Van Life and Camping - The Last Trip

Well, we are just creeping into the mountains here late on a Sunday afternoon, hoping to maybe sneak into one of the mountain lakes after the weekend crowd has moved on, hopefully maybe do some fishing. It's a little bit overcast, but it isn't called for rain. So yeah, we're just going to spend the night out and enjoy ourselves. All right, well, it looks like we've got some options for some wood here. I don't think there's going to be much options at the lake, so what I'm going to do is go ahead, get the chainsaw out. We'll cut what we got here, put it up on top of the van, and make sure that we have enough for tonight and tomorrow morning. All right, well, we've got the wood all in, so I'm just going to get Daisy loaded back up and we'll get to camp. Come here, Daisy girl. I've been to this lake before, I've made videos from this lake before, but it's been a little while since I've been here and I haven't actually been here since I had the kayak and I've always wanted to use the kayak on this lake. Now with that said, I don't think I'm going to do it tonight. I think what we're going to do is just go ahead and kind of get settled, get everything out and get the wood chopped and have some dinner. It's already almost five o'clock and it'll probably be dark by six, so if I was trying to get all that done and trying to get the kayak out, it might be a little bit much for this evening. So I think we'll just chill by the fire and enjoy dinner tonight and then try kayaking in the morning. All right, folks, well, we are getting ready for dinner, just got just a touch of whiskey here tonight. Definitely going to need to get a new bottle. We'll get through tonight, no problem, but ain't going to last much beyond that. Our weather has turned a little bit. We got some rain, wind still blowing pretty decent, but nice and comfortable under the awning, warm fire, got plenty of firewood in, camp's all set up, so we're in good shape for the evening. So yeah, we're going to get ready and start cooking and what we're going to do tonight is I've got some pork chops, I've got kale, onion, serrano pepper, some Thai basil and sweet chili sauce, and then some jasmine rice. So what I'm going to do is I'll cut everything up. I will start with the onion and the serrano pepper with a little bit of butter, cook that up, kind of saute it, add in some sliced pork chop, and then get that all cooked up. We'll then add the sweet basil chili sauce, we'll add the kale, absolutely last because that will cook up quick, and then the jasmine rice, I'm just going to cook it in some hot water over on my cook stove. The rest of the stuff I'm actually going to cook on my skillet over the fire. Alright folks, we're all done with dinner and we're just going to get back and relax a little bit, enjoy the fire. We've got it nice and built back up again, so we've got Daisy in the van so she can kind of stay out of the rain and stay from getting wet. I'm hoping that it might clear off tomorrow or at least stop raining, I don't really want to get out in the kayak tomorrow if it's raining, so it could just be breakfast and out of here tomorrow, we'll have to see and just play it by ear, but yeah, we're just going to relax and we'll catch you guys in the morning. Alright folks, well we have woken up to a windy, cold, blustery day. Not really raining so much, it's just mist blowing in the air and just kind of making it a little bit unpleasant to be outside, so I've just been fairly lazy, just laying here enjoying a hot cup of coffee inside the van. Propex heater, got it turned up a little bit, making it nice and warm in here, so it makes it very comfortable to just sit in here, relax and watch the events of the morning unfold outside through the window. I can see the lake and watch the ripples go by, watch the trees bend to the wind and makes for a pretty decent show all things considered, so it's just like I said, it's been real nice to hang out and relax for a little bit. Alright folks, well we're going to get ready to make some breakfast. The weather keeps changing a little bit, it does show some signs of possibly clearing a little bit. I'm getting just a little diffuse sun off to my south and I have seen just a few tiny spots of blue sky, so I don't know, it's still fairly breezy and that's probably the biggest challenge if I was trying to take the kayak out, is just trying to manhandle the kayak while being blown all over the lake and trying to cast and fish, it just, that part's a little bit on the challenging side, so we'll play it by ear, we'll see if the weather improves any bit more, maybe we'll get it out, maybe not, I don't know, I'm kind of still leaning towards not, but I don't know, we'll just see how things go. But we're going to get breakfast going, I am pretty hungry, so what we're going to have this morning is some biscuits and gravy except without biscuits, I have some leftover polenta which I'm going to use as my biscuits instead of biscuits, which I've done before and it's really good, you just kind of cut it thin and fry it up and then use that as basically as your biscuit and it's great. So what we're going to use for sausage is some venison sausage that I had leftover from another breakfast, I have about a half pound of that and then I've just got some country gravy mix and that will make up our gravy, I'm also going to do a couple eggs over easy. This polenta and gravy is quickly becoming one of my favorite breakfasts, it was actually a complete accident that we figured it out, one day me and Megan were out and we wanted biscuits and gravy but we didn't have biscuits but we had some polenta so we just tried it and ever since we did that we've been eating it quite often, it's really good and it's a lot easier to cook the polenta than it is to cook biscuits in a cast iron skillet. I can do it but it just takes a lot more finesse to get the biscuits to cook without burning them and be nice and light and fluffy and the polenta is pretty simple, there's not a lot of effort, you just flip them a few times to make them golden brown and pretty simple but if you're a polenta lover you should definitely give this a try, it's super good. Well I found a nice little area back here on the back side of the lake where we're not getting hit by the wind and it's actually nice and somewhat calm, when I first took off out there it was just about all I could do to keep the kayak moving forward but back here it's really nice and we're getting some really nice sunbreaks, in fact I'm kind of looking like maybe it might even clear up today and be really sunny and nice but it's still pretty breezy unless you're back here. I think this is probably the last trip for the kayak at least this year, take it out of my skybox and make room for some other winter gear. I'm glad that I did get it out and I'm glad that I found a little bit of reprieve back here because it's really nice when the sun's warm, it feels good out of the breeze. Anyhow guys, I'm going to call this video an end, I'm going to paddle around the lake a little bit more and then head out of here. I hope you guys enjoyed this video, if you did please do give it a like, if you have any comments or questions leave those down below and if you're not subscribed to my channel maybe consider subscribing if you like this type of content and we'll catch you guys again outside.