Why We Sold Everything to Live in Our Jeeps | EFRT Q&A // EFRT S6•EP11

Welcome to another episode of The Epic Family Road Trip. Hey, did you catch that awesome new intro with Lando running in front of the two Jeeps? If you want to know who put that together, it was put together by one of our YouTube followers and he sent it to us just today. His name is Theron Benson and he is a Jeep guy and an animator extraordinaire. Check him out. Hey guys, this week we're going to do something a little different. We're doing a Q&A video. It's been a while since we've done one and we're sitting still here at least for the last couple of weeks and maybe another week or so in one place. So we thought it would be a perfect time to bring you a Q&A video. We asked on Instagram for you to ask us some questions and we got over 60 responses. So some of them were duplicates. We put them all together and hope you enjoy this question and answer video. I'm going to assume you mean going on weekend trips and then longer trips and so on versus going full-time right out of the gate. So I would say three things. One, the equipment you have is probably good enough to get started and so you don't have to spend a fortune or stress about having all the latest gear. Number two, I would have to say as long as you have food, water, shelter, warmth, the basics, you're going to be good. You're going have a great time. And number three, I would just say have fun. You're going to build awesome memories together as a family. For freshwater storage, we have two 5.9 gallon front runner water tanks that we keep on the roof rack. When we're in the States or in Canada, we use those two 5.9 gallon water jugs. But when we're going international, we have a bigger front runner water tank, which is about 17.9 gallons that we'll also have on the roof and it's all plumbed in. And then as an extra backup in our back bumper, it's an AV bumper. It has a water tank in it, which I think holds about five gallons as well. So we've never actually used that bumper. We haven't had to, but it's there for if we're going really deep into a desert somewhere. But those two 5.9 gallons are probably the best configuration that we've found because you can just pull them down one at a time and use the water. And it's easier to use than a huge 17 gallon tank. To answer that properly, first of all, I think the more capable of a four wheel drive you have, the more places you're going to push and go. So if you remember our avalanche video, if our Jeeps weren't built the way they were, we wouldn't have even attempted to go over the avalanche. So if you have a very capable vehicle, you're going to push into more rougher trails and more wild off-road situations. So that's kind of the answer. Most of the places we go, you know, our style of overlanding isn't really just trail riding. Our style is long distance travel. So if you're traveling the length of British Columbia all the way up to the Yukon and back, you're going to probably be doing paved roads 80% of the time or more. So they're very remote roads. They're very wild. There's not a lot of places to stop and fuel up and things like that, but they're not the type that you need a high clearance four by four. So we recommend you do have that just in case you get off the road. And when we camp, we're off road, we get off on the trails, but the actual driving is usually paved or dirt roads. So I think the biggest piece of gear that's the most beneficial to our style of travel would be our auxiliary tanks, because when you get way out in the remote areas, there's not a gas station on every corner and your auxiliary fuel tank is going to be your best friend. I hope that answers your question. So we're fortunate that finding great subject matter and creating fresh content is fairly easy since we are traveling to so many epic places. Making money while on the road is always a challenge. As entrepreneurs, we know that if we work hard and produce good content, we'll be all right. We like to see it more as a challenge than something to be stressed about. And I think the more rigid you are in your expectations, the tougher it is to find solutions and see new opportunities for growth. Learning to embrace challenges is what makes our life interesting. Learning to overcome challenges is what makes our life meaningful. When you start looking at your life as an adventure, that's when you start seeing the value in seeking new opportunities. And that's when you really get to enrich your life by pursuing your interests and your dreams. So yeah, I do occasionally like to wear a little bit of makeup. Doing my hair and makeup on the road just helps me to feel put together for the day ahead, no matter what my workspace looks like. I'm gonna get it down and then Carol will talk about it. So a lot of the times when we're in wilderness areas, we have the convenience of a table which has a wash bucket. It just slides into the roof rack like that. Open it up. If you've been on dusty trails, you got to wipe it down, but we've had a lot of rain so it's pretty clean. So that makes it a nice work area. I'll let Carol show how it works. This just kind of fits right in. And there's my sink. And then I have the front runner water that I usually will put out here so that I can do my dishes. I do them really simple. I just boil the water with my tea kettle and then dump it in here, wash my dishes. I try not to use too much water because then that just helps us get a little bit further down the road. So that's how simple I do it. And I have another bucket and I use that for like if I need to wash socks or dishcloths, stuff like that, and hang them up too. But normally that goes on the laundry mat, but say we just want to be out a little bit longer. What's your favorite dish soap for on the road? Sea to Summit is my favorite dish soap. It doesn't leave a lot of like soapy, soapy where you get the taste of it in your coffee in the morning. It's good for the environment or just it's a nice clean product. That one is definitely my go-to because you use just a little drop and you can do the whole load of dishes. The best was from a friend of mine in the speaking business and he had sailed the Mediterranean for three years with his three kids as well. And we were just thinking about going and he said two words, just go. You can think about it too much and end up talking yourself out of it. So that was the worst advice. I don't call it advice. Bad advice is actually just opinion from people that don't necessarily know what they're talking about. But a lot of people said, oh, don't do it. We went on a RV trip or we went on a camping trip or extended trip and we ended up just getting in each other's hair and we couldn't stand each other. You guys are going to end up hating each other. So we didn't listen to that because over the years we've grown closer, much, much closer as a family and built bonds that nothing could tear apart. So that would be the answer to those two. We get this question quite a lot and I used to always find it so hard to answer just because there are so many amazing things that we love about living on the road. But something that impacts me and I think all of us the most from this lifestyle is of course the incredible people that we get to meet along the way and the unexpected adventures and misadventures that always turn out to be powerful opportunities for us to learn something new and to grow in different ways. All experiences that have helped us become the people we are today. No, we haven't had any sort of encounter with an animal or person where we felt like our lives were in danger or anything. We definitely have had some animals roll through our camp and some sketchy people around, but having Lando in the Jeeps is a real help with that because he eats all of our scraps so it kind of clears out any scent for bears or other animals. We also try to be extremely bear and predator aware and Lando having such a good nose and sense of people or things coming into our camp really helps keep it nice and peaceful. We wanted a GSP for quite a while so naturally we looked at a ton of different breeders and we actually did look at a breeder in Ontario that had GSP puppies, but since we were traveling through the area and into Oregon anyways, we found Lando and a breeder in Oregon and it just fit in with our plans so we could just pick him up along the way back to BC. Although I can't give you an exact number because there's so many variables, I can give you some guidelines as to what to budget for. So obviously when you're traveling fuel, food and occasional lodging are going to be your biggest expenses and then Wi-Fi if you're doing international travel and you end up needing Wi-Fi so having teenagers you're going to use some Wi-Fi. If you're traveling alone you might use less. We have a YouTube channel so we're using Wi-Fi to upload so that can be a cost. If you're just staying within your country then typically you can get some kind of unlimited deal and then Wi-Fi won't be a big expense but that's something to consider if you're doing international. Let's talk about fuel. It depends again on your vehicle and on your travel style. We know people that are full-time travelers but they'll go and spend a week or a month in one location and then they'll drive to another location and spend a week or two or a month. They're using a lot less fuel than us where we, especially our first couple of years, we had a goal to hit every state and province so we had to move move move and we were spending no more than one night sometimes two nights in one location. So we're driving a lot and so fuel is a consideration spending 100 bucks a day or whatever depending on your vehicle. Now we have two jeeps so that's another consideration. So figure out your travel style and your vehicle and the distance you want to go and you can very very quickly get an idea of what your fuel costs are going to be. Food. We have a family of five and we're all adults now so we go through a lot of food. That's our by far our biggest expense and it's hard for us to budget that but we're continually trying to hone that. But here's the challenge with food. There's a couple of things. One, it's cheaper. Food is cheaper at because we had a pantry. We had a much larger fridge. We are able to buy food and different things when they're on sale and store them and then you can save a lot of money that way. On the road you can't really do that. You almost are eating a couple meals, shopping for a couple of meals or a couple of days at a time and that gets expensive. The other thing to consider about food is that you're often going to be in very very remote beautiful remote places. The goal of overlanding, I think at least ours, is to get to these places that very few people can get to. The challenge is going to a grocery store in some of these places the food had to be flown in or it had to be driven in once a month type of thing and so obviously the cost of food is much more expensive. So that's a consideration to make. Where are you going to be? What is your food storage situation? How many people do you have? And over time you can kind of figure out what your food expenses are going to be. So fuel, food and then lodging. Occasional lodging. We try to free camp as much as we can now that we're kind of we've been at it for a while but when we first started we didn't really understand boondocking as much as we do now. We would at least once a week sometimes more would go to a campground especially when the kids were younger. We're in areas we don't feel secure. Campgrounds made us at least they had some kind of security so it made us feel a little more secure but that costs a fair bit of money. We now have reduced our budget on that by free camping as much as possible and so that's something you need to consider. What is your camping style? If you're traveling long distances across country you're going to find yourself in situations where you're not going to have wilderness free camping situations all the time available. So you're going to have to occasionally put up in a motel or a hotel or a campground. So again I can't give an exact budget because you have to understand your style of travel what you're planning to do but I hope you've got some ideas from what I shared with you. One of the top most incredible destinations for a road trip in Canada but I also think in the entire world is the Icefield Parkway and Banff National Park. Another epic one in Canada is the Cassier Road to the Yukon. That's one we did recently and it's amazing to get to see northern Canada with all its wildlife the northern lights and beautiful scenery. My favorite destination in Canada is Newfoundland and Labrador because of its remote fishing towns and epic overlanding trails. There's so much to do in Newfoundland and Labrador like getting to see where the Vikings landed in Lanceau Meadows or getting to hike to the Mantle of the Earth. One of the best places in Canada is also Vancouver Island. This is such a fun place to road trip as a family there's tons to do and so much to see. Well there's about 229,292 clicks on Vandy and roughly 45,000 on Worsley. There would be more on Vandy but for the first few years of travel we towed the jeep and that saved it from clicking up kilometers without us driving on it. For high mileage maintenance we always take the before we get an oil alert warning so we'll we'll take them in when there's still like 1,000 or 2,000 clicks to go before they'll actually need to get their oil changed and then we always do the best which is like ultra premium synthetic oil and then we do a synthetic filter in it as well and then on top of that we just try to drive carefully we're not looking to destroy our vehicles out on a trail all the time we're trying to get somewhere so we do good driving habits and just maintain the vehicles all the time. I use the shank a lot of the time you've seen me use it where I can have my cast iron over the fire and it's off of the ashes and I can also turn it away when I'm restoking the fire or you know building it back up moving things around so the ashes will go out that way and I can just swing it back in place and then the other style of cooking that I like is when you don't have this like a a ring I can just move all the ashes down to one area where I'm cooking and then the fire is off over here and that keeps it separate and I can control the temperature of the food a lot better. And how about soot getting on all your gear? Normally I haven't had that problem there might be an odd ash or something like that if I'm doing a frying pan style but for the most part you know you just have a little brush and you brush off the the lid and then you can lift it up and nothing is it's so so airtight in there and nothing gets in like on the Dutch oven and the three-in-one that I normally cook with. Oh Mexico we can't wait I don't know the exact date but we're definitely coming back and that question was from at 4x4ags our good friends who we went down to Baja with Eduardo and family we miss you guys and we're definitely going to come visit you down there. We actually started with an RV doing the RV lifestyle because we didn't know any different we had never heard the term overlanding our goal was to get out and see the national parks and we went with a small small enough RV that we figured we can get into tight spaces but somewhere along the way we discovered overlanding we saw some folks in these in a jeep with the rooftop tent or I remember we were in Alaska and we saw this guy in a almost looked like a military vehicle all decked out and it was an RV but it was on a big 4x4 so I asked him everything me and Carol went over and talked to him and he was actually from Germany and shipped his vehicle over and that started getting the wheels going man we can do this we can go off he talked about going up the old Denali highway places we couldn't really go with an RV and so we got excited about it and he said if you want to learn everything about overlanding go to one of the overland expos and so we went to the expos and we learned we saw what uh uh what all the possibilities were so that's kind of what got us into it we didn't even start with that we started with uh RV travel our goal was just to get out and show the kids uh the national parks and all the great sites but overlanding kind of came about just different and really all it is is just vehicle camping it's it's a vehicle-based adventure we know people that are sailing around the world and they're doing it on the ocean and I know a guy who flew um a little Cessna all over North America and he's traveling by air we're just traveling by land and that's really what overlanding is we're taking a vehicle that we can kind of live in it'll take us way off road so we can see all the beautiful places that we want to experience so I hope that answered your question so it's pretty hard to choose but I think one of my favorite meals is this acorn squash and like spicy sausage meal it's super good and it's a really cozy meal to have they can cook it over the fire it's just an acorn squash cut in half and it's it's a really nice cozy meal and tastes extremely good especially when you're overlanding my favorite meal is definitely cauliflower ham bake cooked in our dutch oven over the fire one of my favorite meals would definitely be yellow thai curry with jasmine rice and naan bread that kind of became a staple meal for our family over the last few years while on the road and I absolutely love it um Lando is a short-haired pointer so there's not not too much shedding going on actually none and um sometimes he'll get into something on the trail but normally he doesn't do that and we just will wash him down with some Burt's Bee soap it's a kind of natural soap that we choose but for the most part no just a you know a towel wipe down and we have a little brush we'll wipe out his feet before entering the tent and it's good to go so yeah it hasn't really been an issue with us yet one of my favorite ways to make coffee while overlanding is using a small hand grinder to grind whole beans into coffee and then doing a java drip style coffee just one cup at a time it's really nice and tastes the best to me we mostly get our outdoor gear online because then we can ship it forwards as it takes us a while uh if we know we're going to be in a town at a certain time we'll ship it there and pick it up because we're often in the bush but then bigger stores it's usually Cabela's REI or MEC in Canada but we always try to support local outdoor stores if there is one hello nice so there's really two answers to that one with the softshell they fold in half and they take up only about half of our roof rack so we always needed the space up here for luggage lots of extra baggage and water jugs and so on so that was the main reason we went with that another reason is when these fold up they're at least uh six foot five or or six in length and me being six foot four i needed that extra length and at the time and i don't know if that's still true because there's a lot of new models on the market but at the time the biggest uh hardshell we could find was about six foot one so i'd always be kind of crunched i wouldn't be able to stretch out at night so it's really those two reasons um right now because um we're spending a lot of time in kind of a rainy area we're really starting to rethink um what we put on our roof and what kind of configuration we go with normally we had the freedom to just chase summer as we call it so when the weather got cold or damp uh we would head to the desert where it's dry and warm so a canvas tent it was perfect for that situation uh we don't have that freedom right now unfortunately so we're finding our tents are wet a lot of the time and that's creating a lot of problems we just can't find a place to dry out we'll get occasional sunshine we'll get maybe a half a day we'll pop open the tents and hope the wind and the and the sun dries them out but prolonged rainy cool damp maybe even snowy weather you really have to think about that if that's the kind of condition you're in all the time it might not be best to have a soft shell canvas tent so that's the those are the main two reasons for that question we just turn it on when we're climbing into bed warm up our pillows and our sleeping bags the tent area itself and then we shut it off i like to sleep more in colder um with colder air and colder weather but yeah then we do the same thing in the morning we turn it on when we're getting dressed kind of dry out as much as we can and then yeah so with the heater off how do you keep warm at night in really cold weather we have these really warm sleeping bags from sierra design they go all the way to i think minus 16 or 17 celsius and yeah and we also have these little cocoons they're called you can get them at you know any rei and they're basically a sheet inside your sleeping bag and those are wonderful for when you just need that extra warmth in your sleeping so that song is called ghosts will be ghosts by marigansa and i found it on a royalty-free music website called artlist which is where we find all the music for our videos yeah we're all pretty tall thanks um my dad is six foot four i am six foot two roughly daniel is six foot one caroline is about six foot tall and then our mother is five foot eight so we're we're almost all in the six foot range pretty tall well in the last five years i'd say in terms of a difficult day that was when pete was diagnosed and we ended up in the hospital with him all is well that ends well but that was a tough tough day for us as a family in terms of difficult trip that's more physical difficulty that was when we're up in the snow mountain snowy mountains and we're stuck up in that pass um it was a good old workout but it also was a time for us as a family to really uh work together as a team and that was a lot of fun there's a lot more fun thinking about it later than it was while we were dragging the uh dragging ourselves out of the snow but yeah i'd have to say that was uh in terms of difficulty the most difficult yes we'd love to we want to drive around the world we have family in australia who adopted a young man from i think cebu in the philippines and he has become such an awesome part of our family they lived in canada for a while so we got to spend time with them and we met the uh the rest of the family in australia when we were there but uh we would love to go and see where he was born and so the answer is yes uh no we haven't um it was our plan when we were driving up the cassier to the yukon to once we made it to the yukon did what we wanted to do there to come back and then go out and explore prince rupert but we didn't end up coming back the same way so we didn't get that chance but it looks like a beautiful coastal area to explore yes we are certainly looking at tackling the mackenzie trail but before we do we have seen that there is quite a few deep water crossings so we'd like to get a snorkel on worsley which we haven't been able to do yet but hopefully within the next year we can get that done and hopefully we can explore that beautiful area all right one of the questions was how did you decide to sell everything and get into this lifestyle that's a big question but i'm going to try to answer it really concise our initially when we started we were going for a three-month trip when the three months were over we said as a family you know did you guys have fun do we want to keep going and especially carol like asking the kids and they said oh there's so much more to see we're having so much fun let's keep going if we can and so we carried on but we hadn't sold everything at this point so we thought well maybe we'll extend it to six months or a year we had some savings so we were able to do that and then a year came and we were loving it so much and there's such a big world we started to rethink our dreams and we came up with the dream to drive around the world so but there was a bit of a process to that coming to that mindset so initially it was a desire to spend time together as a family and see awesome things and experience awesome things and along the way we had the opportunity to go to haiti so i always talk about these three kind of catalysts that ushered us into this lifestyle the first was our experiences in haiti and we were there with a group of people bringing some solar lights to a very poor village but that whole experience really opened our eyes to a much bigger world and we started we came back thinking you know we don't need so many things and we can be so materialistic um in first world countries and we see sometimes in a third world country yes they're poor and they're suffering under that poverty but we came out of there saying we don't need so many things and and experiences together as a family and being able to focus on family life was much more valuable to us than having more and more things so that was the first one the second one was we were hiking in california we're climbing a a hill in joshua tree national park and our my phone kicked in into cellular service halfway up the hill and all of a sudden i started getting these messages from my brother who was kind of house sitting for us at the time we still had our house and uh he said he checked in every week and one day when he showed up the place had been ransacked and everything was stolen from our house and that was kind of the second uh catalyst for helping to take what we learned in haiti not being so materialistic and then all of a sudden everything we had worked for and everything we so thought we had valued so much was taken from us that helped get us to the next level and then the third one and the final one was when young pete was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes on the road and he was starting to lose weight and to get very ill rapidly and we took him into the hospital and he ended up in the icu to recover from ketoacidosis which had set in we didn't know what any of this was we just thought he was growing and losing weight at the same time but when you see a family member or someone you love so dearly laying there in intensive care and the possibility that you could lose one then it completely changes your focus in life and we that was the final straw you might say and we totally got it that the most precious thing we have is time not things and we came to the understanding that we could always earn more money but we can't get more time and so that was it for us we carried on we learned how to make money while on the road so that we could kind of sustain this lifestyle and we're gonna carry on one of the other questions i might as well answer with this that the other question is how long do you see yourself traveling are you going to settle down are you going to stop uh we don't know the answer to that but as of right now we're enjoying this lifestyle so much we're enjoying our time together our kids are growing up so they won't be with us for that much longer and so we're not in a hurry to change anything that's for sure all right that kind of wraps up this week's video i hope you enjoyed the q a format unfortunately we weren't able to get to all of your questions but we will do that in an upcoming video and if you have any questions that you want in a future q a video please go ahead and leave them in the comments section below and in the meantime we'll see you down the road