A Cozy Vanlife Day | Reading by the Water, Desert Trails & Thrifting

Hi guys, welcome back to the channel if you're new here. My name is Ash and we are currently in the process of moving into our camper van full time. Until then, we are taking a bunch of mini trips just to get out and enjoy the camper and kind of get to see what we want to change about the things we have, if we want to add more things, change things. Just like anybody else, if you move into a house, you kind of end up moving in and then changing a few things to fit your style better. So far, we've added a cabinet, some lights, very minor things. We are currently camped in Utah. We're currently actually camped at a campground. If you watched my last video, you will know that we were dispersed camping in Utah. We are now currently camped at a campground. It's beautiful. Honestly, there's water like right behind me. There's red rocks in front of me. It's honestly gorgeous, but I prefer to be dispersed camping where I don't have neighbors and I don't have to worry about if we're being loud. As I have a puppy who's crying, he's upset because I have him tied to a table and he wants to run because there is water right behind me. You're okay. He has been in a mood all day today. Yeah, we're just kind of seeing what we want to change, what we want to add. So far, we've added a cabinet, we've added some lights, just very minor things. We bought a grill so we could cook outside because cooking inside, you only have one burner and it's just annoying sometimes. Yeah, we normally prefer dispersed camping, but I was checking the forecast yesterday and it said that all night last night, all day today, and then most of the day tomorrow is meant to just downpour and rain. I don't know much about Utah. It's my first time being here, so I was checking to see if the area we were in would be okay if it rained. If it rains, the mud turns into a cement or a very thick mud that makes it really hard to get out of, and so I wanted to double check that we were okay being there and it said not really. So I thought, okay, let's get out of here. I'll find a campground and I'll park somewhere with pavement for the next couple of days so that we're safe and we don't have to worry about being stuck or stranded. Well, we are like 30 minutes out of Zion, which I would love to go to, but I'm still trying to get over a cold, and so campgrounds here are expensive. In Arizona, most of the campgrounds we stayed at, they were roughly around like $15 to $30 a night. Here, they were like $50s and $60s and going up. There were some that were $100 a night to stay at a campground, and they were calling them resorts to make it fancier. They had pool tables and a pool and things like that, but I don't care about any of that. I just wanted somewhere to park and be able to relax that was still very scenic because I've never been here before. So we ended up finding this one. This is the Red Cliffs Campground, and it's just surrounded by beautiful, beautiful red rocks, and it's very nice. The only downside, and I don't know if it will show up because, unfortunately, the GoPro flattens everything out. Oh, my dog is rolling in the red dirt. The only downside is that we were parked on a hill, which, on a positive, I am very, I'm still sick, I'm very congested, so I slept great because we were on like the perfect incline. However, you're on an incline. You can feel when you're walking from the front of the camper to the back that you're on an incline. You can feel it when you're going down from the back of the camper to the front. Everything is sliding. If you're sitting, you're naturally leaning forward because you're on a hill. It's not ideal. There's no way we could cook in our camper right now because everything would be on a hill. There's nowhere else to park. For the days that we were wanting last minute, this was the only thing that they had available. So win some, lose some. I do wish it had rained. I was really looking forward to like a cozy, rainy day reading, but I can still do that here because this picnic area is really gorgeous. There's water behind me, there's picnic tables, there's no one around. Honestly, it's just great. This place also has a bunch of trails I want to check out later. So I've changed locations because the picnic table that I was at is like in the middle of a clearing, and I think it's the walkway path through a couple of trails because people kept walking through following, I think, a couple of the trails. It's all an assumption. I haven't done them yet. But they just kept walking through, which is fine. The dog kept barking at them and I felt bad because this place is so quiet and peaceful. Yeah, I feel bad that he's loud. He's a puppy, but I don't want to be that person that has like a dog barking and yelling the whole time while you're trying to enjoy something quiet and peaceful. I moved. I took the dog back. I'm now sitting like tucked in a corner. People can't see me anymore, which is kind of funny. And I say that because I didn't know this table was here until I was just walking around looking at the water. Yeah, it's been really nice. I think I've read two chapters of my book so far, and I thought I would tell you guys in case you guys are curious what I'm currently reading. I'm currently in the process of reading, rereading, book one of The Way of Kings. I have read this book before. I read it like eight years ago, and I loved it. I read, I think, half of the next book, which I think is The Word of Radiance, or I read over half of The Word of Radiance before I stopped it because I think I was hoping to buddy read it with somebody, and it didn't work out, and I just never got back into it. These books are incredibly long. This one book is a thousand pages, which is why I'm not reading the physical. I own the physical, and I annotated it like to death the first time I read it, and I wanted to bring it, but the book is literally that big. Like it's absurd to carry around, so I'm just reading on my Kindle. I'm still enjoying it a lot. If you've ever read Brandon Sanderson, you'll know that he has like a high epic fantasy, but it's very digestible. Like you're not super confused. He's explaining things. The things he's not explaining are because he wants you to be confused, and he's going to explain them later, and it's going to be crazy. Yeah, I'm going to sit here, probably read maybe two more chapters. It's really disheartening reading these sometimes because on the Kindle it shows like I'm 163 pages in, but I'm only 14% into the book, and you're like, wow, I've been reading for like an hour, and I have not made a dent. It is getting darker outside, and the clouds are starting to move faster. It like dropped in temperature. I'm hoping it rains because I really want like a rainy day, but I'm also scared it's going to start raining while I'm out here. It looks possible for once. I'm happy. So we're currently walking Red Reef Trail. We were looking for Dino Trail, which has like really old, well-preserved dino footprints in the rock. But in the process of like finding that trailhead, we found this one instead, and honestly, it's so pretty. People live here and have these rocks in like their backyard or next to their job, and they're gorgeous. Fitz, on the other hand, has discovered that the ground is sand or a type of sand and wants to run so bad, so he keeps pulling on the leash and like dancing because he wants us to let him off the leash so he can run. If the clouds didn't look as gray as they do, I might let him. And if I knew how far we wanted to walk today, I might let him. But like this is the beginning of the trail. It just started. So if we let him run now, he's going to wear himself out before we even get into it. So maybe later, bud. So we're now back at camp. I'm having to be really quiet because the campsites are so close to each other. But good timing on Aubhurst. It started thundering the moment we got back. So I'm hoping it's about to actually rain. But we were about to head into town. I want to check out this one thrift store that's really close. I want to get another SD card. And I think we might have to do a quick grocery store run. I think it's like 30 minutes away, so nothing crazy, but...