Camper Van Realities | Washington to Cali 😎

Hey guys, how are we doing today? You might think that we are in the Antarctic or something all bundled up like this, but believe it or not we're still in Washington and it's getting really really cold. The ocean! Let's go swimming! It's 35 degrees this morning and we're in ocean shores right on the Pacific Ocean and this little RV park is great. We have a full hookup spot for like the first time in a long time, a very long time. I still haven't adjusted to taking advantage of that. And the beach is literally like a 10-minute walk right outside the door there, so that is great. We've been enjoying our walks throughout our few days stay here and although it's been rainy. Sleet the first walk. Sleet. We were walking in sideways sleet hail. Yeah, on our drive here from uh like through Tacoma it was like snowing and sleeting through the mountains. It was a really weird patch where it just started hitting the windshield and like snow slush balls. I was like what is this? All the locals on the roads were like pulling over and we're like oh what is going on? They were like stopping. You know we're from Minnesota so we're kind of used to snow, feet of it. So that was interesting to see and it's we've had enough I think. Chris has had enough. I can't hear myself talk. I know I'm freezing. We just came in from our walk like Aaron said and god even leaving at 8 a.m it's just cold. It's just unbearably cold. Yeah it's warming up to the 50s but. Yeah well it's just affecting you know we're cooped up in the van. We go on our walks and that's great and we enjoy it. Yeah. But that's starting to become a chore and. It is. We've been doing our workouts inside the van. Yeah that's so cool to be just be able to do that and not have to worry about going outside and battling the the cold weather. Yeah. That's tough. We're grateful that we're able to do that now we weren't able to do that before we got our resistance bands. So it's very nice to have that option. However I am ready to get back outside and really get after it. Yeah we're headed south and we're gonna drive pretty fast. We're gonna have two big long travel days. We're gonna get into northern California where it's 80 degrees. Yes that sounds so good. That's what we need. So you okay dear? Yeah I think it's just cold. I'm just freezing. Do you ever choke on cold air? No. I do all the time in this walk like my ears are all pained. Yeah it's it's pretty bad but we've been waiting for some repair parts so as you guys have seen by now we have our e-bikes and it is amazing. We did a 21 mile ride on the beach the other day. I was grinning ear to ear. I was I was on cloud nine. It was awesome and it happened to be a Saturday so the beach was packed with locals and like horses horseback riding. Lion kites and there was other a bunch of e-bike rentals from the town there and it was great. It was just that's something that we're now getting to experience is the stuff that's right around us. So normally in this campsite we love having our van so for example we went to the whole rainforest which is a two-hour drive and so we take the van up there. We have everything we need. We don't have to worry about packing clothes. We can make lunch. We could stay overnight in a campground up there if we wanted to. We talked about doing that. We almost did. Yep but we ended up not just coming driving back the two and a half hours but what we don't do enough is see the local attractions or even just small towns around us. So the beach I mean we're covering miles just walking it but it's you know one two three miles one way and then back maybe max you know. So just getting on these bikes and riding the five miles to town or the 10 miles to the end of the peninsula was sweet and we are so excited to have this be part of our journey and allow us to see more of the stuff that's just right around us. So that's super exciting. So we're waiting for a few parts. The bike rack we'll show you guys more on the bike rack and all that and how we mount them and things but there's a few things that I'm not comfortable with that they block the lights a little bit. The license plate gets blocked so I'm going to try to remount that and you know I just want to make it safe and secure as we're driving on the road. Yeah and of course be legal. So a lot of people have bikes with RVs and we notice most people don't put covers on the back of them so if anybody is an avid bike toter on their RV or van or whatever maybe help us out and see what what you guys do because some people always notice most people don't cover them at all so they just have their bikes out to the elements which we don't want to do that at all. Then you put the cover on it which was hard to find for two ebikes by the way with fenders yeah with fenders then it blocks all of your lights and your license plates but anyways uh last day here and we're gonna get up early tomorrow and basically drive almost the whole state of Oregon. Almost we're gonna wake up early we say this a lot we're gonna get up early and hit the road early but tomorrow we really really have to because we have an eight hour drive maybe it's longer than that it's gonna we're gonna be driving for like 13 hours tomorrow yeah it'll be a long day but that's what it's all about and it's worth it to just be able to travel um weather zones I mean literally it's the highs are 50 here and we're going to the highs of 80 so how cool is that to up your degrees by 30 in just two short days yeah it was really cool to see the the ocean though we wanted to see a little bit of the coast here up in the pacific northwest yeah it's great here and we got our little slice of heaven we felt like it was a little winter vacation I know that that sounds super soft coming from Minnesotans like we consider that our winter now but I do I'd consider this my winter and I'm ready to move south hey we saw snow yes yeah and we were talking about how much better we are this year than last year because we are toughening up and we are sticking around these areas a little bit longer at this time last year we were well into California yeah we're making the van a little bit more comfortable um with just like an electric space heater uh dehumidifier and air purifier um I think we've mentioned before that's something new to like the moisture up here in the pacific northwest and in the wintertime um I'm laughing because Aaron put on pants today which normally he only wears shorts and today he actually wore pants and gloves and I'm like who are you right now yeah I don't like to wear pants and hopefully I won't have to in California um I told him he needs to wear pants yesterday and he goes why do I need pants when there's sunny California yeah why put on pants when you can just drive eight hours and go to California so we're gonna do that that's gonna be great um and then these sweet um front windshield thermal and blackout kit that um a cool company sent us called Van Essentials that we're testing out we've had them for a few weeks now and we're gonna do a full video on them just but yeah immediately they they changed our lives if you remember we had this curtain this big that's like an ugly drape yeah and it didn't cover you know the windows so it just it basically all the cold air just went underneath it and it just didn't do anything it was a pain in the butt it didn't allow you to use this space um so that was really cool it was ugly yeah James from Van Essentials uh sent us this kit and it is life-changing so far it's it's really good I can't wait to use it in like uh like uh well we're going to Cracker Barrel that'll be our first kind of um uh like city street camping where it's nice to get the full blackouts that shade was just no good it not only did it not like thermally work very well there was you know just cracks on each side so it didn't 100% block out wasn't super proud yeah this is much better this just feels sleeker and better yeah so anyways uh we'll see you guys tomorrow morning on the big long drive we'll take you with on our big road trip there is a life I lead in this city hurrying to cut my teeth I can take what I need to get by it doesn't make it easy the other piece of my heart moves slow somewhere in the great unknown when I return from the afterglow will you carry me like I am whole again wait put me together take me back where I belong I want it all I had a feeling but the feeling is all gone we just pulled over at UPS got a couple of errands to run along our travel day we usually save our errands to do on travel days while we're out moving around and it's pretty easy because we can just zip right into these lots and get it done Aaron's working on taping up some returns which is why we're here to return some Amazon stuff got a little pile going um yeah this is all for the e-bikes and the rack and everything I'm trying to get it legal and safe by like remounting the license plate and uh getting some lights back there because that partially blocks our tail lights so and then we had like bike helmets that we were you know trying to try on six different kinds of those things and bike covers for the rack so we had a couple of those that we were trying so it was nice to be in a spot for a couple weeks we could order all this stuff in from Amazon um and then pick and choose what we want without having to go to stores and try stuff out and then we just got to go and return it on our way so this is great with the cat carrying capacity now I'm going to refill our waters get some it felt like it was really smooth it was in travel days sometimes you have rough travel days and sometimes you have good ones how many miles 475 miles that's a record yeah it was a day for driving pretty comfortable but it's day one so tomorrow is going to be day two of long driving it's going to be comparable you know you usually feel it a little bit more on the second day the first day is a little easier yeah um but it went good and we didn't have any issues we didn't have any sleet or wind to drive through which helps a lot no it was smooth smooth drive and we didn't stop and cook yeah we I ate a couple times but I just ate like cold food out of the fridge but Aaron's being a trooper and holding out for a big dinner so yeah it really does shave off a couple of hours when we don't have to cook get that skillet out yeah we did go to like eight rest areas we peed a lot just to go to just stop go to the bathroom and then keep on driving so that was great 17 and a half miles per gallon we got yes I think it's time for gas once for whatever reason this was just a phenomenal yeah our tank of gas we got 405 miles or something like that and we got this new def fluid def fluid we got like the premium version platinum it's called we got the platinum it just it just came out if you have a diesel truck you gotta check it out it's platinum def fluid by peak and we're convinced that it's cleaned our engine up a bit well we actually had a uh a check engine light on a couple weeks ago we were about to go to the dealer and do some dreaded warranty battling so this morning as we left the campsite here in Washington our dreaded check engine light came on the money light so we're a little nervous we had this happen once to us uh once before where we had issues with our def system our diesel exhaust fluid system that we got covered under warranty in Savannah Georgia just over a year ago that brings back some memories yeah so we are at the local Napa Auto Parts store and we're gonna borrow their code reader and if you're not familiar with that most parts stores nowadays will let you basically just use their code scanner for free so you can bring it out to the parking lot run your codes see what's going on hopefully it's nothing serious so i'm gonna go grab that and i'll be right back hey babe hello i don't need the hood pop but oh oh you do it here that's okay well don't forget to slam that baby down yeah i won't so obd2 diagnostic tool scanner nice and easy to use there's a port underneath mine's in here oh yeah this one has it right there which i should know since i did this once before but as we'll say you're no stranger to your obd port it's been a while i totally forgot so we're gonna scan this real quick and see what it says hopefully it's nothing big i'll take that and the codes usually ring up something like foreign looking right and then you got to like google it yeah so a cheap code reader these can be like 50 bucks or up to a couple hundred bucks but they'll just give you the code itself and then you have to google the code and then you'll get a diagnostic tools are in the thousands of dollars and that's where it actually types out what the what the diagnostic that allows you to like control your vehicle by it's basically like a little computer that you plug in and so um but those obviously wouldn't make sense to have for a non uh technician yeah not where you want to invest your three thousand dollars no oh so you have to fire it up no you just need it to be in the on position and then it blinks reductant level sensor circuit high so you can see it's a p203d which is a reductant level sensor never heard of that sensor before what do you have to do to borrow this tool aaron you have to give them your id and a deposit some stores make you buy it you buy the tool for whatever it is and then you they just let you return it right away it's like a rental tool program this is a small town napa and i just gave my id and they were cool i actually offer the id i don't even think they wanted that so but there is two there's zero this is one of two and the second one says the same thing so i'm not going to delete this you can erase the codes too but generally i'm not going to do that because if there's something wrong there's something wrong so i'm just gonna let that be in there and then i'm gonna go return this quick and then we'll google what this is and try to figure it out and last time you deleted the code the guy at mercedes-benz did not like that he almost slapped me on the wrist and he did over the phone never erased the code yeah so you learned your lesson i'd say i did so all right we we put this new def in we filled it up we weren't completely low we were probably like half full um so we refilled the tank all the way up the light didn't go out we stopped started light didn't go out on the first day and then uh we didn't drive for like i think a week and when we started it back up no light no light it was great so we're cured we're cured and we have improved miles per gallon and i just feel like as soon as that light came on we actually started getting better miles per gallon it was really weird we had a period where it went low and we we couldn't identify it was actually when we were in south dakota i remember very specifically when it started to go low and then yeah it was like in the 13s and 14s and now it's back up to like almost 18 yeah we've been hitting 17 18 it's great yeah definitely weird so home sweet cracker barrel and it was sunny it was getting hot i was actually warm um i can tell sunshine is gonna just treat us well yeah so it's a little sad to breeze through oregon and there's actually i actually have some clients in oregon that were very nice and invited us out and we would have plus you know there's some other people business reasons and we wanted to see a lot of people in oregon but it just got too cold yeah that's too bad and the south part is like it's not horrible yet it's still like in the 60s and lows in the 40s um but in the washington where we were just at it was highs in the 50s and lows in the 30s um actually lows in the 30s in oregon here too like high 30s so we just we gotta get back into the sunshine and outdoor workouts yeah we just have to yep so we're excited ---- that's tomorrow we're gonna be in california tomorrow yes that's gonna be great so cracker barrel here we go i'm excited we can throw our uh our new uh front window kit up which we haven't been able to black out we've always had that dirty sheet that we hang up so and then we're gonna get up early again tomorrow we we did really good with um getting up early in fact we talked a little bit about our lights on yes and i don't know if i said this before or not but every single bike rack we see there's no light plate license plate mounted on it there's no exterior lights like we're being super safe i don't nobody does it but the law clearly states like and i would imagine in every state like if you block your license plate with anything like you can get pulled over for it so we're just trying to avoid um that happening well the license plate you'd fixed yeah the license plate's fixed anyway but the lights is a big well the lights is a safety thing like we don't have any basically tail lights you can't see us you know the brake lights work but no tail lights so were you about to yawn no that's it's you deserve it if you want to because i earned 10 hour drive so anyways that's really it we're gonna cook dinner and uh relax with a movie or we're watching we're watching a scary show we're watching the haunting haunting of hill house and it's kind of messing me up in the head it's messing with your sleep it's messing with me yeah i'm gonna put on my comfy pants make dinner and start lounging good morning 6 30 a bit of a rough sleep last night it always is for me at a new location but we kind of went to bed pretty early we're both pretty tired just from that long drive and i think we dozed off around 9 or 9 30 and i woke up pretty hard at like 10 or 10 30 to screeching tires and some woman was yelling and i don't know what was going on out there but that's just how it goes sometimes in a cracker barrel or a walmart so our morning routine it's usually up between five and six 6 30 would be a sleep in for us like this and i make the coffee and we usually sit in bed for about a half an hour or so and do just a little bit of light computer work before we start the day today we have still another 350 miles to go into california and we're kind of waiting for the sun to come up a little bit because of our taillight situation with the bike rack it's about 40 degrees outside so it gets a little cold and so we had to have the propane heater on last night also which that can be if you're a light sleeper or if you're just um falling asleep or that sometimes when it kicks on will wake you up so i think i woke up at 3 30 4 30 5 30 and 6 30 how do i look sleepy oh i can't even i wasn't talking to you chris is like i can't see you but it is a new day and it's gonna be a sunny and 80 degree day in california hopefully so we are excited to get into there i heard a lot lately people talking about leaving california people have strong opinions about california and uh yeah i don't know if i'd want to live there but it certainly is nice to visit we're gonna try to hit up some something hanging out of your nose okay we made it to california five miles across the border and we're already at a rest stop well hey part of my morning routine is chugging water yeah that's true i like to front load in the morning this is actually a really good tip for drinking water front load it in the morning because if you don't and you try to get it in at the end of the day that's going to disrupt your sleep it's going to disrupt your sleep cycle and sleeping is equally as important as water is yeah so the morning when you throw water and then coffee on top of that and then water water coffee water coffee yeah we're at the rest stops quite a bit this is actually our second rest stop break already and we've been driving for under an hour yeah we just went through the egg checkpoint and last year it kind of wigged me out a little bit because we've never been through one before in california so you know you get across the border and every vehicle has to stop and they ask you if you have fruits and vegetables well you know last year yeah we have a lot of fruits and vegetables that's like what we eat and i don't remember did we did we say yes we said yes and then they kind of asked a little bit more about it uh like you know did you get it from like a farm oh yeah and we're just like no it's just from the grocery store like green beans and you know tomatoes and whatever they wanted to make sure it wasn't like rustic yeah so it wasn't a huge deal but this year they just kind of almost waved us right through they asked us and we didn't have anything so we were planning on uh not shopping until we got into california we are so out of food right now yeah and everything we're running low on everything and we were holding off to cross the border yeah although i did throw an onion away because i didn't want to say yes i have an onion and then get super searched but the weather is already great here like just even in medford oregon i saw the highs coming from 50 that's that's a huge swing and uh as we get into california a little bit more it's supposed to be like 82 so i know we're always talking about the weather but it's a huge difference for us living in a van you know when it's last night was 37 degrees and uh i was talking about the heater kicking on and off so the bedroom thermal curtains help a ton the new thermal curtain kit for the front helps a ton uh but it's still 38 degrees outside so it's going to be cold in here no matter what it's cold yeah i'm excited for a sunshine warmth not wearing hats and mittens i'm excited to be able to do morning workouts like early morning workouts the way i like it and what else am i excited for i'm excited to not have to wipe the moisture off the windows every day that's a pain in the butt there's so much moisture every morning from that from being cold and hot in here and so just so much moisture it's everywhere we're excited if you can't tell we're excited to be in california we love california and we can't wait yep so five hours and 15 minutes on the map 299 miles and uh that's gonna put us uh probably closer to seven hours maybe six and a half seven hours because we have to go to the store and stuff too so we better get going yeah big day i'm excited to shop i'm excited to get into camp be officially relocated i'm so pumped nice let's keep moving there is a life i lead in this city hurrying to cut my teeth i can take what i need to get by it doesn't make it easy the other piece of my heart moves slow somewhere in the great unknown when i return from the afterglow