THE END OF ROAD LIFE? (and camping in a toyota highlander hybrid)

So I just made a deal with my mom. The deal is if I clean her car, I can take it car camping tonight. I didn't actually look in the car before I decided to make that deal, so I had no idea what to expect, but I thankfully found myself in a fairly clean car. So we're going to get the rest of this stuff pulled out of here and get it all ready for a little adventure today. There's a few textbooks in here. What do we have here? Bourbon nib brittle. Sounds pretty good. Round one. She really got this wedged in here. Oh my goodness. There's waters in here. I need something to hold this up. I got it. Flash cards. Perfect. Hey, there you go. I get your food. Trunk is clean after I got these. Buddy, do you want to go inside? Okay. Oh, you're coming back out? Okay. I acquired the vacuum and it's vacuuming time. For now, I'm going to get you clean. That was kind of gross. Hi. Whoops. It looks like I'm being sponsored by Armor All right now. Yeah, that's going to take forever. We're not doing that. I think it's clean. I can't figure out how to lay these flat. Got it. I just spilled Windex all over my mattress. It looks like somebody peed. It's very light. Look at that. That is a winner. Fits with ease. I can't tell which way is which way. It fits. Return these. I'll be back. Love you. Whoa. Is this thing actually on? It sounds like a golf cart. A very large golf cart, but a golf cart. Who put the e-brake on? Who would take the e-brake off? I am so confused right now. It says park. It was just telling me the car wasn't in park. Okay, let's go. Watch out, Gunny. I promise I'm not cheating on you. Allow me to show you the proper way to wave. Like this. Oh, she didn't wave. Rude. Oh, I should probably turn this off. Check rear seat. What's wrong with the rear seat? There's nothing. Okay. What was the damage? 4580. Not bad. Engage the golf cart. On the road again. Can do it. I merged so much better in this than I did in the 4Runner. Wow. Okay, so, so far, the Highlander wins USB ports and for power. I don't know the exact power on this, but it felt like it was more than the 4Runner. All right, so, I am now on the road and I figured I would give you a formal introduction to this vehicle because I have not really talked about it yet and you've only seen little glimpses of it. So, as some of you have probably already figured out, this is a Toyota Highlander. It is a hybrid and I believe it's a 2021, but I'm not sure about that. I'm really curious to see how the gas mileage stacks up compared to the 4Runner. Supposedly, this thing gets insane gas mileage, like 40 miles or something like that on the highway and the 4Runner usually gets about 20. So, that would be a massive improvement over the 4Runner, but I'm going to drive this the same way I drive my 4Runner and then we'll get a good comparison of whether or not that is true. Honestly, the gas mileage is my biggest curiosity because I want to see if these hybrids are really as fuel efficient as people make them out to be and if I would consider doing a hybrid over my 4Runner. I'm not convinced yet, but maybe this little overnight excursion will convince me otherwise. So, it is telling me on that trip, I got 29.3 miles to the gallon, exactly. So, there's your exact number on gas mileage. And for this evening, St. Louis is the final destination. I am just going to run some errands and then cook some pasta and call it a night. I need pasta. Pasta. The most important stop is complete food, of course. All right, next stop is REI so I can return some shoes, hopefully. Last time I went to REI to return shoes or return an item, they gave me a hard time and it was the first time that I've ever returned anything to REI. So, I was a little disappointed, but hopefully this one goes smoother. This is a nifty little car. Let's see how this goes. Just the wrong size? Yeah, they were not as wide as I was hoping. I'm going to go to the side that does not have a cop sitting in here. It's time to make some food. All right, so this recipe is coming from Janet and I am supposed to cook bow tie pasta. Let's get started. I need to get the pasta going. Get all my ingredients kind of close. Back to old times, guys. It's kind of chaos. I'm winging this in terms of measurements, so hopefully I'm not too far off. Come on, cooperate. Windows open. So while I am waiting for this water to boil, I figured I would give you an update on what has been going on in my life these past few weeks. So, about three weeks ago, I came home to Illinois for a very unplanned visit, but it was also much needed, I would say. I was really excited to get to go home for a little while, see my dog, see my family, and not feel so guilty about it. Because usually I feel a little guilty whenever I'm going home, just because if I'm calling myself a full-time car camper, it seems contrary to the title if I live in a house, even for a short time. I know that's completely crazy, but it's just kind of how I feel. Anyways, I went home and I got home and I was pretty sure that I was going to be there a couple days and then go back out. What was that? All right, and then go back out on the road as soon as I possibly could. But once I was there a few days, I wasn't quite ready to leave. And the longer I was there, the more questions started coming up about what I wanted to do long term with the car. I've been in a bit of a slump, a creative slump, about making forerunner camping videos, just because I feel like they can get a little repetitive. And I really appreciate all y'all's support every single time I post a video. All right, so before I go into how I'm going to get myself out of this creative slump, it's time to add the pasta. It's not quite boiling, but it's pretty darn close. So I'm going to go ahead and turn this off. So just in case I knock anything over, I'm not going to start fires. There's somebody in the car next to me. Now that I have an audience, let's continue. To get myself out of this creative slump, I have given myself complete freedom in terms of my channel. I am no longer going to hold myself to just creating forerunner content for the sake of keeping a specific niche or niche, whatever you want to say. So you can expect to see more stuff like this. Me trying different vehicles, taking shorter road trips, and also getting away from car camping in general. Not to say that it won't still be adventure-y and outdoors-y, because it definitely will, but it might not be car camping content. And for now, I'm going to sit here and watch this boil and hope that it cooks faster. Okay. Pasta is pretty good. I need to chop up some garlic. I lunged it into the stratosphere, but I broke the skin. Multitasking. Neat. All right. I'm supposed to cook this on low. This has been going for a few minutes, so I am now going to add in my spinach. The cheese is melted, which means it is time. I'm going to drain the pasta and add in some chicken and pine nuts. Way to go, Grace. Honestly, I could have called that one. I do need to pick this up, though. Okay. It left us with a lot less pasta, and I didn't drain this very well. It's going to taste delicious, though. Chicken. I'm just going to dump all this in. And for my final touch, pine nuts. They are toasted, of course, because toasting the pine nuts makes them taste better. Salt bae. I'd say that looks pretty good. It is also quite delicious, and it doesn't take very many dishes. I don't really know where I'm going to camp tonight, because I don't think there's a lot of places around here, and I don't have my window covers. That doesn't really bother me too much, but I tend to like to camp where I know there will be other vans or car campers if I'm going to be doing that, just because it makes me feel safer. I know some people feel safer whenever they aren't by people, but I always feel safer with other people. Safety in groups. Safety in numbers, I guess. I am now a proud member of the Clean Plate Club, so I need figure out where I am sleeping for the evening. So I am going to pull up iOverlander. Okay, so I am seeing some spots on here that people have marked as safe and quiet the entire night, and I would tend to disagree with the safe part, just based on what I know about St. Louis, having lived here for a little while. So I'm going to go with the Cracker Barrel. Better safe than sorry. Starting route to Cracker Barrel Old Country Store. Use the left two lanes to merge onto I-64 West. Take the exit. Lock the doors. Okay, so I don't have full window covers, but I do have these little shade things. Honestly, I'm not sure this is any better than the 4Runner, because I still can't sit all the way up, which at that point, what's the point? Because I'm not going to sit like this. I'd still have to lay down on my stomach, which means it's the same. I will see you guys in the morning. I'll let you know how I sleep. The console in this car? Con. Doesn't work. My usual process does not work. It's this open console. Let me show you. And even if I shut it, I wouldn't feel comfortable putting my knee on that, because I don't want to break it. Now that I have a beautiful backdrop, let's list some pros and cons. I have my list here, because otherwise I would forget. So, pros. The gas mileage is better, so I do have to give a point to the Highlander for the gas mileage. Although, as I said earlier, it's not as good as I would really like it to be. Other things. I liked the blind spot detector. The 4Runner doesn't have that on any trim levels, I believe. So, that was really nice. I also enjoyed the sunshade things in the back. Some cons. It is hard to set my camera up on the dash to film. That is a big priority for me since I film all of my adventures, but I guess that's probably not the first con that everybody's going to notice. Center console. I talked about that this morning. I don't love this center console in general, because it has that back charging station, like the Q charging, or whatever it's called, but you lose a lot of space. It might just be the size of this vehicle, but the center console seems small. I like my center consoles to be large, so I can stuff a bunch of crap in there and really get it good and messy. Also, and this is probably the biggest con, this definitely should have gone first. The back area of this car slopes so significantly that it couldn't even be considered lay flat. I don't know if they call it a lay flat, but no. You're laying at 15 degree angle. Okay, moving on. Seats. The seats in this car are not comfortable. So, would I move into this car? Oh, wait. We have to go back to the pros. This is chaos. My brain at 630 apparently does not function. The car, I believe in my opinion, is still large enough for two, so if you wanted to squeeze two people in here for a car kipping weekend, go for it. Okay, and last on the list, everything on the car is intuitive. I know for me, at least sometimes when I get in a car, I'm like, where are the windshield wipers? And I'm trying a bunch of different dials and nothing is working, or where's the gas tank thing? You don't have that issue in the car. It's really easy to use, and I do actually enjoy the interface. Okay, overall rating of the car, I don't have anything to go off of, but I guess we'll rate it on a 1 to 10 scale. 10 being absolutely perfect, and with the number of cons, I think that it's probably going to be a 6.5 for me. That seems right. Probably wouldn't do this long term in this vehicle. Maybe if I took out the seats, because the sloping area in the back makes it hard to store anything and sleep. So, there you have it. That wraps up today's last night's video on car camping on the Highlander. If you have more questions for me about this vehicle specifically, or about car camping, or what I packed for this trip, let me know in the comments. And as usual, thank you for tuning in, and I will see you on the next adventure.