FnA Van Life: A Stranger Did THIS on Our Boat Trip (Pregnant with Twins)

As long as no one drowns, I think it's a good day. It's a good thing we got a good captain, you know? So relaxing that you just want to take a nap. And it's been almost every single lock. My lady, who's making twins right now. I'm sketched out. I won't lie. He's like, just pull up on the beach. That's what affinity life is all about. She takes out the stick and she starts banging and drumming and just my skin and the tears, because it was just like my heart. It's day two of our La Boat adventure. We are really excited. Today, the goal is to get from Lakefield to Buckhorn. And just beyond Buckhorn, Jamie and Lisa actually have some friends with their own mooring and dock that we could go stay at. So the goal is to get to their house. Unfortunately, it's like a six hour boat ride. And we've got a toddler, a dog and two babies in my tummy. Can you show me how you would stand if you were making a music video? How would you stand? That's a good one. It's called raincoats and life jackets. We've done this La Boat trip about four times now. I think we've had Everly every time we did it. The thing that I was thinking before we even started this adventure this year is that this might be our last boat trip for a long time. If by next summer we have six month old twins, the likelihood that we're going to be able to get on a boat with her and two babies feels challenging. Especially if we don't have help. So here's the deal is like Jamie and Lisa came with us last year and they helped us out so much with Everly and they're back at it again. And no, Jamie and Lisa are not Everly's grandparents. You would think that maybe the grandparents might be here or cousins or... We're not related to Jamie and Lisa at all. Except we both have vans, which makes you part of a family. Yeah, but they're happy to be here. They're hanging out. They love hanging out with Everly. And Paco. And Paco. They act as if they're pretty much grandparents to her. For sure. Or like aunt and uncle. And so it's really building the community and finding the right tribe that will allow you to be able to go on these type of journeys. And was running back and forth doing the robes and like dealing with everything and we didn't have help. But now that she's more mobile, it's actually more challenging. So maybe twin six-month-olds would be easy. Twins and toes. We each have one of those little things with a strapped to our chest and you can make it happen. That's the thing. I'm already tired. I'm tired just thinking about it. We'll show you throughout the day the trials and tribulations of all the stuff that kind of goes on with having a toddler and how our friends help us out so much. And maybe if you're wondering if you can do it, you'll know by the end of the day if you want to. And Alex and I think you can do it. We think you can. Positive mental attitude. It's either you're going to be sitting at your house miserable or you're going to be on a boat miserable. As long as no one drowns, I think it's a good day. Put your hands on the white part. And then there you go. Good. You did it all by yourself. Hey, hey, Everly, what do you say? All by myself? Mercer Mayor. It's a book. Little Critters. The book is called All by Myself. Oh, Mercer Mayor. Mercer Mayor. It's funny, though. She'll be like, I did it all by myself. Mercer Mayor. You're like, okay. So if you're wondering why Everly has a raincoat on and then a life jacket, it's because we all went swimming in here yesterday, including her. And both of her life jackets got wet. And then it rained last night. So I made it to where... Also, then we don't have the sunscreen yet. It's a little bit cool right now, too. All right. Lock's starting to open. Look at this. Whoa. You can actually smell the lock water. Hold on to the rail. Holy, that's a lot of water. It's crazy that these locks are like 100-plus years old and they're still operating and they're still strong. Clearly, they've replaced some of the wooden doors, and I think they do that every couple of decades. But the mechanics are the original mechanics of the locks, and that is so cool. You've got to look at her. You've got to say it. Say it really loud, okay? Chateau! Bonjour! Say bonjour, puppies. We did so good, Everly. High five. High five, Paco. Okay, bye. Lisa was prepared to come over and help her right away. And that's what I mean by having, like, really good people on the boat with you because they're always paying attention. The most dangerous spot to be on these boats is actually in the lock. You think the tree pushed that? That's what she said. Sorry, man, you keep setting me up. Parker was born in the Wood Buffalo National Park. It's the largest national park in Canada. This is also the home of the longest dam in the whole world. One of the nice things that we found about traveling with Everly is that generally it's a really kid-friendly world. Like, obviously some places are more kid-friendly than others. Like, when we were in Portugal, it was so kid-friendly, and everybody was, like, excited to see kids and welcoming and, like, no trouble at restaurants. And, like, they would go out of their way to, like, make her feel comfortable. Here on the Trent Severn, at a lot of the locks, they've actually given Everly coloring books and stickers and little toys. You know, they see her on the boat, and they are like, oh, my gosh, we have something for you. And it's been almost every single lock. Yeah, and she's stoked on it, so don't forget your markers and crayons. Whoo! Whoo! So, yeah, you can pick and choose your destinations based on places that are known to be kid-friendly, but even if it's not, it'll be okay. One of the things that makes me kind of sad when we're on these adventures lately is that I worry that the twins aren't going to get to have such an adventurous life as Everly did so far. Yeah, I totally agree. I feel like we'll figure it out in some way, but, like, you know, it's that much harder and that much more expensive to travel with three. Five, really, plus a dog. So I'm like, how are we going to... I was already fretting about how we were going to do it with one more baby. Yeah. And then to find out that we're having two more babies... You go, Pud! Definitely makes me anxious about, like, what our life is going to look like moving forward. It's definitely interesting. We have this travel spirit at heart, and, like, I feel like that we always figure out a way to do the things that we love, no matter the circumstance. Right. I'm just going to have to see what it looks like. Not forcefully, but, like, in a good way, we figure it out. Yeah. This is pretty cool. Yeah. And I feel like it's such a neat experience for Everly, too. Yes. She's just exposed to so much, you know? I wonder, like, in the future, if this will be super beneficial to her. It's definitely, I mean, making her a well-rounded little kid. Yeah, and her language skills are incredible. Look at you! Another loon! Can you show everybody your loon noises? I can see the loon. He dove under the water. They dive really deep, baby. Right now, we're doing a little divide and conquer. We have Lisa on the front with both Paco and Everly. Alex and Jamie are both inside, and they are working on breakfast. The lock is going to open here in a second for us, and Alex will come with me and help me out with doing the ropes as I also drive the boat. Or maybe Alex will man both the ropes while I drive the boat. I'm going to divide these eggs. And you're going to conquer the sandwich? I'm going to conquer the sandwich. A little cheese, a little bacon. Talk dirty to me, Jamie. Ooh! Chef Jamie, thank you so much, man, for cooking up some beautiful breakfast. Appreciate you. We're enjoying brunch, and then actually at this dock, there's a special little spot just right there. But before we enjoy a special treat, we have to have a special breakfast sandwich. You got to fill the belly before you have the sweets, you know? Paco, you trying to have some too? Yeah? Well, thank you, Lisa. Lisa's saying that she could watch, or they could watch Everly, and Alex could get a little rest. This is the reason why you need people on the boat with you that are willing to watch the kid, you know, willing to watch Everly, because this is my lady who's making twins right now. This is how she's feeling. I just feel scared. Okay, 30 minutes, we'll leave by noon. All right, well, we're going to go head out, walk over this lock and go to this little store, see how it is, see if it's cute. Do you guys want to go to the store? Sure. All right. There's a reason why we came here. Wow, look at you! All dogs are welcome. Paco's allowed inside. Have you ever seen a beaver with pearls? It's so soft. What is it? Oh, does it make shadows on the wall at night? Okay, ready? You want to look? Look how beautifully... The strawberry one, and then look all the way over there. You see that one all the way over there? That one's a raspberry one. You like raspberry a lot. And I want that one. Can you try any samples? The first one, I had a feeling. Whoo, yeah! One way to always keep the kids occupied, by kids I mean Jamie and Everly, is to get them ice cream. Yummy! Can I have raspberry? The raspberry's really good. This water looks so relaxed and calm, but realistically, the water underneath is sucking at such a high rate, pulling the water through that dam. So it's so dangerous to potentially go swimming right there, and you would never know by the top of the water surface. Along the Trent Severn, there are 18 licensed hydroelectric generating stations, approximately making about enough energy to power 40,000 to 50,000 homes in Ontario at the same time. First mate Jamie has given Captain Frank, or what Everly would say, Captain Poo Poo, a little bit of a break. How you feeling driving? As long as it goes straight, we're good. He's like over-correcting this way, over-correcting that way, which is pretty normal when you're getting used to it. Yeah. You know, so don't feel like that you're doing something wrong, because you're not. We're in wide open water, so there's nothing that you could really hit. It's very forgiving. When we get closer to the locks, that's when it gets a little bit more scary. Pass it over. I was left unsupervised. Where are you going Jamie? This is your rudder right here. So when you have that in the middle, that's kind of like, kind of center. The way the current's going and the way the wind's going is going to blow you in the direction always. It will move you in the direction always, so slightly left or slightly right might be straight. Say you're going real hard right, when you get back to straight, there's going to be a new straight. Does that make sense? That's it, I quit. You're doing great. Oh my gosh, Lisa, something's following you. Mosquitoes and the deer flies away. I understand this thing works. It's so funny. Ice cream and dragonfly was the purchases today. You know, it looks good though. It looks good. I was actually just saying to Jamie how this is the most technical part of the driving so far and he's the one doing it. Right now we can see one side of Burley Falls here coming through. Then there's another side right around this massive rock. It kind of comes around both sides. Really cool looking. To be quite honest with you, the camera does not do this place justice. It is very, very spectacular. The rock formations that are here, the life, the green of the wilderness around you, the rock structures coming out of the water just randomly, it's really, really unique. We're so lucky today. The sun has stayed out all day. It looked like it was going to storm and according to all the weather information we were getting, it was supposed to rain all day. It sprinkled barely once for less than a minute. For Lisa, noticing the lock because we would have literally just drove right past it, it was sneaky. It just kind of turns on you and there it is. We're going to go just in front of that little boat and if I could get you guys to grab ropes and hook us up over there on that right side. Yay! That's amazing. I can see why you've traveled doing that. I've seen a lot of places. What's your name? Janet McHugh. Janet McHugh. Janet very kindly invited us to her private island for a private performance and who were we to say no? Okay, Janet is going to play some music from the top of this rock. She does healing drums and she wants to build a whole retreat here for healing. How cool. So amazing. Thank you so much. On what little boat trip are you going to say you got that type of experience? I can tell you, you might be able to get it in the future because it just happened here. And also, if you were at home with your child, you would have never gotten that experience. So get yourself out and go explore. That's what affinity life is all about. When we pulled into the lock and I heard her say she's a singer, I'm like I wonder if she can sing for us because I was just thinking this would be neat. She said, I can sing in here. I like to sing in here. She takes out the stick and she starts banging and drumming and just my skin and the tears because it was just like my heart. Just like what Frankie and Alex were saying, this is what life is all about. It's the journey and you never know what you come across. Jamie and I feel so blessed when things like this happen because we run into so many little things that go on and people that you meet. It's fulfilling, really. Alright, we've made it to the lovesick lock which we've heard a ton about. Apparently it's really relaxing here. Very picturesque. Good for little hikes and stuff on the rocks. But there are no services and I think we want to get into a town maybe tonight. So we're going to try to make it all the way to Buckhorn. Right now we just pulled up to a marina spot here. We're going to see if we can get a power hookup because it sounds like the spot that we were trying to go to in Buckhorn the lock is closed right now. Day two has legitimately been a great success. We had zero rain when it was supposed to rain all day and we just pulled up to a marina and Lisa went on a big walk and found the person who's in charge here and has got us a mooring spot for overnight where we can plug in. We don't have to worry about power and so I'm really looking forward to that aspect of having a nice, quiet hopefully really good sleeping night. Cool night. The aircon on the whole time. But it's been amazing having these two. They made lunch once again. Who made lunch? Team effort? And here's the thing. They don't know that's going to happen yet. Now that they're here and Alex is here too and Alex had a nap earlier, I think I'm going to have a nap today. You deserve it. I'm exhausted. I feel like when you're traveling, especially with kids, you kind of have to take things a bit slower. You never know what your night sleep's going to be like, what their nap's going to be like. You also look like you've gotten deeply tanned in the last two days. I can feel it on my forehead. I think that might be contributing to your tiredness also. Alright, well bon appétit. I know we had said we wanted more of a city vibe for tonight, which is not what we found here at the marina. But we do have some of the amenities of a city in terms of water and showers. Gonna just kind of go for a wander. It's supposed to start raining here soon, which is fine. We'll have a nice, kind of like chill night in. I think everybody's a little bit pooped. I think it's so relaxing that you just want to take a nap. Yeah, you're like falling asleep as you're doing it. Actually, I think what's happening is you're taking in all the sights, the fresh air, the sunshine, all the stuff that you don't necessarily get at home because you're stuck inside. You're getting that on the boat. Your body's like, I need a nap. When you're done, you're ready to go lay down and chill out for a bit. Yeah, the nest is at the top of that tree. Oh yeah, I see him. Bird nerds! Nerding out on birds! They got the app that tells you what the sounds are. You really let her go? I had faith and trust in you guys, you know? I wasn't planning on doing anything. Well, that was a bad plan, Alex. So this over here is Jean, and Jean has built this beautiful garden. She's been coming over here for the last 21 years. It's so cool to meet the people who actually live here and spend time here and make these places so uniquely what they are and how beautiful they are too as well. Yeah, we could show them better over here. Oh yeah! That was amazing! See, people are so incredible. You just got to give them the opportunity to be. They come up, they walk up, they say would you like to feed the fish to Everly? Absolutely love it. This is why you need to travel. Get outside of your comfort zone and you're going to have amazing experiences just like we've had on day two of this journey. And it's only going to get better from here. This is only day two. You fed the fish? Yes, she fed the fish. Show them what they look like. Whoa! I feel like no matter what you do when you go out and you travel and you explore and you do something outside of your ordinary stuff, you find magnificent people everywhere. How are you feeling? Tired. Yeah. But Jamie seems to think that he has never played this game before. But we'd like to officially roll the tape. We have video evidence that he did play the game before. Here it is. Oh, that's a cute thumbnail. This is Jamie sitting right here. The same spot he's in today. I'm in the corner. Game's on the board. Abundantly clear, buddy. How do you feel now that you've seen the tape? I'm a little embarrassed. I'm taking you to the doctor because maybe you had a stroke. You want to know what else is funny? What? They're green and we're red at the game. It's like legit. You have green chips, I have red chips. That's funny. Wild. Clearly it was a memorable night. You're like, is that from last year or did you just film that today? There's no telling. Well, you can tell by Everly in the video how young she looks. But unlike last year, the boys are winning this time around. Last year, we whooped their ass every time. There's no disputing. And anyways, we'll see you tomorrow. I'm just getting video evidence so that next year when we play again we can say, look, we played two years in a row. Do you remember the game? I don't remember. Did we win? You guys liked it so much, I thought you were going to buy it. I wanted to, but we forgot the name of it. We are all freshly showered. Smelling good. Ready to embark. Today we're going to go see Jamie and Lisa's friends. They have a cottage right on the water that they say that we can dock up at. My baby just walked outside. Oh my goodness. Get back in here. I don't want you to fall out. Can mommy come walk with you? Okay. It's a good thing you got a good captain. You know? Who? Captain Poo Poo? Yeah, Captain Poo Poo. Yeah, I'm Captain Poo Poo. Beautiful picture. That's a cool little spot right there. Yeah. We thought the lock might be full but they're going to squeeze us in. Perfect timing. We had to circle the lake. Frank had to do basically like a 360 turn and then we came right in. Jamie's ready. And I think this one might be a little bit... Look at us getting in here. Oh, Paco's a tight squeeze too. Alright bud. A little bit sketchy because we don't know... I mean we can see how deep it is on the radar but... He's like, just pull up on the beach. I'm like, we're not pulling this boat up on the beach. Yeah. I think that's against the rules. That would be absolutely fine if it was our own boat but this is way too expensive of a boat for us to make a slight mistake. Sorry, the babies are yelling. It looks like that right about here where this little six foot mark is would get us almost all the way to their cottage. I'm sketched out. I won't lie. Yeah, I'm unfamiliar with this spot. That's why. But it does say on this radar it says six feet six feet and then basically five feet, six feet and then it gets down to like two. That's their dock. I think this would be their dock. Their dock looks like it can't handle this boat. That's the other question. And we're strictly not allowed to anchor. The anchor is only in case of emergency situations. Do not do it. Very not allowed. And we also haven't drove for five hours today so there's no shot that we're going to be able to use electrical all night. I think we make it back to the lock for tonight. Because we can't trust that dock to hold this boat steady all night. Yeah, that's fair. And the lock, honestly, it's only been like a 20 minute drive. Yeah, especially with this wind. I think that we go back. Okay, we snagged literally the last spot at the government dock and it's going to be $12 a night for hookups and power. It's kind of perfect. There's so many boats here and this is a very popular lock because there's a bar and a restaurant right there. There's a playground right there. Lots to do in the town of Buckhorn. You can go inside and wander around the town. So we feel pretty lucky that we got this spot. And I think we're just going to stay here and then meet up with the friends a different way. What's really cool and unique about what they've done here on the Trent is they took the old wooden gates and they made them into tables when they replaced the gates and they cut the wood out of it and so the wood is so big and heavy that they don't even have to chain up these tables. Like look at this table. Not chained up. Huge. Look at that table over there. Tiny. Chained up. Also no rust. This is going to last forever or a very very long time. The one that's metal is rusting and the wood and everything is going to be gone before you know it. The time of year that we're in, traveling right now on the Trent too, you have to make sure that you stop at your lock fairly early or get lucky at the lock to be able to get a hookup. You will be able to find some dry camping on the other side of the lock where the hookups aren't, but sometimes it's hard to come by so a lot of people will reserve the marinas. Look at you go. Yerba! What's it called? The song. Everly quite literally just put on a dancing show for that lady. That was really sweet of her. So funny what kids do. She was like, kids are so agile, huh? It's so cool to see all the different boats and the different kind of people doing the boat life thing. Now the lock is closed so we're going to walk across and go for dinner in Buckhorn. Yes. The ketchup's coming. And the most important part of the meal. There you go. Ketchup. Where do you want it? I need ketchup. Tomatoes. It was so nice to enjoy a meal last night and spend some more time with our friends and that's one of the best parts about being on the road for us generally always is all the great people that we meet along the way. And as you can tell by the video it's all about your tribe and your community, the people that are with you along your journey that are going to help you out and make your experience even better. So don't worry if you want to travel with kids. It is possible. You can do it. We're doing it right now. And you know what? Honestly, I love when we're traveling. It feels so much better to be on the road doing something or out in another country doing something than being stuck at home doing something. But you know, you still have to deal with the stuff. You still have to deal with the toddler. So you might as well get out and deal with them outside. We'll have to update you guys when we've got three.