We were fined $1000 for filming in National Parks (then everything changed)

we need to address the elephant in the room last year we were fined over a thousand dollars for filming in national parks but now we're spending the next three days filming this video inside of yellowstone no way there is a small herd of bison just 10 feet away from where we slept last night we stopped and ran at these cross-country skis [Music] after spending four years traveling the world full-time and documenting our journey to 100 countries 2020 brought us back to the us where we bought a converted spinner van to explore all 50 states after a slightly traumatic journey to our 25th state of wyoming i'm sorry that was so scary we spent our first full day in yellowstone national park what a morning where we were greeted by world famous geysers and countless bison so we are currently in west yellowstone because that's where the snow coach picked us up to take us to old faithful now that we're on our own we're heading to the north entrance of the park because that's the only place where visitors can access the park by themselves in the winter but the majority of the roads in the park get closed down in the winter so we have to take the very roundabout way to get there also uh look what happened last night our sink busted for a second time it's kind of hard to tell because it's still frozen our water purifier actually froze and broke a few weeks ago so we've been buying jugs of water to drink and hard as a rock also somehow our veggies and hummus froze in the refrigerator so defrosting them on the dash we are on our way to mammoth campground because it's the only one that stays open year round in the park but it is first come first serve and it's a weekend and it's one of the most popular parks in the country so i'm thinking it's going to be a miracle if we can snag a spot tonight but i'm feeling hopeful i am not [Music] so many cows we're almost there feeling less and less good about this on a more positive note the drive here was absolutely stunning thank you so much all right we're officially in yellowstone national park i see a lot of cars parked up here i think they're looking at the elk we don't need to see the out keep going let's beat them man at campground it doesn't say full be bear aware i kind of want to see bear from the van and we get to camp in yellowstone i cannot believe how few people there are here yes just look at the view from our campsite it is us and like three other campers in the only campground in yellowstone all right before we continue exploring yellowstone we need to address the elephant in the room last year we published a video called why we don't visit national parks to date that video has almost a million views and it evokes some pretty strong emotions in that video we explain how we have been fined over a thousand dollars for filming two videos in national parks at the time of filming those videos we didn't realize that we needed a commercial permit to film videos for our youtube channel inside of national parks we make our living off of filming videos for this channel so it made sense to me that the videos would be considered commercial but when it really became frustrating was the first time i ever tried to fill out an application to obtain a commercial filming permit as youtubers who carry around the same type of camera equipment as any tourist would we were being asked to fill out a permit just like we were filming a major motion picture they wanted to know how many animals we were bringing on set if we had any weapons plus you would have to give them an exact itinerary of your trip what you would be filming then wait weeks for approval and if you were lucky and you received a permit the fees weren't cheap so while it was still hypothetically possible that we could film in national parks we felt like with all the restrictions we wouldn't be able to film the type of content that we it to plus without a big production team we just didn't have the bandwidth to go through a major permitting process every time we wanted to make a video our intention was filming this video wasn't to complain or even to change the status quo we just felt like we needed to explain why we were traveling around the us in a van yet avoiding some of the most beautiful places in the country and honestly after filming that video we just assumed we'd avoid national parks as we finished our journey to all 50 states what we didn't know at the time was that there was already a case pending in court that it started back in december of 2019. there was an independent filmmaker who was in a similar situation to us but instead of just giving up and paying the fine he actually took it to court and he was arguing that it was unconstitutional to require a permit for commercial filming because it violated his right of free speech fast forward to january of this year and my inbox was flooded with emails letting me know that a dc federal judge had ruled that it was unconstitutional for the national park service to require permits or charge fees for commercial filming on its land the judge said and i quote mr pierce the guy who was taking the case to court his filmmaking at these parks constitutes a form of expressive speech protected by the first amendment the threat posed by a man with a tripod making a commercial film is no different than the same person and equipment that is used for a non-commercial project so basically the issue was with making a distinction between commercial and non-commercial and charging for one but not the other i don't fully understand why this is unconstitutional but that's what the judge said but the judge wasn't saying that there should be no rules just that the rules needed to change she specifically said in issuing this injunction the court observed that a more targeted permitting regimen for commercial filming which is more closely connected to the threat posed by larger groups and heavy filmmaking equipment may pass constitutional muster in the future and in late february to our excitement new guidelines were released it's uh it's pretty exciting stuff they said low impact filming activities will not require a special use permit that's us low impact filming is defined as outdoor filming activities in areas open to the public except areas manage this wilderness involving five or less people and equipment that will be carried at all times except for small tripods used to hold cameras so this is a huge win for small filmmakers like us and this is what's been unfolding in the background over the last few months since led to us being able to film this video okay i don't want to drag this out any longer than necessary but i do want to encourage our fellow filmmakers to please be respectful when filming just because you legally can film somewhere doesn't necessarily mean that you should the reason i bring this up is because just the other day when we were filming at the geysers there was a crew of four guys one of them must have been a self-help guru and i think he was talking about how to get girls instead of hearing geysers bubbling we were listening to a lecture on confidence and personality types just don't be that guy they were so annoying okay i'm going to wrap this up but just remember you still can't use gru groans you still can't use drones you still can't film in wilderness areas you still can't film with equipment larger than a tripod and you still have to follow the same rules as everybody else in the park okay that's my lecture it truly is a privilege to be able to film in national parks so let's all be on the same team and not get that privilege taken away also it's about 15 degrees out here and oh i think i pulled something [Music] before we go any further we want to say a big thank you to simplisafe for sponsoring this video we have to leave everything we own in our van for long periods of time very often but i always have peace of mind because ever since we moved into the van we've been protected with simply safe whether you live in a van or a castle they make it super easy to protect your home all you have to do is go to their website and customize the solution that works for you once you've ordered your parts they're sent to your door and it takes less than an hour to install or it's much quicker than that if your home is the size of ours every setup starts with a base station and a keypad and then you pick the other components you need in our van we have entry sensors on all four doors a glass break sensor a panic button a smoke detector and a carbon monoxide detector once you have your system set up you can sign up for their professional monitoring service which will call the police if anything happens you're protected 24 7 for just 50 cents per day if you're interested in protecting your home with simply safe just go to simplysafe.com forward slash kara nate to learn more or just click the link in the description below [Music] so yesterday before we came into the park we stopped and ran at these cross-country skis neither one of us had ever tried this before but seemed like the most fun way to explore the park so today we're going to try something new no way look at this in our campsite what a way to start the morning look at the baby yeah come say hi to us sharing the road with these guys awesome [Applause] legitimately the only thing i know about cross-country skiing is from the one youtube video that i watched yesterday the great thing about cross country is that you can just head out and give it a go all right here goes nothing can't even get him to come apart that's a good start whoops so you push this down and you just step in that's what he said i look good i think you're in i'm in that was the longest ball i've ever seen [Laughter] your let's see if i can do this anymore gracefully than you a lot i'm in ready to go congratulations you don't seem happy for me all right you ready show us how you push glide oh you look like a pro it hasn't even been five minutes yet we're shedding layers one body jump is up let's do this push go live push squat so it's more of a kick glide kick glide kick glide i think i'm doing a lot more pushing than gliding if there are any predators out here and they see us skiing they're going to identify us as the weak link and come eat us oh we definitely look like wanted animals ah don't eat us you're flying whoo making me sweat trying to keep up with you you give me a fist pump it'll work i'll go blame it on my backpack all right we're coming up on our first downhill oh wow whoa oh yeah oh i think i pulled a rib oh that really hurt good work i'm so tired we are across mountain skiing not cross country skiing look at this view though this is awesome and to make it even better we have this entire place all to ourselves proud of us we just met some locals and they said it was pretty tricky today with the ice so my wife out number two kind of hard to see but that's a frozen waterfall worth it for this yeah just hearing the water with birds chirping this is magical all right back on the skis let's try this again no problem back up get the hang of this now can we get out of this piece all right you ran out of my ski we're at the halfway point it is lunch time for lunch we packed sausage cheese and i love bread everything just tastes better in the wilderness it's all about the chocolate all right let's see if we make it back without hurting ourselves [Music] things we do for this video i think the rest of trail is pretty much downhill from here let's see how it goes there's a lot of people watching us do this we only have one suggestion for this young fellow right here i hope it's not your first date we've been married for seven years she stuck with me where'd all these people come from we start trying to go downhill this is embarrassing going down is hard you can do it you can do it okay here we go all right this is you in the wide open trail now all right i'm wearing the gopro now gonna get nate going down yes you're wondering who the random person was wearing the gopro behind me good luck i want to look up and look at all the scenery but i also can't look away from my skis or i fall this is sweet [Applause] look at this go yeah [Music] oh no did you try to look up that's what just happened to me we made it back in one piece man it is hot i could go lay in the snow in my underwear right now this is crazy i wore wool pants underneath him you see how wet these are this is sweat are you serious this isn't gross i touched water it's soaking wet in addition to it being an awesome day it was an epic workout i gotta take these pants off i don't know how good a job i did of capturing it because i'm not good enough to cross country ski and film at the same time but i loved today i think the reason that we're still traveling five years after leaving home is because we're both kind of addicted to new experiences and so to get to do something new for the first time and be pushed out of our comfort zone today was awesome and special because you can only have your first experience with something once and that was cross-country skiing today for us it was really special we must have some workout endorphins going [Music] it is kara versus the bison never a dull moment in yellowstone this is so beautiful how tired do i look i got belly in my eyes and she's like my eyes can't stay open juicy lines it's like a mix between chili and macaroni [Music] it is our last morning here in yellowstone and i convinced carrie to get up with me before the sunrise to go searching for wildlife it's our last chance to see a bear a wolf our definition of cold has drastically changed over the last couple weeks nate just said oh it's only 30 degrees outside so warm because we woke up and it was negative 4 not too long ago good morning ladies look at this little baby can you point us in the direction of the wolves please do y'all communicate what about bears are you listening to me [Music] well we didn't see any predators this morning but we did see hundreds more elk and bison it's funny how normal that's become on our first day here we saw like five bison and we were like oh my gosh this is the best day ever and i'm still really glad that we got up early because now we have mammoth hot springs all to ourselves [Music] mammoth and that's that's all snow so the calcium carbonate that's flowing up out of the hot springs over thousands of years has created these beautiful travertine terraces and having those in the foreground with the mountains in the background and the sound of rushing water just running over it all this place is pretty spectacular the only other place that we've seen anywhere in the world that compares to this is panmukale in turkey its nickname is the cotton castle and just from looking at these terraces here and the formations you can kind of see how a place like this would get that nickname [Music] okay before we leave yellowstone i have one more fun fact that i want to share with you i didn't realize it before but the 45th parallel actually runs directly through the park and according to the sign we are currently standing halfway between the equator and the north pole so uh at yellowstone we decided oh gosh it's so slick we've decided we're going to start a new sleep app and all the sounds are going to be hot springs and geysers from yellowstone and we'll get cara to tell soothing bedtime stories we just need a name for it i like to whip around behind you and you gotta catch them you feeling confident about this the guy at the shop said it was no big deal that we had no idea what we were doing either that or he did not realize the lack of experience that we truly had [Music]

Channel: Kara and Nate

Views: 1,780,664

Keywords: national parks, filming in national parks, yellowstone, yellowstone national park, wyoming, #vanlife, converted van tour, couple 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 couple vlog, travel vlog, usa travel, van life, van life couple, van life usa, van life vlog, van tour, vanlife, vlog, road trip

Id: lEUHr4U9MgA

Length: 21min 32sec (1292 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 07 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/TheDreadedWombat]

Their pipes froze. Again.

[u/[deleted]]

Sailing is no joke. with no experience i fear the worst for them. another decision i question by these two. ill pass on the sailing vids and hope to pick back up when traveling abroad. I was really excited for them to visit New Hampshire, there is so much in such a small state but instead they will probably visit Portsmouth (boorrrrrinnngggg) and be gone like that. Really just seems like they just want to check these states off as fast as possible.

[u/DancingSeaAnemone]

They failed to mention they flew a drone in 2 national parks before they got fined. The fine was only $1,000. They paid that much for one night in a cave. It’s nice they can film in parks again but, the drone is still illegal to fly there, as it should be. Nates still not selling me on them doing nothing wrong. I don’t care how many motion graphics or Venn diagrams are added to the videos. I have friends that fly drones and they all were licensed to do so before making money doing it. That being said, I did enjoy the skiing part because I’ve totally pulled a Kara. Their editor is doing a great job at showing some relatable stuff. The sailboat thing tho? Please no. No doubt they will gain new subs from other boat life lovers, so it’s smart but, they aren’t van life people... boat life is much more involved in the vessel. A charter? Sure... just do it once and not the whole coast. The issue there is that it might not be enough for boat life algorithm searches.

[u/nowheresville99]

Loved the travel content of this video but the part where Nate tries to explain the Park filming rules was painful.

First, his comments about how difficult and expensive it would have been for them to get a permit was for them under the old system were simply incorrect.

But the most damning part was when Nate talked about making sure you are respectful of the rules and of other people - apparently deciding to simply ignore that what really got them in trouble the first time is was that they were using a drone within the parks. I assure you, someone flying a drone in a National Park is far more disturbing to people and nature than someone else recording a self help vlog within the parks.

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[u/reliableotter]

I liked this video. They did a nice job documenting the park and their trip.

Their cross country skiing was very similar to my first experience. It's hard to figure out if no one can teach you.

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Really hope they decide not to do the boat thing. Or else go full on unrelatable luxury charter.

[u/Embarrassed_Froyo_86]

Enjoyed this video! Makes me so excited to road trip round the US again :)

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