nice because it packs down to nothing similar material this is my son's sleeping bag he's going to be two in october 2021 so it's just a nice small sleeping bag it's actually made out of the same material as like a puffy jacket or something which is cool and then this is just one of those cheap uh puffy blankets from costco and this giant man pajama shout out back road exploration he's kind of dealing with the same thing this is my ancient giant sleeping bag it barely packs down it sucks for heat the zipper doesn't work so that's definitely going to need to get upgraded getting a new one of these would definitely save me a little bit of space in the in this tote which would be nice maybe i'd be able to fit the pillows in there because over here skipping the kitchen stuff over here i keep my pillows and just chairs and other stuff if you're wondering what the heck is up with my pillows uh my mother-in-law made these for my wife when she was a kid just for fun and long story short it ended up being my camp pillow so yeah that's the thing camp pillowcase so two pillows um this is like a little tiny baby chair and then i've got my two camp chairs right here um some propane my mattress inflator some random stuff let's see i've got my little inflatable light um this is a fan if you have the the buddy heater or something going um having one of these is nice or if it's the summer and it's really hot having one of these can be nice to circulate air i've got my little fire starter cheater and a knife so i really cut down and some hand warmers i really cut down on what i what i take with me it's good to go through your stuff every now and then okay so here's all the cooking gear i'm actually gonna take it all out set it up on the table and i'll show you more in detail all right so this is another piece of the puzzle that i'm pretty proud of it took a lot of thinking and and planning to make work so right off the bat we'll start with this this is just a a stanley um what's it called french press now i'm not like a coffee snob or anything but the size of the container a 32 ounce stainless steel kind of pot if you will is what i was going after and this allows me to boil water and even cook like soups and stuff if i wanted to in a small form factor it also doubles as a container for our coffee which is cool and i can even use the french crust if i want so i keep all of our coffee tea hot chocolate stuff like that in a baggie and it goes in there nice little form factor and if i want i can use it to boil water [Music] okay in here i've got uh i put it into a tote just to kind of contain it but i've got things like my spatula camp knife i recently picked these up we'll see how they go they are kind of pop apart mugs so that we can have mugs because that's kind of nice for coffee in the morning and hot drinks at night and stuff like that but i didn't want them to take up space so i picked up these silicone ones that kind of compress and go together and now if we use them cool if we don't use them well you know they don't take a whole lot of room so we've got two of those some random sauces that little dry pack thing but this guy this was tricky so this is a 10 inch jetboil pan it's got a 2 inch lip on the side this was kind of a criteria for me and my wife because we like cooking meals with eggs and sausage and stuff like that so it's nice having just a big pot that you can stir things around but before this i was using a pan that was like an old kitchen pan and it didn't fold down or anything like this so this was kind of a pricey piece i think it was i think it was like 30 or 40 bucks and then i had to buy the lid separate because they don't sell it with it this is a lid for the jetboil pot and it's compatible with the the pan so i wanted a lid um so once i got this i was able to kind of add things inside of this to save space so in here you know i keep our utensils i'm missing one little pincer things again these are some silicone bowls if we end up needing bowls or something like that got two of those and then i bought some nine inch plates it came in a pack of like 20 so i've got tons of them but uh you know three three ought to do it and then they just kind of fit right in here into the into the pan and i can use that so i'm super excited at how well all of this stuff packs together saves a ton of room i mean i think i shrunk it down by like maybe 70 like a lot okay so moving on here let me make sure you can see okay moving on now i have a camp chef propane two burner stove um i'll show it here right now you can see kind of what it looks like it's very common you see a lot of these often what i found when i was out camping definitely solo but oftentimes even with family is that i don't use both burners and uh the downside to that thing is it's large and it doesn't pack down at all so i'm trying something new this is something i've been interested in that's upside down this is a butane single burner stove so here you go the fuel cell the butane fuel cell sits right inside here you lock it down with this lever there's a million videos on there this is a gas one oh gosh g 3700 i think it was like 30 bucks or 25 bucks or something on amazon i'll link it in the description and there you have it like that's all it's kind of all i think i'll need just like that saves a ton of space packs up all together then i don't have to carry extra propane from what i've heard one of these butane cylinders should last me a long time so let me go ahead and get this thing all packed up and last but not least we've got the gazelle tent i think there's a million videos out there on the gazelle tent but if you look at my mount st helens video i posted a long time ago before i really started making videos you'll see uh you'll kind of get to see it in use the little guy the man the myth the legend himself all right so there you have it i've made a mess this is all of the gear it packs down to almost nothing which is great and uh i'm looking forward to trying it out hopefully soon so let me go ahead and get all this packed up [Music] high five yeah okay so everything's all packed up and as a little teaser for the next video probably this is what i've been working on so some of you may have guessed it immediately by seeing but i'm building myself some sliders um i've already got the rails that are going to go under the pinch weld fully length out cut they're notched so i'll be hammering this down welding around it that way it will have a nice 45 degree chamfer chamfer these plates are going to bolt up to the the frame rails and then these are the standoffs between the frame rails and the uh the long tubing so what i'm waiting on right now is uh round tubing for the the actual slider portion unfortunately the metal shop that i've been going to uh they've been out of it for a little while so i've got some on reserve gonna go pick it up on monday and get back started i'm really excited about this should be pretty cool for anyone interested in doing their first fabrication project i think this is a great one i mean it's really not that hard to do you've got quite a bit of wiggle room to be custom and do your own thing as long as you build them safe and strong you'll be okay um dirt lifestyle nate shout out he made a great diy slider video for basically beginners it's it's i've been kind of partially following that but also the nice thing about sliders is you can really kind of do your own thing as well so yeah keep your eye out for that all right you guys that about wraps up this video uh this is a setup that has taken me years to refine even before i made this channel uh you know i was out camping with friends and family and this is always something that i've wanted to do is just continue to refine my camping setup and uh so hopefully i i showed you some cool tips some tricks uh maybe i allow you to skip a step or two in your planning setup and kind of think ahead to be more efficient and uh yeah spring is in the air so hopefully i'll be out soon and i'll be camping i'll have my new sliders and uh we'll get some some cool videos and have some some good times so uh so thanks for watching and i'll see you in the next one [Music]

Channel: GrizzlyPath

Views: 9,241

Rating: 4.921875 out of 5

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Id: l6ivP6Cc1ME

Length: 20min 1sec (1201 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 27 2021