Putting our life back together (aftermath of the bike trip)

so yesterday it was 70 degrees outside and now look at this it's september this is crazy ah snow makes me so happy we're karen nate and we've spent the last four years traveling to 100 countries but 2020 brought us back to our home country of the united states of america where we bought a converted sprinter van and transitioned from living out of suitcases to full-time van life if you missed our last video nate just finished mountain biking 570 miles across colorado which turned out to be without a doubt the hardest physical challenge and after reaching the finish line in durango we drove back to our friend's house in leadville to spend the better part of a week recuperating from that intense adventure this colorado trail trip really put the van to the test cara took it down some super rough dirt roads we spent most of time camping off the grid and we slept three full-size adults in a van that's built for two people after arriving here in leadville we pretty much moved into our friend's bed and breakfast and we've just been ignoring the fact that our van is a complete wreck just look at this we've at least put all of our clothes into a bag now minus all of the shoes and bike stuff this area hasn't been used in days i'm embarrassed we've had a dirty van before but it is past dirty like it is absolutely filthy and then the shower is turned into a storage unit i think i was tired for the bike trip cara was tired of being in the van for 17 days plus she's having to edit all the footage so this is just a mess that's the only way to describe it [Music] so we were planning on just taking the week off to knock all of this stuff out but we thought it would be good to show more of a complete picture of van life instead of just the fun adventures why wouldn't it come off plus we have some super fun upgrades that we're making to the van this week that we wanted to share too good luck [Music] it doesn't get much better than free access to a washer and dryer when you live in a van and we have a lot of dirty clothes found some cool stickers in nate's pocket i almost washed these and my chopstick is stolen so when we first moved into this van two and a half months ago everything had a place perfectly in the drawers and in the cabinet but now they look like this and this and this and uh this one's so before i put all these dishes away i think it's time to just take everything out and reorganize all of it ew literally dirty paper plates like trash in our sister store i found our gopro we thought we lost it who goes there hi frankie [Music] i found myself some helpers what is this it's our security system security system that's right somehow i've made even more of a mess than i had before hello okay i've only done three drawers so far but i already feel so much better this one has bowls plates smoothie cups and my blender mugs cups drink stuff we're not the only ones doing work on our van today yep we had a little fuel leak so i got the manly hair dryer out also known as a heat gun and we just plugged the hole with a like a hex it's gotta be better than duct tape right rick's doing real manly work on his van today what are you doing on yours so far the plastic bucket is the best system that we've come up with it takes a while but it's pretty easy this is like the worst design on the sprinter van you have to fill this up but there's no way of knowing when it's full and the liquid is super corrosive it's just a recipe for disaster oh i think i hear it wow i guess we really needed that huh the first week we were on the road i hit a tree and this thing bent all the way back and hasn't worked ever since so if the wee boost is working this this light right here should be on i'm going with it and plug it back in strategy huh set your multimeter to volts dc you should not have it rick and i fix things very similarly it always starts with watching a video on youtube and then yeah so it is getting power so i think there's a chance that i may have figured this out i've been staring at this thing for 30 minutes now and i think i may have just fixed the wii boost replacement go in there all right the new fuse is in now i hook it back to the fuse box plug it in and we see if it works okay the moment of truth the real moment of okay if the light turns green when i plug this cord in i fixed it is it green i can't see it oh i was sure i had fixed it i have not missed this part of van life after posting our bike series we realized how many people were interested in how a family of four can travel in a sprinter van so race gonna give us a quick tour so we got the 170 wheelbase the extended one adds about a foot and a half at the back that's allowed us to have a little more space in the rear which allowed us to put the second row seats in without being too cramped when we bought this thing it was just like a standard cargo van the cargo model of the sprinter just has the front seats but because we have a family of four we needed to add a second row of seats to fit the kids we got the swivel seats to make like a second living space i know what a lot of people are probably interested in is how we fit a family of four in a van to be honest it hasn't been too difficult our kids are still small they're four and eight so that helps once evie gets to be about 12 we'll have to either pull a trailer or strap it to the roof or something i'm not sure what they're going to do just yet you know our van's still a work in progress like a lot of sprinter van owners the diyers you know we we're always balancing do we put the kitchen in which we desperately need to do this is where it'll go or do we go on that raft trip or go on that bike trip or go on that climbing trip or do any of the other amazing adventurous things you can do in colorado so we found ourselves in this kind of position where it works we can sleep this is my kitchen the fridge which is amazing it can hold food for five days for us or four cases of beer and i have my cab kitchen so this is like my plates and dishes and knives and full fresh food my washing up sink and anything else that when we're on jolty roads i just put in here because it actually seems to stay pretty it hasn't fallen down before but cooking in here right now is kind of tricky so that's why we're lucky it's summer i just use our car camping stove which is like our coleman two burner and i just pull this out really like you guys saw me i cook maybe in the garage but i like walk outside to cook in the garage this is upstairs downstairs in the garage this is our uh informal lounge that's the informal lounge this is the formal this is the former lodge we have companies when we have companies these are pretty nifty these we rick built these boxes and i keep extra toilet paper um just stuff that i don't need access to a toolbar blanket there's a ton of storage and then you have yourself our wheel wells are still in there too and so in here i keep emergency sleeping bags a tent our camp chairs to put this in perspective we almost have the exact same van it's the 170 wheel base it's a high roof their van is just about a foot and a half longer than ours but for some reason every time i'm in here i feel like they have so much space i think the main difference is that your van is like a new york city apartment and ours is like a colorado garage bottom bed 350 for the top bed and then for the bottom bed [Music] there you go is that it time that's it time time time oh the bottom bed was so much faster this is where we sleep and this is where i sleep on this side of sometimes and when it's super crooked we either put our hand on this end or the center they are the other clothes are up there when i went and we have to step on the fridge to get up there and they're hanging on the carabiners oh this is my socks and undies this is and these are my shirts and pants these are my shirts and pants and mom and dad sleep up here and they have a fan and they turn it on everything yeah this is how they turn it up press this button and last but not least the bathroom tour so for the bathroom frog family we we only wanted the best we went with like a real top-of-the-line bathroom we were actually at walmart looking for toothbrushes and we found this thing for 49.99 i think we also bought battleship and uh and we just put it in here oh we had to take it out of the box yeah i would say less than 10 seconds you do your business and then that's a flush but to be honest we don't even use that we uh we use the high pressure flush this is a high pressure flush so this is the eco flush because we're very vitally conscious you just do one of those squirt that in there all right last question where is everybody else when you're you know well this is the best part about this toilet so it's a family affair we have conversations we play board games sometimes that doubles as a chair you basically just sit there and do your business and wave high to people sleeping up here even frankie playing down here as you can tell the kitchen and the bathroom are almost the same thing kitchen bathroom more kitchen well thank you for the van tour you're welcome bye bye good job so up to this point we've been pretty content with everything in the van but after caravaning with rick and beck for 17 days down the colorado trail we realized there were a few upgrades that we wanted to make the biggest one being a leader we would all get in this van on those cold mountain nights and just snuggle up with each other in this warm van and then we'd have to get out in the freezing cold and go back to our van it was that and last week it snowed eight inches in september this is also why we're getting a heater we just want the the flexibility to not have to run away from this we're also super excited to install an alternator charger which essentially lets the batteries that are in the back of the van charge while we drive we usually end up having to find a place to plug in which means paying for a campground for the night when realistically there's plenty of good free camping spots in most places so it'd be super nice just be able to get in the van start up the car go for a little drive and let everything charge back up last but not least this is one of those things that's more of a preference than an actual need but we realized just how clean an in-dash backup camera looks instead of this thing right here that's just kind of an eyesore on the dashboard and only works about 50 of the time most of you will probably be happy to hear that dave is not doing these upgrades himself we are hiring a professional and it's the same guy who did rick and beck's band and he lives two hours away in steamboat springs so that's where we're heading now but i'm very sad that we're leaving leadville when we first came here we thought we were just staying for the weekend it has now been six weeks and it really started to feel like home we'll be back one day i'm just sad i'm going to lose this acclimation my body's used to living at 10 000 feet right now i feel like that's a rare thing to happen in life [Music] i think we're a little lost supposed to be spending the night in a parking lot or something know where he's trying to go right now i'm not real sure where we're going so we're planning on putting the van upgrades in this video but the guys ended up uncovering some pretty serious safety issues so this wire is going to start on fire before that's gonna ever blow and things got a little more interesting than we were expecting so since our last few videos were over an hour long we'll give you a little break and part two we'll post on sunday this is a toothpaste when i brush my teeth that's disgusting what was this what is that toothpaste oh no it's cheese so that was what why is everything in here i should probably just throw that away where's all that mess coming from this drawer isn't it amazing that all this fits in that tiny drawer i love cutting boards i'm gonna be the narrator in our youtube channel you are yes you know how you say work here and blah blah blah blah blah i'm gonna do that great because my mom thinks i should do it because i can't wait to see y'all's first she's too scared to talk to the camera really can i come in of course did she watch this spin hello did you even wash it there's literally vegetables still on the spoon what the heck nate was supposed to clean it he was supposed to clean it i want to hop on the bed do it can you hop over the drawer or do you need to close it i can hop off the circle this is the one where you did the smoothie that is how i make my smoothies yep i'm sorry so much stuff is on the bed well is that on hello what are you doing you guys without children don't i feel like i don't normally find things like that avocados if you scrape the brown off there's still a meal there frankie would probably eat them

Channel: Kara and Nate

Views: 983,034

Rating: 4.9538703 out of 5

Keywords: #vanlife, colorado trail, colorado travel, colorado travel vlog, couple vlog, daily vlog, full time travel, husband and wife, husband and wife travel, husband and wife vlog, kara and nate, kara and nate vlog, sprinter van, sprinter van conversion, tiny home, tiny home on wheels, travel, travel couple, travel duo, travel hacks, travel vlog, travel vlogger, travel vloggers, usa travel, van life, van life colorado, van life usa, vlog, vlog music, where to travel in usa

Id: z-ReS0Woifg

Length: 16min 50sec (1010 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 07 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/FilmoreFelines]

The toilet situation in Rick and Bec's van is... not for the faint of heart.

[u/Ro6t]

Will miss Evie & Frankie. Wonder how it is growing up in a van for the two kids.