VAN LIFE Van Tour | What we brought for our trip across Canada| Dodge Caravan turned camper van

Hey, we're Keith and Deb and right now we're traveling across the country in this 2011 Dodge Caravan. Today we wanted to give you a tour of how we're living. We are going to give you a tour from the front of our van all the way to the back, how we use it, what we've done, what's important. Let's get to it. This is the passenger seat. Keith and I will trade off on the driving, but Keith does most of the driving because I edit while we are driving. This is my side. We've got sunglasses, sunscreen, my RX bars in case I get hangry. Watch, headphones, mask, very important. So that's my side of the door. In here, we have our first aid kit, which has everything from gravel to Advil, polysporin earplugs because you never know where you're sleeping, Benadryl, band-aids, first aid, not a first aid kit, a sewing kit. We've got flashlight, EpiPen. I'm allergic to Brazil nuts. Some extra masks, gloves, puffer because I also have a puffer. Usually I don't need it, but with the wildfires, you never know. It's important to have. And we have some antiseptic wipes, which again, before this year, probably wouldn't have, but with COVID it's important. So that's our first aid kit. And look at this case. Below here is just classic car stuff and napkins because you never know when you need napkins. Two more things I forgot to mention. One is we always have trail mix in this seat. Again, you get hangry, you got trail mix close by. And then under here, we have toilet paper and baby wipes in case you're somewhere that you need to use the bathroom in the woods or that often outhouses don't have toilet paper, as well as these are excellent for washing your hands or your body. If there's no showers. One more thing I also forgot is as you can see on our two seats here, both Keith and I have different things. And when I drive, we do switch. I have this cushion because I'm a lot shorter than him and it just pushes my back that much closer. So when I'm driving, my foot can actually be on the pedal properly. And Keith uses this for his back. This is so nice in the summertime. You don't get that sticky back feeling on that bench when you're driving for hours. So on my side, obviously nothing too exciting. Just some masks, my glasses, because I do need those glasses to drive. I mean, I don't require them, but they help a ton. Got my wallets. Actually something down here that I find very important to have is this window breaker and seatbelt cutter, which you never know when you need to use. So keep that right there. So this thing's pretty crucial. When you're GPSing your way across Canada and into the back country and the side roads, you need this for your phone for sure. Otherwise you rely on your, well, your navigator. And sometimes your navigators aren't experienced or skilled. That's coming down here. Obviously we have our to-go coffee mugs, some change, but this is where it gets interesting and busy. So we have this 12 volt DC adapter that goes into 120 watt sort of AC plug. So we're able to plug in a laptop or charge anything that would require this sort of regular wall plug. And there's also USBs obviously for phones and anything that requires that sort of plug. This is the permanent phone plug. Now this thing, this is a recent purchase. We made this purchase for this trip specifically. And when Devin edits the videos, she uses her old MacBook Pro and it always needs to be plugged in. So this is when we are not driving and we're, we're not running the battery so she can still be editing and still be plugged in. It's 240 watt Jackery battery that Luke recommended. Thanks Luke, Devin's brother. In this charger bag, there's phone chargers, battery chargers for the camera, portable batteries, portable batteries like this, the anchor batteries that are I think 200 milliamp hours. They charge your phone like four times. Very handy. We have two of those. Really mainly cables in here, the MacBook Pro for editing and my laptop as well. Steve Dell. Hopefully we can do some day trading on our travel as well as movies and friends and how I met your mother and their shows that we're starting. These are water bottles. We have the same one, but different colors. You will literally see it in every single one of our videos and we love them. Something else. I also forgot this table. It's definitely not meant for a vehicle, but it sets up like this and it's kind of perfect. My computer also overheats a lot so it makes me not sweaty, which is nice, but it just sits above right here and then this is how I'm going to edit and how I was working before on the road to the middle area. Wow. Wow. Would you look at that? So this is thanks to Keith O'Halloran. He set this up. Thank you Keith. Yeah, I put these little, uh, misc units up that we found at GP. They're taped inside here and it's magnetic and honestly it works very well keeping the bugs out. We shut the doors at night, but it's really great to get across breeze during the day. If we're parked somewhere like right now. Also there were some holes, so duct tape is also your best friend when you're van lifing. Right here is where we have our like day day packs. So my backpack that we take on hiking trips, I have my purse. We have a grocery bag and then one other little bag that we have up there to put our electronics or stuff in it if we're traveling. Okay. Then this is where I have my shoes. So literally all shoes. I have water shoes, real water shoes, running shoes, and then my favorite shoes. I'm wearing my Berks. Me and Keith both have this on our sides. It fits perfectly in. As you can see, you're starting to see our bed platform and where we spend our evenings. But this is awesome. We have all of our clothes. We each have one bin, all of our clothes in the bin. And then on top it opens up. So inside we just have our bathing suits, underwear, bras, socks, that kind of stuff. And it just Velcros perfectly together. Mine doesn't, one of the wheels is broken. So it slides a little, not as good as Keith's, but it works. I also have my yoga mat right here, which I'm excited to use tomorrow because we haven't had a campsite yet with grass, but there's grass here. So I'm hoping to use it tomorrow morning. We actually brought both our acoustic guitars that go right here. So I also have the magnetic mosquito net, but there's my guitar and Devin's guitar right underneath. And on it, I have an emergency sort of quick access hoodie for warmth and my rain jacket. Over here we have my toiletry kit, which is easy access, obviously. Speaker, some flip flops or some slides. That's just right there. Easy access and my Berks as well. Same as Devin. Slides out. I got rollies, she doesn't. I'm going to the bin at the bottom, put it there. And this is my clothes bin. And this is honestly huge because otherwise all our clothes is in a duffel bag and it's getting really damp and humid. So this is a big game changer. And I recently discovered this military roll. Like look how compact this shirt is. Like thanks YouTube and Google. While we're here, you can see the bed frame we built with Devin's dad. This is a platform that we built and you can watch that in our van build video. Very easy to build. It was a, it's a six feet, four inches long and four feet wide and it fits perfectly in the back of the van. Sort of, if you take it out and put it on the ground, it's sort of on an incline because the van itself is on an incline. So the legs over here are actually longer than the van. The, the legs at the front or at the back, sorry. But that's pretty much it. That was, that's all we really had to build in that and the mosquito nets and then reflectix, which we, uh, we cut out for the van, specifically for every single window. And we don't need any suction cups or anything just because they're slightly bigger than the window. So they stay in place really easily. And this is huge for, uh, for keeping heat in. But more importantly, this time of year in Canada, keeping heat and sunlight out more parked. And to make these reflectix, you can watch the van build video as well. Now it's the last section of the van, the back, it opens up like so like a normal van and we have our kitchen. So right off the bat, this is like our produce bin. So we have produce bananas. We do need to eat soon. Then we have our water jug. Ooh, this is awesome. We filled it up recently and then it's just, we pull it out, you turn it and we have water. We side it over here. We have our pantry. So I'll pull our pantry out cause there's something behind it. This is just all of our produce that don't need to be refrigerated. So we do have apples and tomatoes in there, but it's also mostly dry goods. And honestly the movable bag is so, so, so helpful. Yeah. Like it just, I wouldn't do a bin for this cause you never know how much food you have and that can change as you eat. We also have two of these jars because we do a lot of overnight oats. So when we wake up in the next morning, you can just have them ready to go. So we'll probably make some tonight for tomorrow morning. Behind our pantry we have, we do use a bin for this, which I think is great because the stuff that's in it never changes. These are the best by the way. This is our kitchen bag. So we have our dish soap here, all the things we need for cooking. This is all like cutlery, that kind of stuff that is really helpful just being in a bin on its own. So you just pull that out. Our coffee cups, most important item right here, our coffee maker. We have some containers, wine glasses, all the things we need for cooking is in here, right here. Also easy access. We have our stove. Keith can tell you a story about this stove in a second, but it's amazing and we love it. Yeah. So it's super portable, super handy. This thing is from like the fifties. It's like the original Coleman stove, but this thing works better than any new sort of stove. It's been around for a long time. Old stuff lasts forever. Thank you John O'Halloran for letting us use it. Thanks grandpa. Continuing the tour, we have our refrigerator, which is none other than a cooler, but we have all of our cold items in there and it works great. We've had no issues so far. One thing we really like about this cooler though is this water is not going to come out right now because like I said, new ice, but the water just dumps out and you don't have to do the whole, hold everything in and all the food falls out in the water. Yeah. Last time we were on a trip out east, we had to do that. So that's really, really great. Actually, I'm going to keep this out. Cause we're making dinner soon. Yes. This is our other item. Big ticket item here. We've brought, have a cast iron pan. The other thing we use literally every, every meal. Next up, we have some more supplies. So here is just hand goods and all that kind of stuff. More food. Here is a very important bin. It's our spice drawer. It's amazing. It smells like coffee because we have our coffee, tea, oils, a bunch of different spices, a bunch of seeds, salt and pepper, which you tend to forget in a camping trip, but you really require it. Yeah. So this is amazing for our overnight oats. It's like our overnight oats bin, breakfast bin, as well as we literally use all the spices and stuff for dinners and lunches. So it is easy access. We just pull the water out. This is our table. So when there's not a picnic table around, we brought our own table and it's really cute. And also this is our fun bin, which has some candles, headphones, books, a notebook, some games, things like that. It's pretty great right here. We actually, I access this from the other door. Most of the time it is easy to get from there. And this is our shower bin slash my brush my teeth bin. So we've got our shampoo, soap, conditioner, deodorants, soaps, hair stuff. Yeah. Everything you need. Before they do the Thule, one thing we forgot, we do have these cup holders in the back that have a sunscreen. The other side has bug spray. In the Thule, this is definitely a huge, huge storage compartment for our van. This is crucial, I'd say. So in here we have pretty much everything. Right off the bat right here, we have easy access to our little garbage bin, which is pretty cute. This is sort of a, our dishwashing bin slash sort of dinner. It's easy access. It's just the tablecloth, sponge rag, and this is a picnic blanket. Over here we have what I call the stuff bin or what Devin calls a stuff bin. This is really everything. So we have an Ikea bag for extra storage, some bungee cords, Tupperwares in here, and an extra little day bag. And in here we have more rags, sponges, dishcloths. Like I said, stuff bin, another lighter, some rope, clotheslines, candles, life straw, and a little romantic candle. Oh, and of course you have to think about this when you're traveling. Extra batteries for all the battery stuff that we have. We also have a dry sack full of dirty clothes. This is pretty cool. So this is our workout bag. We have bands that we actually used today in our workout video and more bands here. Devin's phone case for when she goes running. And obviously tennis ball for massaging any knots that you have. It's pretty cool that we can bring that around. And talking about workouts, we also brought two 10 pound weights as well as my yoga mat. So we have two yoga mats and two guitars and weights. That's excessive. This is an Ikea bag with boots and extra shoes because we're going to go all the way out West and we might need them. We also have two foldable chairs and these are pretty clutched too because sure they're stools, but they make perfect little side tables like that. They just snap into place. This is pretty cool. This is a, thanks Lisette. This is Lisette's Westfalia rear cover. So we throw that on the back door and it overhangs and it gives us sort of extra space in the van. We have a dry sack that we can do laundry with because we have these little rubber drying balls that we actually haven't used yet because we haven't done laundry yet. But I had some laundry detergent in there for our clothes and shake it up. And then over here is the stove bin essentially and also a shower bag, an extension cord and also a tent because you never know when you're going to go tenting or when you need it. Lastly, we have our mattress, which is a queen size mattress, so it kind of folds over the edges, but it's really nice and cozy and comfy. It's memory foam and it's like what, two inches thick. Yeah, but it works so well. It's what you'd put over top of a normal bed, but it works great for us. We've slept on the floor with this and it's so comfortable. It's nice. And then we have our, my duvet from home, so it's really comfy and cozy in here. And then we made the bed so that it lines up perfectly with these side backseat side things, like cup holders. So I have a, we always have our books, pair of socks and a headlamp. And then right, this right here is actually a car starting battery in case our battery dies, which I say is pretty important. Yeah, definitely. When you live in a car over here on Keith's sides, his is a little more busy. He's got our baby wipes and toilet paper because you never know if you need to use the bathroom in the evening. We've got some twinkle lights, another lantern, which we actually used last night outside his book and then his headlamp. And yeah, and then once this is here, the book stays perfectly. So it's pretty great. And this is us in bed. It's pretty comfortable. Yes, I bang my head a lot because the ceiling's right here, but it's only because I'm a noob. Yeah, we're still getting used to the van life. It's only day five for us. And when you live in a van, you gotta watch your head. But this is the best part about living in a van though. Check out this view. So thanks for sticking around this long. We hope you enjoyed our van tour of our home for the next month. It's been great so far. And And if you're interested to see how, uh, how we do for the next month, then follow us along. Yeah. Thanks for watching. Thanks for watching.