Our scariest day of van life. (winter in Yellowstone)

when we woke up this morning we planned to make what we thought would be a long and boring 13-hour drive from nebraska to our 25th state of wyoming to experience the beauty and wonder of yellowstone national park in the winter time however today was anything but boring it was like one minute the road was completely fine and the next minute it was frozen there are two giant beautiful eagles just sitting in this snow covered field [Music] it was 75 and sunny yesterday wow it hurts i really hope we don't get trapped in south dakota so today we were supposed to be driving 13 hours to the western entrance of yellowstone which would probably be the most driving we had ever done in a day but uh now we've found ourselves in a snowstorm in south dakota surrounded by nothing our odds making it or not looking good so in case this gets interesting we thought we'd turn on the camera it's crazy how we can't see anything past like 100 yards so we've just made it off of the back country road and we're getting on to what we hope is an interstate that has either been plowed or at least has a lot more cars on it to knock some of the snow off oh it's black oh there's still some ice this is terrifying 13 hours is already a lot of driving you have to do 13 hours through this i'm gonna be mentally exhausted you did so good i'm just gonna try to get past these this is what i'm scared of yeah you did so good nate i don't know how you stayed so calm it was like one minute the road was completely fine and the next minute it was frozen i mean way over my head being a driver from tennessee but at this point i feel like it's probably more dangerous to pull off the road and take the risk of sitting there and someone else hitting us than it is just to keep going at a slow speed as far as we can whoa look at that oh no completely flipped i think this is the most nervous i've ever been in my life we're still five miles from the next exit but even then we don't know if we're gonna be able to get off like i just feel trapped right now there's no good option the next five miles were painfully slow and felt like an eternity after that close call it felt like our van was going to slide off the road or into another car at any second this was without a doubt the most scared we had been since moving into the van all right i think we're gonna go for it there's actually a nicely parked out path here there's a hill though so hopefully we make it up come on man go up the hill keep going truck in front of me come on keep going keep going there's not a car just keep cruising i'm going through the stop sign right police officer sorry about that you waved at me i just ran a stop sign right brother police officer and he just waved at me and completely understood we've almost made it that guy's wearing shorts no one was prepared oh we didn't even capture the most exciting moment on camera when i was careening towards two 18-wheelers that had already wrecked on the side of the road it was like there was a magnet attracting me to him as we were sliding and that's the last second we started going the other way it was really scary [Music] now that we're here even though i have no idea what we're gonna do i just feel safe i'm just so thankful that we're here i'm sorry that was so scary i'm so glad you were driving you okay yeah we're so close to hitting that truck i think i just kicked into survival mode i don't even think i had emotions i don't think i did either and then they just they all hit me at once i feel like in my mind we were like five inches away i don't think it was quite like it was happening and you were saying out loud i'm losing control i'm losing control i'm gone i'm gone i'm gone and i was just like like i was embracing the hit like i thought we were yeah we were sliding straight into the truck the good news is we're in our home so if we do end up in the pilot parking lot for the next 24 hours we have a bed and food and water in subway is there a subway yeah yes food makes everything better real quick we want to thank better help for sponsoring this video i think we can all agree that this past year has been really tough on almost everyone in one way or another and a lot of people might feel like they're alone in the struggles that they're facing let me assure you you are not alone and it is okay to not be okay therapy is something that we think should be normalized and utilized by more people but it can be scary to make that first appointment and even scarier to physically go and face a stranger with your struggles but that's the best thing about betterhelp it's all online when you make an account you take a short quiz and betterhelp will match you with your own licensed professional therapist you can talk to them on the phone schedule weekly video chats and instant message them anytime you want not only is it more affordable than traditional therapy but you can sign up from anywhere in the world we know so many people who have benefited from counseling and it has changed their lives dramatically for the better so if you're ready to join over a million people taking charge of their mental health you can get 10 off your first month by going to our link betterhelp.com forward slash knn that's better h-e-l-p [Music] look at these wicked icicles you driving no all right it looks like they plowed the roads the snow has really slowed down and we're gonna attempt to drive through the night and save this trip to old faithful you're on board for this don't do that we agreed to this i'll decide when i see the interstate i'm not forcing her to do that you're right no i agree [Music] look at these beautiful snow free roads the only thing that concerns me is how few cars there are on the road but maybe that's just south dakota we're in the middle of nowhere is that an 18 wheeler in the ditch oh there's a car too wow no more snow grass has never looked more beautiful this is the first time since we pulled out a gas station that i've actually thought we had a chance of making it to yellowstone gps currently says our estimated time of arrival is 206 am tour starts at 8. we're going to need a lot of caffeine oh today was very stressful and i was a hot mess for a little while but it could have been so much worse i'm so thankful that like the only bad thing that's coming up today is we're gonna lose a few hours of sleep let's go to yellowstone all right we have about three hours to sleep before we get up and do the tour of the morning also it's negative two degrees which is by far the coldest we have ever attempted to sleep in this van dirty on the heater we'll see you in the [Music] morning [Music] hey siri what's the weather it's currently clear and minus four degrees today's high will be 32 degrees it uh wasn't exactly warm but we survived wow negative four is cold i am surprisingly awake this morning after three hours of sleep look at the size of these tires that's crazy it's huge [Music] [Music] wow what a start to the day that was so cool we've never been here in the summer but i cannot imagine that it gets any more beautiful than this you're definitely more restricted on where you can go in the winter and how you can get there like the only way you can make it this deep into the park is on a snow coach or on a snowmobile but i don't think i would trade it this morning has been incredible we've only been out here for two and a half hours and i cannot believe how much we've already gotten to see so you wanted to come check us out what the morning the bison with their frosty hair standing by the misty majestic missouri river it doesn't get much better than that it does get better they have hot chocolate cheers you know it's been a weird 24 hours when i order hot chocolate instead of coffee i don't know if i've ever done that are you sick she had so much coffee [Music] look look they're fighting i feel like i'm living in a national geographic documentary i cannot believe i'm seeing this in real life right now i think last night strauss catching up with her i told her i'd see way more of yellowstone than she would today we have just arrived at the upper geyser basin which is home to old faithful i'm pretty sure the most popular guys are in the entire world so old faithful used to erupt every hour on the hour hence the name old faithful but there was a big earthquake in 1959 that somehow threw that off and now it erupts every 70 minutes give or take 10 minutes on either side which equals out to about 20 times a day we have somewhere between 10 or 30 minutes to sit here and watch it steam as we wait to see one of the world's most famous geysers erupt over 100 feet into the air i'm so excited me too the anticipation thank you that's incredible wow [Music] i'm not gonna say that old faithful was underwhelming but it was definitely less powerful than i expected but we got super lucky there's another geyser that's going off right now and it only goes off once per day they've told us it's completely unpredictable it's called beehive and it actually goes almost twice as high into the air as old faithful i feel like we're acting super spoiled here it is absolutely mind-blowing that these things are happening naturally water spewing from the earth i feel so fortunate that we're getting to see beehive yes no our guide told us that in the summertime there are three to five thousand people who come here to watch old geyser go off oh geyser oh faithful and if you want to get a front row seat you have to get here an hour before and we just rolled up 10 minutes before it went off got a front row seat no problem and we had maybe 100 other people here and now we're pretty much all alone enjoying our lunch with the perfect view of old faithful there's a small group of like 20 people way over there but uh we pretty much have old faithful all to ourselves yellowstone in the winter highly recommend i'm not even cold and you're not asleep and i'm awake [Music] so we are currently hiking through a geyser field called biscuit basin and we just learned something that i think is super fascinating there are only 900 geysers located in the entire world and 500 of those geysers are located here in yellowstone so over half the world's geysers are located on these two million acres and they don't even stink i'm getting about 47.3 on this section right here this water it's rolling down the hill it's cooling each one of those bacterias we call thermophiles they all reflect a little different color back to our eye and so kind of the takeaways when you see different colors you're seeing different forms of life let's try this right here a little closer 72.1 right there so it's risen over 20 degrees fahrenheit just a little bit away doesn't he have the best guide voice cara said he should pick up a second career reading audiobooks look at all this insect larvae down here all those little black specks those little flies are amazing if they fly more than two inches off the surface they'll freeze to death no way you guys want to take a guess on how hot this is we just tempt what was a 49 and 75 what do you guys think 95 95 because 100 100 let's give it a try let's see which one of you is closest here that settled on whoa 126. so i won that's crazy don't jump off that temperature i've tempted this runoff up to 155 before where we're standing right here is the most common place in the whole park where people can get burned because that water's just right there and so people they come up and they think oh it is actually really hard to see but now check this out we're getting up here at sapphire pool wow our guy told us if it's blue it's not for you the reason it's blue is because it's so hot that not even bacteria can survive in it the shade that we're in right now has nothing to do with clouds we are standing in the shadow of the steam from the largest hot springs in the united states and the third largest in the world it's called grand prismatic and it's actually really hard to see in the winter because of how hot it is and all the steam that's coming up from it but apparently if you're here during the summer the colors are absolutely beautiful we're getting just a taste of that on the edges we have been trapped on this boardwalk for the last hour waiting for the bison to move and they finally just took off running freedom wow we're at our last stop of the day and we've gotten super lucky once again fountain geyser which goes off every six to eight hours started erupting as soon as we got here what a day we are completely surrounded right now this is awesome four are going off at the same time there's two here fountain geyser and then jet geyser right here just started erupting that makes eight total for the day this one's getting me wet it's almost like kissing under a waterfall yeah kissing under a geyser kissing under a waterfall that smells like rotten eggs it really feels like yellowstone just put on a grand finale for us i'm just so grateful that we were able to make it here yesterday but thankfully this is not the end of the trip it's only the first half in the next video we'll explain how we're able to film in national parks again because if you've been following our channel for a while now you know that last year that privilege got taken away from us but thankfully some things have changed all right let me show you how we made it through yesterday's drive one two three four five cups of coffee we are so close five minutes away according to the gps and it is 2 43 a.m to so work thanks for driving

Channel: Kara and Nate

Views: 2,153,674

Rating: 4.8116527 out of 5

Keywords: #vanlife, converted van tour, couple vlog, daily vlog, full time travel, kara and nate, kara and nate vlog, off grid living, self converted sprinter van, sprinter van, sprinter van conversion, tiny home, tiny home on wheels, tiny house, travel, travel couple, travel vlog, usa travel, van life, van life couple, van life usa, van life vlog, van tour, vlog, yellowstone, yellowstone national park, wyoming, yellowstone vlog, west yellowstone, road trip, winter in yellowstone

Id: nBAVV8F_bBE

Length: 18min 38sec (1118 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 04 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/qpid]

Still odd seeing them cover the logo of their Canadian goose jackets with black tape.

[u/Betsyis12]

Welcome to white-knuckle driving. Being inexperienced with icy highways at least Nate knew to not pull over and risk being hit by another vehicle.

I really enjoyed the Yellowstone Park segment. Beautiful place, great cinematography.

[u/nowheresville99]

This one video perfectly sums up everything that has been so frustrating about watching K&N over the past year or so.

The second half of the video was easily the best content they have done in months. Yellowstone is amazing anytime, but not many people actually even think about exploring it during Winter. I'm sure they had the tour comped, but the price of the tours isn't even as bad as I was expecting (looks like about $200 per person, per day - although I didn't look up what specific company they used). If the video had only been yellowstone, it would have been a great video.

The problem is the first half of the video was so far beyond cringe worthy that it was really hard to enjoy anything with it by the time they got to that point. First, they boxed themselves into a corner by having to drive more than 800 miles in a single day so they could make their 8am reservation - a distance that's tough to cover in a day even in good conditions, and was completely needless with better planning on their part. Then, when it was clear that the conditions wouldn't be good - which obviously they could have known before leaving by simply looking at the forecast - they didn't stop, they didn't attempt to reschedule their tour for a day or two later - they paused for an hour and continued down the road. Throw in the extra stress of driving a van in winter conditions for 2 people with no experience driving in winter on top of the already stressful distance, they were certainly in a massively fatigued and dangerous state by the time they got to West Yellowstone. Nothing but poor decision after poor decision, and since they managed to again escape without any serious consequences (except apparently for the pipes freezing again, which they haven't shown yet, but I'm sure they'll blame on anything other than themselves), they learn nothing from it. Inevitably not too far down the road, they'll repeat their mistakes, we'll have another moment of Kara crying about how scared she was while praising Nate for being her hero for managing for surviving the situation that he was responsible for causing and could easily have been avoided.

[u/alvarkresh]

Glad to know they're safe. That was Big Pucker Factor there in the video, for sure.

I also noticed the wipers on that van aren't doing a great job - guessing there's not much need for them in the more southern parts of the US. I hope Nate changes them out soon.

[u/tfresca]

I guarantee they stopped paying them.

[u/SamosaSambusek]

I watched this video hoping to see some footage of Yellowstone, one of my favorite places. I am not getting into their dangertubing adventures driving in inclimate weather which has been covered already in another post.

For people commenting on their Canada Goose sponsorship, you should really pay attention to the sponsor they are promoting in this video, BetterHelp. Because this company and the people who promoted it on YouTube were in so much controversy last year. The app and the service is basically a quack and offers no real mental health service and even YouTube influencers who are not known for integrity, distanced themselves from this company.

Here is an article and if you Google the name along with “controversy” or “scam” or other similar words, you will get plenty of hits

https://drallisonanswers.com/other/better-help-controversy/

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/572803/

This is Pewdiepie who was warning and blowing the whistle on Betterhelp long before the media picked up this story last year.

https://youtu.be/8PLgOaVXmGU

Lot of professional psychologists and psychiatrists trashed this BetterHelp as garbage and no real mental health help. The site themselves say they are not real substitute for seeing a qualified therapist .in addition, the company systematically engaged in fraudulent and deceptive billing practices for their non existent mental health help.

The reason YouTube influencers were promoting this is because in addition to sponsorship, this company has an affiliate program that pays $200 for every person that signed up through the affiliate link and they are basically a ripoff.

I really question the judgement and the ethics of sponsoring and promoting this company considering how much controversy and unethical business practices they were in just last year, enough for even YouTube influencers to distance themselves from them as toxic waste. There is ample information and research available on BetterHelp already.

All this information has been out there and the issue boiled over in the media just last year. To be sponsored by them and promoting quackery as mental health help just for money doesn’t speak a lot about your ethics and your willingness to promote anything to your viewers, if the price is right.

For the ones riling about Canada Goose, you should really do some research on BetterHelp who are ethically 10x worse than Canada Goose. Canada Goose at least took active steps to remove fur from several of their lines and introduce new lines without fur and committed to using ethically sourced fur where they are still using it. BetterHelp is just carrying on and finding ethically compromised and indifferent influencers still left on YouTube greedy and desperate enough to still promote them after all the information available about their services and they just found Nate and Kara. Pushing this to your viewers at this juncture is willful disregard for the welfare of your viewers.

Anyone trying to sign up for this after seeing Nate and Kara do promotion for this unqualified service, please do your research and don’t trust people promoting services on YouTube in exchange for money and take no accountability or responsibility for the products they promote. Mental Health is a serious issue.

[u/1868orc]

Dakota ground blazzards are brutal. Nate has some balls. Yellowstone looked awesome.

[u/[deleted]]

So incredibly over dramatic.

[u/fakemoose]

I thought they swore off National Parks? Did they end up paying for a commercial permit?