A change of pace (taking a break from van life & Camper's Birthday)

How's it going everybody? I'm Nikki Delventhal and this is my dog Camper Delventhal. We lived in a Prius full-time for three years but now we're in a 4x4 Sprinter and we're here to take you along on the wild ride. So fasten up your seat belts and let's have some fun. Don't forget if you like what you see, like, subscribe, comment, share with your friends, and turn on notifications. Camper and I would be so thankful. On last week's episode we begin our adventures with the heat breaking in our van yet again. But in true Camper and Nikki fashion, we make the best of the situation and head to Denver to get a full system replacement. Here we meet my mom and her best friend at a house they're sitting at in Golden, Colorado and have a ton of fun. While the heat's being worked on, we also take you all around town. Racing our way along the river, making a rock band, and take you to some of our favorite local hot spots. And we leave off our adventures with a little more home disaster. But this time the actual house had six pipes burst and we learned very quickly that in a van or a home there's going to be issues and you're going to have to deal with it. Good morning birthday boy. Look at all that snow out there. It's beautiful. How does it feel to be three years old? Don't tell them, don't tell them. I'm still a two-year-old. All right, so every year on my birthday we have carrot cake for breakfast in bed. So I think we're starting a tradition here. This is our second birthday together and we got a little surprise. You want to see it Kemper? Kemper is not a fan of fire so now we'll celebrate. Happy birthday to you. Oh that's a big boy bite. To you. Happy birthday to Kemper who's three years old and has really really soft cute ears and is the best boy in the world and really likes to dress up. No I don't. And is no longer a toddler. Oh my god is he a teenager 20 year old? This is crazy. Happy birthday to the most handsome boy in the world. You are so smart and kind and awesome. These are all things you should be telling yourself every morning and intelligent. You could take over the world with your computer science brain. Rocket science. Sorry. I'm going to be sleeping on carrot cake for the next week. All right you ready for surprise number two? Come on let's go. All right guys as you can see we are not in our usual vehicle. We are living large for Kemper's birthday. We came to visit my mom who is house sitting for a friend of ours and oh my goodness wait till you see this view. All right Kemper you want to go outside? Oh shoot I need shoes. Oh well cold feet. Let's go. Good boy. All right birthday snow romp. Oh this is dumb. This is dumb. Laundry room amazing. Workout room even more amazing. Did you see this birthday boy's hat and outfit for you? Go get it. Go get it. Now we got fresh tracks. What are you doing? Are you done over there? He says uh no more snow mom. Every party has a pooper. Well I guess it's your birthday so we could do whatever you want. Not your thing huh Kemp? You want some uh greens and coffee? All right you birthday boy. We changed up Kemper's food again. Now the good boy is eating like 80% whole foods and I'm just cooking him whatever I would eat. He's gonna live forever. Uh do I get extra for my birthday? It is so weird having to walk so far for everything and not just have it accessible in a van. We have so much room. This is amazing. My house is the size of this table. There's my bed. There's my kitchen. There's my front seats. Coming down on your level my dude. Birthday chug. Cheers. Haven't been drinking caffeinated coffee lately. Today we are living on the wild side. House day. It's gonna be a fun one. You ready mom? Sure. What are we gonna do? Uh you have to say we're gonna get wild. We're gonna shovel. We get cold. So much room. I love being in a house. I could never do this in a van. We're also mopping the floors. Birthday hops. Birthday hops. Birthday hops. Birthday hops. Oh my gosh. Is that the face of a three-year-old? Don't tell them. Don't freaking tell them what is wrong with you. God you keep doing this. It's so embarrassing. It's magic. Can I get a good morning camper Delvin Ball? You mother trucking sexy three-year-old making moves. I'm using three different sinks because I can. This is so cool. This is so unnecessary but also kind of necessary. You guys give me a break. I've been living in like 10 square feet for three and a half years and now I've got like a million thousand four hundred twenty nine square feet and a workout room. Oh I love this thing. Now this is also where all the pipes burst. Hit it. Boom. Mom you're such a good friend. What are you doing right now? I'm gonna try and insulate. I need to add this to my van. It's hard to pet and bicycle at the same time. 45 pound squats. That was the door. Can you hear that? More birthday presents for Camptastic. All right it is a package time. You guys every time I am at a friend's house or have an address I always make sure I send my packages there. When I don't have an address I'll use USPS. UPS a lot of them will allow you to send packages to those locations but usually that means you're stuck in an area. So I took this opportunity to order a ridiculous amount of toe socks. I love them. And continue to try to figure out the big internet problem of the year. If you've been following along on my channel you know that internet has been an ongoing issue. At least reliable high speed internet. Now before you say anything, McDonald's, hotels, libraries, coffee shops, all really really great options for nomads if you need internet. But you are required to go there and they're not normally high speed. So the line of work I do, I need high speed reliable fast internet. Just in case you don't know about these or you're about to comment it, let's go into the next one. Internet through cellular hotspots. Whether through your phone or a device. Verizon, AT&T, all those. They are essentially unlimited but they slow your speeds at a certain data amount. So for instance I have a 50 gigabyte hotspot. Now once I hit 50 gigabytes it slows down so much I couldn't even open Google Maps if I wanted to. I will go through 50 gigabytes of data with 50 gig upload. So it never finishes my whole project and then I have to switch to another method. That can get really expensive to have multiple hotspots. And then there's satellite internet. So Starlink has a few different dishes. I have tried their standard dish. That is not optimal. If you are a mobile user, a nomad, or you just move your dish from your house location, they will automatically deprioritize you and there's no option to pay for priority service. I need to find a solution. So I did order a ton of different internet options. I ordered not one but a few different internet routers to try. Let's just say I'm here to do the footwork for you guys. I am on a mission to find reliable, high-speed, fast internet for nomads because there are none that I found so far. This bad boy is good to go. This guy's still booting up. These guys are so cute. They put the username and passwords right in here. We are first going to test out the speeds of the air. No way. You guys, this is so good. With the smallest unit, right now the upload speeds are at 21. Normally I hit maybe four or five on Starlink anywhere I am. And the signal in here is rough because there's just metal all over the ceilings. All right, Camptastic, let's check out this Starlink. All right, Starlink is up. It takes about 15 to 20 minutes for Starlink to figure out where things are. So let's give it about 15 minutes and shovel this thing. We're gonna fast forward through shoveling. Hello from the roof deck. It's really slippery, but we're doing good. Starlink is cleared. Now we can make an accurate test because there is no tree cover. Sweet. All right. You're supposed to stand on things when you make an announcement. First impression on nomad internet. I am pleasantly surprised. Those of you guys who told me about this, thank you. I am really, really excited to continue to try it and continue to review it. One for you, one for me. Wow, a day in a house. Oh yeah, post-workout shower time. Be right back. All right, we are cozy and warm. What do you say, Camper? Birthday movie night? Maybe make some dinner? All right, mom already started cooking, but we have to cook for Camper. Camper's like a spoiled dog now. He's like, oh, that's not like fresh chicken or beef. Why do you just throw it on the ground? Good night, birthday boy. I love you. I'm the luckiest person in the entire world because you are my first shot. All right, you guys, we're gonna let this little boy sleep. All right, good night, mister. Good morning, everyone. Cynthia, come say hi to your friends. Good morning, everybody. Not a good morning, but an interesting morning. Okay, yeah. The heat saga continues. Mom, do you want to explain it? I don't know how to explain it, except that it's not working again. Oh well, you're stuck with me. CliffNotes version, last night temperatures got down to four degrees and a fault code went off on the Aquahot system. My concern is not that the heat didn't work last night. Totally fine with that. My concern is that there's a 30 gallon water tank that is frozen and there is water in the lines that are frozen, which means there's most likely a leak. You know, my van's, you know, it's gonna be easy breezy. I hope. Let's not... Please knock for me. So on that note, we're gonna take you all around Denver, show you all of our favorite things to do, and hopefully we'll not have a cleanup. Let's start at the dog park. Cherry Creek State Park off-leash dog area is my favorite dog park in the entire country. There's a ton of room for the dogs and a two and a half mile walking loop with a river, which especially in the summer is a ton of fun. And there's some horse friends next door. Just beware, there's a hefty entrance fee for out-of-towners. Then I utilized the rest of the week making it all about friends and fun activities. My best friend Logan flew in and the first thing we did was hit Red Rocks Amphitheater. From there, we went directly on a hike. The hike to St. Mary's Glacier is about 1.5 miles round trip. As you can see, dogs are allowed and it's good for visiting year-round, except not so great on the pockets. There's a $20 parking fee, but let me tell you, the views are totally worth it. You'll get to see a gorgeous lake, maybe even slide on it if it's safe and have a dance party. And you can get up close and personal with St. Mary's Glacier, a must-do on your Colorado itinerary. We also visited Boulder, Colorado, where we checked out the Flatirons, then hit Pearl Street for its shopping, street performers, and food. It was the best day ever. Unfortunately, Logan had to go, but we're continuing the friends and fun. Side note, we also had a ton of friends greet us in the backyard when we got home, and between all the fun, we continued to thaw out the frozen van and water tank. One amazing thing about Colorado is going on hot spring hunts. This is home to so many amazing natural hot springs. Some of my favorite is the paid spot in Hot Sulphur Springs to these wild And you guys know me, I can't resist a good polar plunge into an icy cold river to complement the occasion and the scenery. Obviously, I took multiple dips and soaks back and forth. It is so good for the soul and makes you feel so alive. Next, since I was in the area, I went and visited Fraser. They had an amazing fire and ice festival where I visited my cousin, viewed all the ice sculptures the locals made, and enjoyed the big bonfire and fireworks. It was such a blast. By the way, there's also great skiing and snowboarding in the area, but I have more friends and fun to get back to back in Golden. My friend Harrison came by the house and gave us an awesome tour of the porch that he lives in full-time, and then we decided to go axe throwing. And can you guess who won? This activity is such a blast. We also had our friend Michael come visit. We did our laundry and hit the local Golden Trails. Fun fact, 60 million years ago, lava flowed to create North and South Table Mountain. And today, we're gonna hike South Table, but watch out, this time of year can get pretty muddy where the trekking can be what feels like bricks on your feet. New skill added to the list, mud hiking. But the views at the top are so worth the struggle. So that's Coors Brewery where they make all the beers, and then that's where they get the water from. That's why they say Rocky Mountain Water. And then you have a view of the rest of Golden. We finished the week shopping for my new van I get in a couple weeks. Design team assemble. And with all the newfound room I'll have, I even got a little stylish myself. Oh, and before we say goodbye, we have some great news. We got the heat fixed. The glycol levels were just low, so we filled it back up. They're topping off the glycol, baby. And we're back in action, ready to hit the road again. And even better news is my van's ready in two weeks. So, you know, maybe we should speed this up a little bit. We found a camper in the wild. Oh my gosh, it's alive. Let's see if we can catch it. It's running so fast. And he found a stick. I haven't seen one of those since 1942.