- A few weeks ago, I decided to transform the back of my Subaru Forester into a camper. And I'm finally pretty much
all done with the setup. And today I'm out in the beautiful woods of Washington State camping. I'm so excited about how
everything has come together and that I get to start using my setup. So I thought I'd bring
you guys along with me for this little trip and show you what I've
got going on back there. (upbeat music) So here is the setup. I will have the video links down below where I talk about the
actual platform itself and where I build it, if you
have any questions about that. But now I have my bedding all in here. I have some bins down underneath, which I'll talk about in a little bit and I've added tons of
accessories that are super cool that I'm excited to share with you guys. So mounted up on the left
side of my roof rack, I have the Rhino-Rack Sunseeker Awning. I was putting together this whole setup, and it dawned on me that I
didn't have anywhere to sit if it's like raining or super
sunny and I'm in the desert. And then I saw that you can get awnings that mount onto your roof rack and just unroll right off of them like staying attached to your car. And it looked so simple and so easy. And I liked that they
couldn't just get blown away in the wind if they weren't
properly staked down. So I picked this up and it's so easy. It takes like 30 seconds
to unroll and put down. And something I really like about it is it gives me a covered
entrance to get into the vehicle, if I'm getting in on the side. For example, if it's pouring rain outside and I'm like getting in and
out to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night or something, I wouldn't have anywhere to stop and like take off my soaking
wet rain jacket and things before crawling into the car, I'd have to just crawl right in. But now with the awning, if I
unroll it before I go to bed, then I always have like
a nice covered area to step out into. I'll give you guys a look
at what this looks like from the side entrance. I usually have stuff down
here on the floor for storage but I have all my stuff out on the table over there right now. So here's just another
look at the sleeping area. I have my two pillows, one for my head, one for my body, of course. As far as the bedding itself, I just have a twin sheet set on this. And then this blanket is a
camping blanket from REI. It's by a brand called Rumpl. I saw it and it looked super
cozy and I loved the color. And I also liked that I could use it as just a blanket around camp as well, like sitting around the campfire. Then down under here I have these two plastic
bins that I found at Target that fit pretty perfectly. And they can also be pushed
quite a ways further back. There's a lot of room to
store stuff under these, so I can push it all the way back. I also have a couple of
little lanterns here. So in one of these bins,
I keep all of my cookware, some coffee, anything kind
of food, cooking related. And then in the second bin I just have some
miscellaneous like toiletries and my sleeping bag just
in case it gets extra cold. So that's pretty much everything
that's in my car right now. I do have some stuff
piled on the front seats but for the most part, I pulled out all of my
accessories and stuff and brought them over here. So I have all of like my cooking stuff and just some other things that make it feel a little more glam and comfortable out here in the woods. I also have this really nice fire pit that I am definitely going
to be sitting around tonight. So when I first started considering transforming my car into a camper and doing road trips
and sleeping in my car, there were two big questions or issues that I knew
I would need to solve for this to be a realistic
thing for me to do. The first question was, how
I'm I going to have power? Because I need power to shoot
content while I'm traveling. When I'm on the go and
shooting these types of videos I often will have up to five
different cameras with me. I have my mirrorless camera,
my little vlog camera, my drone, my GoPro, and
sometimes my DJI Osmo Pocket. And depending on what I'm shooting I'm rotating through
those throughout the day, so they all need to be charged every day. I also need to have my laptop charged to take all of my memory cards
and dump all of my content. And then of course, I also
need to charge my phone and just want to power other things. So that is where the Jackery Explorer 1000 power station comes in. Oh my gosh, you guys,
this thing is a beast. Jackery very kindly gifted this to me. I am absolutely giddy about this because look at how many things you can charge off of it at once. It has three regular wall outlets on it, two USB type C outlets,
two regular USB outlets, a 12 volt outlet, and it can power anything
up to a thousand Watts. So you can literally run a
television off of this thing, a blender, if it's a
thousand Watts or less and the battery capacity is enormous. Like you can charge your
laptop many, many times, your phone many, many times. Now the super, super cool thing about this is it can charge off of solar panels. I have my solar panels
folded up right here. I don't have them out right
now because it's pretty shady but you can hook this thing up to two of the Jackery
SolarSaga 100 solar panels. So you can go off the
grid and stay off the grid and keep powering all of your stuff, your television, whatever you want with solar panels with this thing. I think that is the coolest thing ever. You don't have to use it
with solar panels though. You can also charge it off of
the 12 volt plug in your car. So if you're doing a lot of driving you can charge it while you drive and you can also charge it
off of a regular wall outlet. I'll have a link to this down below. I will say this one,
especially the Explorer 1000 is a splurge for your setup but you might not need this much power. And they do make them in smaller sizes that are more affordable. So now the second question
or issue that I had in mind when I was preparing for this setup is how am I going to shower, especially how am I going
to wash and dry my hair? When I started thinking about this setup I thought it would be so much easier if I had a way to just blow my hair dry, because it takes forever to dry. I get headaches if I
try to let it air dry. This thing will power a hairdryer. This is the BaByliss Nano Titanium Dryer. It's a 1000 Watt hairdryer. Most hairdryers are
above a thousand Watts. So you will need to make sure that whatever you use is
a thousand Watts or less, but this is actually a great hairdryer. You know how most travel hairdryers just like scream in your ear
and have absolutely no power, this is actually a
legitimate, good hairdryer. It's good heat. It's not too loud. So I'm going to turn this on high. (air whooshing) It totally works and
it's absolutely amazing. But next you might be thinking how are you going to take a shower? Well, I have figured that
situation out as well. First for privacy, I have this Pop-Up tent
pod that I found on Amazon. Super nice and it collapses down so it doesn't take up much room. And then this right here is the Geyser Systems
portable shower with a heater. This thing will heat up
a hot shower for you. This brand is a small company
based out of Colorado. They sent this to me to try
out, which is so nice of them. And they designed this
product to help people stay clean off the grid while also consuming as
little water as possible. It has a three liter capacity and a pump and you can adjust how much
water you want coming out by just twisting the nozzle. So if you're really
trying to conserve water you can only turn it on a little bit. And this isn't just for showering, it's also for washing dishes or spraying off your feet or anything else you need water for. They actually sell different color sponges that attach right to the nozzle and you can color code
them for different things, like a pink sponge for showering and a yellow sponge is for your dishes. You can find this at REI, and they actually sell
two different versions. One with the heating
capabilities and one without, but you don't necessarily
need the heated one to have a hot shower in
either of the versions. If you add two liters of
regular temperature water and then boil a liter of
water on your camp stove and add that in, that should instantly
be a hot shower for you. And they have a temperature
gauge on the top too that tells you what the temperature is. And the whole thing
automatically shuts off if it's over 101 degrees, but if you have the heated version it's designed to plug into
the 12 volt outlet of your car while it's running. I could also plug it into
the Jackery power station, that works as well. And then depending on the temperature of water you initially put in, it'll take anywhere between
15 to 45 minutes to heat up, which I mean you get up, you turn this on, you cook your breakfast and by the time you're all done with that, it's gonna be hot. And then moving over here I
have my cooking and food set up. My propane is still in the
car, I need to get that out but this cute little mint green stove. Oh my gosh. When I saw this, I was
like, that's the one. I knew I needed a stove
to do all my cooking on. And this one's so cute. And I liked that it has
the wind guards on the side so that a breeze can't go over your flame. The brand of this one is Eureka. I know that REI carries it. I think a lot of outdoorsy
type places carry this brand. I think this was a
popular one this season. So I will try to find it somewhere and have a link down below
if you're interested in this. And then down here, I have my cooler. This is the YETI Roadie 24 cooler. I didn't have a cooler and I knew I needed to
get one for this setup. But to be honest, I wasn't sure if I wanted to spend the money on a YETI because everyone raves about them but they're also like pretty expensive. However, the ultimate deciding
factor for me to get this was the dimensions because with the platform in my car, a traditional like squatty, wide cooler just doesn't really fit anywhere unless I wanted to set it
right on top of the platform. But obviously it can't sit
there while I'm sleeping. So I did some measuring and concluded that I really needed something
that was taller and skinnier so that it could sit on the
floor behind the front seats. And as it turned out, the dimensions of the Roadie
24 were absolutely perfect for what I measured. This cooler was actually
designed to be tall enough to fit wine bottles in it. It's also a perfect seat height. They actually sell a custom little pad you can put on top to turn it into a seat because these coolers are
virtually indestructible. They're designed to be bear proof. So you can totally use this as a chair. The inside of mine is not
super organized right now. I just threw some ice in, like actually just the whole bag of ice in on my way out of town without
like nestling anything in. I also bought the little accessory basket that YETI sells for dry goods. Like I have some Hershey's
for some smores tonight and stuff that you
wouldn't want to get wet. So this does fit perfectly
behind my front passenger seats. However, something that
I am considering doing I'm gonna grab a lantern here. It's kind of starting to get dark. So if you watch the platform build video, you know how this platform works and how there's a piece that is on a hinge that flips out at the end of the day and props up on these legs
for more room at night. And the YETI cooler fits
perfectly right in this well but not if that wooden leg is there. So I'm considering trimming one leg so that it just rests on
the top of the cooler, because those things are
so like sturdy and rugged, that that would totally
be fine weight-wise. And then I'd be able to keep the cooler just in one place all
the time, even at night and the leg could just sit on it. So we'll see. I'm sure that there are things as I continue to try this setup out, that I'll decide to modify. I'm going to pause on
talking about the setup because it's starting to get dark. And I think I'm gonna make dinner and kind of start getting
settled in for the night, get a fire going. First there's something I
need to get out that I bought that's super fun. I found some USB powered
twinkle String Lights at REI, and I'm gonna be plugging
these into the Jackery, and lighting up my camp a little. (pop music) ♪ Meet me where the meadows
grow, by the waterhole ♪ ♪ Lucid dreams of you and me ♪ ♪ Sky high busy life, I wanna leave ♪ (pop music) ♪ Oh, muscle tight, early
light, clenched down jaw ♪ ♪ Say my name or say it twice ♪ ♪ Shed this layer of overthinking ♪ ♪ Oh ♪ Good morning. Last night was good. I was surprised at how well I slept. The mattress is super comfortable. However, I was in there about 10 minutes before I decided to
get my sleeping bag out because it was just chilly. I had the sunroof Kraft about six inches and I think it got down to
the high 40s last night. So it was just a little bit chilly. So what I ended up doing actually is I got my sleeping bag
out and I crawled in that, but I left it unzipped because I don't like how
restrictive sleeping bags are. So I just crawled in it,
leaving the zip open. And then I put the orange
down blanket over all of me so that I could still
like stretch my legs out and be covered in stuff. And that actually worked really well. I don't know if I'd recommend that setup if you're starting from scratch
and don't have anything yet I'd probably just recommend getting a much heavier down blanket or just a sleeping bag
that you like to sleep in, but it worked. Also something that I meant
to show you guys yesterday is how I'm blocking my windows at night. These are some sunshade
covers from WeatherTech. I actually got the idea for this from the same blog post that
I got my build idea from. And they're customized
for my exact vehicle. If you go to the WeatherTech website, you can put in your make,
your model, your year, and they will have a custom cut for the windows of your
vehicle, which is really nice. And the nice thing about
them is they're reversible. So if you want to keep heat out you put the silver side facing out. If you wanna keep heat
in, you flip them around and you do the black side facing out. So the silver side is reflecting the heat within the vehicle. And when I saw this, I knew
I really liked this idea because it's very space efficient in the sense that you don't
have any curtains hanging down or dangling around your vehicle. I know that curtains are very like Pinterest boho camper chic, but because I was already
so tight for space within my vehicle, I
really didn't want anything hanging that could be like
caught or pulled down. So these popped perfectly
into the window spaces. And they're so easy. Also on my build video, I
got quite a few questions about the mesh sunroof
cover that I talked about. This is just a piece of mesh fabric with some magnet sewn around it. I found it on Amazon. It's not big enough to
cover my entire sunroof because it's a panoramic sunroof that if I'm only cracking
my sunroof like six inches then it works totally fine. And it was great last night. Something else that's pretty handy for this type of sleep
in your car camping style is a roof box, which you can obviously see I have on my roof. There's a squirrel on my table. What are you doing? Get out of there. No, no. Get out of there. Come on. That's my stuff. No, you're not supposed to eat that. That's probably not good for you. Don't worry guys. I didn't leave this out overnight. I had it all in my car, but I just pulled everything out to kind of start rejigging things. Anyway, speaking of rejigging things, a cargo box is pretty helpful if you're bringing a lot of stuff and you don't wanna do
a lot of reshuffling. For me, I didn't really want
to pile a whole bunch of stuff on top of my bed during the day because one that would
block my view out the back while I'm driving, and two, it all has to go
somewhere else at night. Like anything that I pile on top of there needs to be put somewhere else, which you can put quite
a bit in the front seats if you just shuffle things
up there, but it is a lot. And I definitely do wanna
be able to fit everything in my car at night. I don't like leaving anything
out while I'm sleeping. I like to pack it all away. I found this Kuju Coffee,
pour over coffee at REI and I'm boiling up some water. (upbeat music) This thing is so cool. It comes with its own
little pour over pouch that folds up that you open up. The brand also sells the coffee in bulk if you don't wanna use
like a single use thing, but since I've never tried it, I thought I would do the fancier version and see what I think. (techno music) I'm all packed up and ready to head out. And I wanna check here how much battery is left on my Jackery. So I charged my phone. I charged my camera battery. I ran the USB twinkle lights. I charged my laptop. I ran the Geyser shower off of it to heat the water up this morning. And it still has 74%. I hope you guys enjoyed
coming along with me on my first solo camping adventure. I'll have everything I
talked about in this video listed in links down in the info bar. And I will see you guys in the next one. Bye. (techno music)
