Van Life Week 1_ Colorado to Utah and Nevada

This is the current state of our van. It's a mess and nothing's done. We spent all day shopping for things for the van and um didn't get really anything done. And uh this is still here. All right turns on the post office. I just removed the angel. The angel's gone. She no longer guides our trip. We got our top board on here and we got our multiple valves for our water hookup hooked up. So we're gonna drill through this side right here, put a freshwater tank on here, have a spare over here, and um then put our raising countertop over here, get a cushion, get a bed, outfit the van, leave. Jordan's trying to get a drill bit out of the wood and he might freak out. Spent all day cleaning so now my room is very bare and tomorrow we pack the van. All right this is the after mini van tour. This is our solar gauge. Step in. Got some storage. We've got a sink, a fold-out bed, all of our gear. This is our bed. It's more storage and this is uh the van. All right everything's packed in the van. Sort of. Yikes. Headed to Jordan's and we're gonna pack it up. Okay we finished packing the van. Not too bad. I'll show you a back view as well. Fits perfectly. Fits really well and we're off. We are 50 miles outside of Grant Junction. Feeling very tired and we're trying to make it to, well we were trying to make it to Moab but now we're gonna just try to make it to Grant Junction. All right we're camped at Zion. You can't see the rocks from here but this is our campsite and first meal in the van. Exciting stuff. Because it starts from like right here. This one's saying start from the Chinle trail which is uh just decent rock. Okay all right that's the ridge that we're gonna go up. A lot of route finding. We just came from on the top of this hill. Uh not much of a trail but we're gonna go up top of one of these. It's gonna take us way too long to get to the top of that ridge. Bad instructions for the trail. We found it. It's on a ridge line um but we're gonna go back into town and we're gonna boulder instead and maybe come back for this one sometime. Definitely coming back. Um project failed us on this one but uh you know we got the trail down. Next time we'll be back. We'll get up there. And good views all the way around. Still in Zion. Doing a little bouldering. We're starting real easy with some zeros and ones. Beautiful views while you boulder. We're at the Spring Creek trailhead. We have a great view for dinner. It's about 11 minutes away from Zion. Jordan is doing full We're here. It's crazy. This is it. He's thriving and uh this Pacifico may be the best thing we've had in a while. Um we're gonna do the Namaste wall. A little Waco climbing. 10s and 11s. Are we doing the half row? In Namaste. Are we? I'm gonna try. We're gonna try. Some 11s. We're 50 degree overhanging uh sport climb. Yeah it's a little bit much for me. A 11a gym climber right now but um we'll try it. Oh yeah. And uh we're about to do the worst thing ever. Cooking raw chicken. Cooking raw chicken. Sad. Look at how big these chicken breasts are. Oh my god. Real big. Real steroid action. All right this is our countertop setup in case you haven't seen it yet. This raises up from our bench and uh we can cook. Look at that. That is crazy. Okay Jordan's ruining the vlog but look at these beautiful canyons. Kolob Canyon. This is the start of the hike. There's Namaste. The holes in the rock you can climb up. Uh it's definitely overhanging. Um if it was straight down. Yeah. Because you're climbing at the angle. Yeah. All right half route is actually pretty overhanging. Yeah. Gorgeous. This is what crazy hair looks like in the van but we just got back from climbing and this, wait for it, is our view for lunch. This? This is what I have to live with in the van. Oh yeah. There's no fire on these sticks ever. There will be. At least in time. Honestly pretty impressive though. And he's right. Good backdrop. Jordan's using the hang board and this is our campsite and our view for tonight. I realized that my bike tire is flat and our plan was to bike the six miles in to Zion to go climb because the shuttle tickets are taken. Um we pumped the tire up and I'm hoping that for some reason it just got flat on its own and we can go bike early tomorrow morning, do the climb and then we're going to go to Gooseberry Mesa. Gooseberry baby. The goose is loose and uh and do some mountain biking and then head to Vegas. It's a lot of food. You're a growing boy right? We're biking into Zion because there's no shuttle tickets left. It's about six miles to the climb and then we're gonna go climb some cracks. Now looking at these cracks right here is our first climb. Um it's hot. It's probably about 90 degrees. Not ideal for climbing but it's still gorgeous. All right after bike riding out toward Dangerous Landing and Zion, look at Kristen's climbing in the crack up there. A little fun Indian Creek style crack climbing. That's Angel's Landing. This is the canyon. So a little belay. It's good stuff out here. Having a good time. Just uh some biking and climbing. We'll see if we get to the other mountain biking later today or if we do it tomorrow morning. Yeah. Did you see any of those? We are at Gooseberry Mesa which is a mountain biking trail. It goes all the way around the rim of a canyon. Lots of fun slick rock. We're doing about seven miles this morning kind of as a rest day. Gonna hit the road. It's about an hour or two to Vegas and then we're gonna post up in a coffee shop. Get some stuff done that we need to and then camp at Red Rock Canyon where we will be climbing a lot for the next four days. Doing a lot of long multi-pitch routes which is really exciting. Beautiful, beautiful weather today. All right a little taste of Gooseberry Mesa. It's all slick rock. A lot of these crazy little rock tunnels and formations. Big drops. It's pretty awesome. As they say the goose is loose out here on the trail and uh yeah took south rim to Hidden Canyon and north rim back to the car. So good stuff out here. Having fun mountain biking out in Utah. It's hot. I think I'm ready for the mountains again soon. Saturday we're about to do Cat in the Hat climb. All right we're at the top. Cat in the Hat in Red Rock Canyon. We got lucky today with the clouds. Good time. Six pitch climb over there and uh we're out in Pine Creek Canyon right now. So pretty good stuff up here. Just uh having a good time climbing and having fun. So check it out. See what other climbs we got. A nice rest day tomorrow thankfully and then uh looking at Armatron. It is our rest day today so we are at the library and we're gonna try to do dark shadows tomorrow. The first four pitches not all 10 because it is crazy hot in Vegas and so I think we're gonna either wake up really early or we have to get there at 10 a.m. It kind of depends on when the wall is in shadow and then after that we will head over to Joshua Tree and hopefully do some more climbing. Before the crux move not during. Vegas. Not during all right. Jordan's tired. ------- tired. Weekend and I'm tired. It's the heat okay. I said it. Are we in Vegas? Are we in Arizona? Are we in Florida? Are we in Houston? No one knows. It doesn't even matter. It's all the same. We can't leave Vegas because our water pump delivers by 10 p.m. from Amazon today. In the hot desert sun. This is the life we chose. Just so no one thinks the van life is too glamorous. It's 100 degrees in Las Vegas. It's hot. It's really hot out here. We just ate a salad sweating outside of our favorite spot. The Anytime Fitness. Oh yeah. Showers. It's shower day. We haven't had a shower in years it feels like. I'm gonna have enough dirt on me for probably three weeks. Me too. Ready. We're ready. Get out of the heat. We're getting our water pump for our van. We're still in Vegas. We're leaving soon. Time to get out of here. Only gas station for so we uh we've got to fill up but it's gonna cost us a hundred bucks to fill up this bad boy.