We Didn’t Expect America to Be Like This

America certainly gets a bad rap in the news in the UK so in this video we want to show you a different side and why we love it. After returning to our camper van in the US and getting it back on the road we found ourselves in Choke Canyon State Park. The south of Texas is one of the best places in America and in the world for birding and I've just found out that birding is the most popular sport in the US. I don't know if I would really call it a sport at all especially when it's saying then people watch birds in their back garden. Is that what like one in six people in the US are into birding? I'm not sure if there's that many cool people here in the US. Look what's in here. Look at that. I've never seen that bird in my life. Form an orderly line ladies. What do you guys think of birds? Any opinion? They're cool. Yeah? Birds are cool. F**k yeah. Yeah man. And you? Sure, birds are cool. Meet Philly and Keely, an Irish couple currently traveling around the US in their retro RV Milo and we have joined up with them to explore a little bit more of Texas together. These guys have just whipped up a Thanksgiving feast. Guys, I had nothing to do with this. It was all Keely. Impressive. Thank you. Holy moly. Have you ever made this before? I've never seen this before. No. So this is gonna be new for all of us. This is so America. Look at that guy just behind you. I like y'all's accent. Oh yes. It's British. Oh really? British, I like it. Or Irish. You can tell us. This is our attempt at a Thanksgiving dinner. Oh yeah, this is our Thanksgiving dinner. You can tell me if I pulled it off, okay? Oh yes, it looks amazing. Beautiful. Awww. He's so cute. He's just woken up. A grumpy little boy. That's the way my boys were. Are they still grumpy? Yeah, oh yeah. When they don't get their sleep, they're still. Aren't we doing this wrong? Aren't we supposed to be saying what we're thankful for? Oh yeah. All right. Go. I'm on the spot. I'm just thankful for time with friends. This is lovely. Oh that was cute. You haven't said my friends. That was cute. Today you'll see some really unique and interesting camera shots and it's from Now this camera here is the Insta360 X5 which is a 360 camera which means it's capturing everything that's going on around us. My favorite feature is that if you don't have a drone or you can't fly one because you're in say a national park, you can still get these amazing drone-like shots using this long extended selfie stick and with the built-in stabilization you can get these really smooth shots. And what I really love is that you can vlog on this camera and I don't have to carry this big heavy one around with me and my arms just slowly drop and drop and drop as I'm speaking to you guys and the invisible selfie stick looks kind of like it's just hovering in front of me which is really cool. And then editing is really easy on the app as they have AI editing so it can help produce videos for you without having to do anything or you can just use your finger to look around and create key frames at the best bits so you can just shoot first and then reframe later. I think that this is the best camera to capture really beautiful family moments in a really fun and creative way. They also have a lot of different mounts and accessories so you can get really creative with the different types of shots just like this bullet time feature here. And it's also just really fun watching Alex try to do the bullet time feature because he looks like he's trying to be a cowboy. Well I'm in Texas. It has an adaptive tone mode that you can select which improves the dynamic range and lighting and the camera is even great in low light as you can see here. If you're interested you can grab yourself one of these amazing cameras using our discount code TRAVELBEANS to get 15% off and for the first 10 people to buy it you actually get this free collapsible selfie stick which also doubles as a tripod which is very very cool. So if you are interested make sure to check out our link down in the description. We've actually got some other friends who've come to join us for the next number of weeks. You might remember these guys from some previous videos of ours. They're lurking just over there. Meet Eric and Alison from The Endless Adventure. We have had many adventures with these guys over the years and they are some of our dearest friends. Look who it is. Well we've seen these guys. What are we doing today? Uh what are we doing? We're going beach camping baby. Son of a beach. Don't we look like we're ready for the beach? It's great weather for it as you can see. You can see we've got all our rigs here. It gets bigger bigger. Oh we have the most people in our van. So we're all about to hit the road and apparently here in Texas you can camp on the beach which in my mind I've just seen stuff in the UK where people park on the beach and then the tide comes in and then they get stuck and everyone calls them idiots. So there's a little part of me that's anticipating that that's gonna happen and you guys are gonna be like you are idiots. See ya. Seeing these guys with all their space in their camper van has definitely been eye-opening to us on this trip and usually we kind of liked having these small camper vans in these small spaces feeling like that's all we need but now with the three of us I think there's a chance this might be the last trip in this camper van at least. I feel like it's impossible to be around those guys and their rigs and not think about what it would be like to have that kind of space of our own with Noah. So there's a lot of internal comparison going on which I know is a dangerous game but I also think it's kind of fair because there's three of us in a very tiny van now. You just know one of us is gonna get stuck. But who's it gonna be? I think we all know the answer to that. Hopefully the ones about the children. Howdy there park crew! So apparently this beach stretches on for four miles until it starts to go four by four. We'll let Eric and Alison go first so if they get stuck we can drive off. We don't have to go super far. No. We could just park up here. Yeah. You know maybe it's all the same isn't it? Yeah it's just more of this I think. Do you know that this existed? I didn't know that. One I didn't know Texas had a coast. Nor did I. Yeah. It's embarrassing. When you zoom in you see this tiny little sliver that runs like the whole way. It's awesome. Yeah this is not what I expected. Not at all. No. America's crazy. Oh they're stuck. No. They're stuck. No. Hey buddy. Hey buddies. Seriously it's been two minutes. Of course these guys have got stuck. For some reason Alison had the bright idea to do a u-ey on the beach. Oh no. But what happened was if she gets in the sand her wheels buckle so then she doesn't roll you know so she's trying to pull the tow vehicle. I bet you feel stupid. Real stupid. I should have left them in my dust. Oh. Okay so now we know there's no backing up or turning around on this beach. We have the foresight. We say this is going to happen and it happens within a minute. Two minutes. I was shocked. And there really is like the kind of like evil sick part of me inside that was happy that this happened because it was funny and it wasn't to us. Also it feels like because it's happened now that's it's not going to happen again. That's really naive. That's exactly how I think. Like oh cool tick done got out it wasn't that bad. Exactly. I'm already livid. Why? We've been here parked up for all the five minutes and there's already sand everywhere. I mean whose fault is that? We all know where that's going to go and it's going to be in my bed tonight. Well who brought it in here? You. I haven't been outside yet. Yeah but I had to run around and laugh at Eric. Priorities. Do you like cold water? This is good. No I hate it. This is horrific. Yeah I know. Oh my god. Look at these guys. You nutter. How are you feeling pregnant lady? Left out? No tired. Happy to be left out to be honest. I was just saying to these guys that this is perfect for Emma because she can go and rest and she can kind of kick me out and say go and play with those other big kids and I'm all excited because I get to go and release the energy that I have built up inside me. And I get a break from the energy that he has built up inside him. It's a win-win. So Noah's just woken up here. We were in a car park when he fell asleep so this must be quite mind-blowing for him. Look at him. We're at the beach Noah. I'm so happy right now because it's just dawned on me that I'm going to be falling asleep to the sound of the waves crashing on the beach. I feel like I'm living the American dream. Oh yes. And like for example we've got all these these beach toys basically. Speaking of beach toys look at these guys. And like I'm guessing like they're tackle boxes and stuff. Americans just know how to have fun outdoors. They do. Especially yeah. Girls in the Abbey making pizza dough. Yeah baby. How do you think the boys are going? Oh my god I've been trying they're either going to come back with one less tire, maybe a ticket from a ranger, one less seller. I don't know what's going to happen. As long as all three of them come back. We made it back safe and sound. It was so much fun and now what a great way to end the day with a beer. Did you make this all in the camper van again? Yes. Who is the superhero woman? It does look delicious. What other ones do you want to choose? Oh a sneaky piece of sweet corn. Full of too many beautiful moments. I'm actually quite emotional about how much I've enjoyed today. It doesn't get better than this in life. And they've produced more pizza. Oh yeah there's another one in here. Is there one in the oven? Oh look at that. I'm just in my element being fed pizza and hot chocolate. You've been late. Merry Christmas everyone. You look great. This feels like the first time in about two and a half years where I've woken up first before all my family. I thought oh I'll go outside and catch a lovely sunrise and come over the sea. Instead I actually feel like I've woken up something better. A very very misty and moody morning and I have it all to myself. It's extremely calm, extremely peaceful. These cool little sandpipers running around the beach which is very fun to watch if you're me. It's actually crazy how close the tide came up to the vans. Way closer than I thought would be the case. See how close it is because all the jellyfish have been washed in and they're everywhere around and it's so close. This is just everything we've been looking for in life. It's amazing. This feeling is something I haven't had for a long time. It's really really lovely. It feels so nice to be with friends who love spending time with Noah as much as we love spending time with them. Just deep human connection was definitely missing from our life and having it it's just it's really highlighted how much it was missing from our life. Yeah I think we kind of built ourselves this difficult life where all of our friends are dotted around the world from our travels which is really lovely when you travel to those places but when you're not in those places you you don't have that community with them. Look at this. Look what we're looking at right now. They say that you need a village to raise a family and being in this little tiny village has been really restorative for us and so so nice. If you enjoyed the video give it a big fat thumbs up and if you're interested in the Insta360 camera check the link down in the description to get 15% off and a little freebie as well. The X5 has been so useful for this trip. It's portable, reliable and captures everything around you with the unique 360 filming. The fact that we could just shoot first and frame later meant that we could stay in the moment with our friends and just edit it all later. Let us know down in the comments did you enjoy this collab and is there any other YouTubers that you would like to see us collab with and nothing left to say but thank you so much for watching we'll see you next time and Beans out!