ROOFTOP TENTING ON A REMOTE BEACH /// EFRT S5•EP11

Welcome to another episode of the epic family road trip. This week began with us driving out of Exploration Outfitters with our new jeep fully retrofitted and expedition ready. For our maiden voyage we headed to South Padre Island National Seashore in Texas. So we made it down to San Padre and we got our passes to head out onto the beach and apparently we can drive as far as we can go on the beach and it's gonna be a lot fun. It's awesome being back at the ocean. I mean driving right along the water and crashing waves. Once we arrived we set up camp on the beach with beautiful white sand dunes behind us and the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico in our view. Beautiful place. This is also our first night camping in the new jeep tent and all that so it's gonna be exciting. Works good. It's adjustable so you can put it on a pre-cut. As the sun went down we cooked a beautiful meal over a campfire using our new front runner grill. Ready? So we've just driven into mile 25 of the beach here. There's not much beach to drive on right now because the tide is so far in but we're looking for a camp spot and this one could be okay but it's on a bit of a slope so we're thinking we'll go back I don't know about a half a mile or less and there's the 25 mile marker and it looked like a bit of a level spot there so that's what we're gonna do and the plan is to not get stuck but if we do get stuck we're anxious to use the dead man recovery device that we have. In any case we're heading back there now. Places we're using rocks to level but here because we're on a slope we did the exact opposite dug a hole for each wheel and now we're sitting pretty level. Let's take a look. Perfectly level. Is that level or too much? Kind of a windy chilly rainy day but first thing we do when we get to camp is we set up our tents so we have a place to go if it rains. We set up the awning on an angle so the rain can run off of it and we get a fire going that's that's what it's all about getting comfort. You have a fire going it's really warm shelter and food and water that makes life good out here in company so we've got all of those we're gonna have a good night. The tide's in really close it's not too far from the jeep's there but it it'll work its way out overnight and then we'll head on down the beach. We're at mile 25 it goes to mile 60. I don't know if we're gonna make it all the way to the bottom but we're gonna try. The other thing is we have now both Long Range America auxiliary tanks on the on Vandy and on Worsley and that is what gives us the confidence to go all the way to the bottom of this and back so we're using our our main tanks now we always have that auxiliary to kick into if we get low. The last thing I'm going to show you is right here that is called the original fire reflector. So this thing is amazing for a couple of reasons one when you got heavy wind coming off the beach like that this you can see the fire is just burning nicely behind that wind and the other thing is this is called the fire reflector because it works like a parabolic arch and it reflects the heat back on everybody sitting there and you can open it up wider and have a bigger group of people sitting here but it is just amazing we had a tiny little fire this morning it was a chilly morning and the heat on our legs was just awesome and the last thing about this is the glow at night creates such a sense of community so these are going to be on the market in March I think and get yourself one. Good morning it is February 20th and a chilly morning here on the coast this is the what they call the national seashore and it is just a beautiful stretch of in fact it's the longest stretch of undeveloped seashore in North America if not the world I think and we're about halfway down this morning and we're going to see if we can drive all the way down 60 miles or so but it's just an incredible place there's all kinds of bird wildlife here and right now we've got a bit of a chilly morning going on I'm in a sweatshirt coat and flip-flops that's Texas for you so for those of you who want to know more about the national seashore here which is Padre Island in Texas so you go it's like a national park you come in through the gates you pay 25 bucks per vehicle and then there's no charge for camping so you can stay up to seven days and then you renew and you can stay another seven days so 14 days total for 25 bucks you can't go wrong but if you have a two-wheel drive vehicle or even a small motor home you can get on the first part of the beach it's really hard pack that's where a lot of people are within the first mile of the the entrance but then as you start coming further in it gets into deep sand and you need you definitely need a four-wheel drive vehicle and high clearance because it's in some spots very deep yesterday afternoon we were coming in and the tide was right up so you don't have any of the hard beach to drive on just the soft sand so we had it in four-wheel drive and we kept moving and had no problem but the nice thing is you can camp wherever you want in this entire 60 mile stretch you just find a spot you like you pull over you set up camp which is what we've got we've got both vehicles back to back here and we camp sideways today because the tide was in so high we were on a slope sometimes we pull them straight and have the tents towards the ocean but we all often get heavy winds off the ocean so we'll turn it the other way around but yeah there's all kinds of options if you have a jeep or toyota or some kind of four-wheel drive uh camper vehicle you can camp anywhere in here which is just awesome it's so quiet other than the sound of the ocean and the waves we haven't seen anybody all day yesterday since we got past say mile 10 um i didn't haven't seen anyone all day and all night and here we are this morning waking up to a quiet remote beautiful beach so i'm sure it's warmer at different times of year this is the middle of february so it's a little chilly but the first day we got here the sun was up and it was incredibly warm so it comes and goes it's supposed to be sunny again in a day or two unfortunately we'll be on our we'll be out of here by then but uh yeah check out quadray island national seashore it is wonderful for for overland camping 10 pieces of trash everywhere we stay per person and lindo kind of gets at least 10 but he found that i don't know what it is it's a fencing or something and we found a ton of those uh i don't know if they look like onion sacks anyway we'll get them in the bag and haul them out of here but well you see a lot of trash washing in it must come in during storms because i don't think people are actually littering here but anyway there's quite a bit of plastic so um anytime you come camping we learn that from no matter where they are they pick up each person picks up five to ten pieces of trash it's a good habit to get into in the meantime we'll see you down the road