Realities of living in a van (when nothing goes as planned)

How's it going everybody? I'm Nikki Delventhal and this is my dog Camper Delventhal. We lived in a Prius full-time for three years but now we're in a 4x4 Sprinter and we're here to take you along on the wild ride. So fasten up your seat belts and let's have some fun. Don't forget if you like what you see, like, subscribe, comment, share with your friends and turn on notifications. Camper and I would be so thankful. Before we go on today's wild adventure, I think a recap of last week is in store to really get the full picture. It started out a birthday dream. Waking up to birthday cake for breakfast, taking a walk on the beach, picking up my dad at the airport, and enjoying the week at my friend's private hot spring. Happy birthday to you. Then the string of unfortunate events began to unfold. The first thing that happened was the car died. No! And when my battery jump starter wasn't working and all other things didn't work, we got the great idea to try to jump it off of the house battery. So then we went searching for any scrap metal that we could find. From there we started using the metal to bridge the house battery to the car battery. Woo! We did it! Here's the winner. I wish I could say that was the least of our problems, but we were also having issues with the heating system in the van. The entire van was filling up with smoke. It was terrifying. So needless to say, our heat was officially out of commission. Car died again today. I just jumped it to go drive it. I went just around the corner and I realized that it was stuck in 4x4 in low range. There's something going on with the computer and it will not get out of it. Long story short, we're having more van problems. We're gonna call the local Mercedes and see what we can do. Hi, Dustin gave me your number and said maybe you could help me with the problem I'm having with the van right now. Unfortunately, they were unable to help over the phone, but said that the computer can act absolutely insane with a low battery. They wrote a song about this. It goes, oh lord, stuck in low range again. All right, so we did about an hour of driving at five miles an hour. Tested it a few times to see if we could pop it out of low range with the battery charged up, but we have had no luck. Dustin, the owner of this van and Overland Van Project, did just call us. He's amazing. He got roadside assistance on the phone and they're gonna be here in 30 minutes with a battery, so we're gonna go eat some lunch. This is what I call a last resort meal. You find anything you have, which is not a lot, and you put it in a pan. Today we're doing rice, panna masala, and maybe some soup. That's nasty, isn't it? Yeah. All right, plop her in. Have some more salapitos, kids. God bless America. Cheers. Cheers. Bon Appetit. It's a Delvin Tall mashup. Here they come. Come on down. Last time I had needed roadside assistance, I had to wait six hours. Yeah, this is a dream come true right here. Yeah. What are we gonna do here? We're gonna run a diagnostic on the vehicle and see if we're having a battery issue or not. Amazing. Randy, is there a way that I can maybe avoid this in the future where the lights won't come on or maybe a setting when I am parked long term? There's a quick disconnect for the negative cable. It's right behind this panel here. Just disconnect the cable and it just disconnects power so the battery is no longer connected. It's a good idea to do. Anytime you're gonna be parked for long periods of time, it reduces the risk that you're gonna wind up with a dead battery. So what's going on? I'm gonna replace the battery. Yeah, was there something wrong with it? Yeah, it failed the test, so we're gonna replace it. Wow, all right. It was a failed battery. I still think it was your fault. Bye old battery. Amazing. Oh, all right. You want my autograph? Oh my gosh. I promise not to sell it. Bye Randy, thanks so much. Bye, have a good day. See ya. He's so cool, isn't he? Yeah. He's the best. I like him a lot. Do you want to take a swim, shower, and get out of here? All right, now that we have a battery and a running car, we can go stock back up. First stop, headed to the closest town. It's gonna be a really big restock day. I think it's gonna be expensive. I'm a little nervous. Coffee, don't mind if we do. I already knew this was gonna be an expensive trip, so. How much do you think it was? About $2.37. Close. I love this. So while we were shopping, we met Kathy and Paul here, and they want to meet Camper, so obviously we're gonna give them a little tour. I love this. I'm so glad you guys said hello. Camper, do you want to meet some of your friends? They watch you on YouTube. How long have you guys been living in your fifth wheel? 17 years. Incredible. And what inspired you to get on the road? It was him, it was him first. I was, I was a bit hesitant. Yeah. Because I had to quit my job. I'm a yoga teacher. I had to quit my yoga classes, my job, give up my car, sell our house. It was tough for me in the beginning, but I love it now. I would never go back. Yeah, it's so much fun. The plan was to be close to nature. Yeah. Close to nature because nature doesn't have any ego, and we felt, every time we've been close to nature, we've been happy and happier. That's amazing. 17 years. All right, we are filled up. You ready to get out of here? Oh yeah. Let's do it. All right. See you this summer, friends. Bye. Bye. Come on, Camp. Go up front. All right, guys. That was so much fun. I love meeting new friends on the road. So if you see Camper and I, or any of my family, make sure you say hello. But now we need to keep our journey going. So one of the main reasons we are going to Phoenix is because the heat in this van is broken. I've already been to two different dealerships to try to get it serviced. They couldn't figure it out. We are going to Phoenix to go fix that. There's a guy there who can replace the whole system. So to Phoenix we go. But we're going to have some fun along the way, right? Right. Oh yeah. Dad, you see back there all those white dots? Yeah, what's up with that? Those are all RVs. Wow. Well, at least there's a love so everyone can shower. It's ridiculous. I've never seen anything like it. All right, you guys. We are making a quick stop in Quartzsite, Arizona. This place is fascinating. Why? Is because this place at any given moment will have thousands of RVers, car dwellers, van lifers, whatever you want to call them. But especially this time of year, there will be hundreds of thousands of them. I did make a video here about a year ago. You can watch that right here. I think one of the biggest draws of this place and why you see so many people is beyond the free camping in most of the areas, there's also a long-term parking area called La Posa. And you can stay there, I believe it's between September and April, a seven-month window for, get this, $180 for the entire time. And that includes water, dump station, garbage. That is wild. I absolutely love this place. So if you haven't looked at it, go for it. But in the meantime, we're making a pit stop to make some food. You know, for being such a weird dish, it kind of works. Works great, man. I love it. But I've always loved leftovers. That's why they call me Captain Concho, because I hate waste, but I love you. All right, let's keep going. We got places to be, it's Christmas. I don't know what some of this stuff is. I'd be down for a little drinky drink. Oh, I got a kitchen knife to cut carrots with. Will my pilot friends see this? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Hey, Clint. How you doing, buddy? I'm flying a vision jet. You're not. First class treatment. Yeah, here we are. Well, I am just going to relax and enjoy the extension of a perfect, melodious vacation. Love you. Best trailblazing, psychedelic, adventure consultant, badass daughter I could ever imagine. You're the best. Love you. Night. Good night. I love you, my favorite cousin in the whole world. That's right. I love you, too, favorite cousin. Sarah's going to be pissed I said that. Home, sweet home. Want to see what I got? You enjoying your long-time pamper? You going to come sleep with your mom? Right. Good night. Good morning, good boy. Hey, there. It was cold last night, you guys. I'm so excited that he is hopefully going to be fixed today. Third time's a charm. It's been like three or four weeks, and this is the third service guy to look at it. Good morning. Oh, good morning. I'm tired. Yeah, it's been a good road trip. Good morning, family. Okay, I got to introduce everybody, right? See, I'm right. We got Marnie. Hi. Cook extraordinaire. This is her home. We got Ron. This is also Ron's home. How you doing? Ron's a pilot. He's a badass. That's right. All right, and we got Rich, Ron's brother, also badass, also pilot. Of course, Dan Dalvinthal. Wait a manana. Dad of the year. Dad of the world. God of the century. What are we making? Eggs, sausage, seasoning your cast iron with your dog's neck and gizzards from the turkey. How is it? Unbelievable. Oh, yeah. Good boy. All right, we are going to North Mountain to do a little hike. It's a little rainy, so we're picking the paved path route. You guys ready? Marnie, Ron, where are we going this morning? North Mountain. All the way to the top. Nice, easy paved trail. Nobody stops early. Who's ready to go hiking? Phoenix is super cool. There's just little mountains surrounding throughout the city. If you guys come out here, go check out the Superstition Mountains. I did do a video there, I think. I'll try to link it up here. Hike on up and don't slow down. Hike on up and don't slow down. All right, we made it to the first tier. Trial number 44. May the forest be with you. Modern day Rocky. Come on, camper. You do have the option to take a little hiking trail, but when it's rainy like this and a little muddy, you can take the paved trail all the way up. Made it. All right, way back down. Let's go. If you are going to do this hike, I highly recommend doing it at sunset. One reason being you can hunt for scorpions, but you'll need to bring a UV light because the UV light sets off something in their skin, some type of chemical makeup that makes them glow in the dark. It is one of my favorite things to do. It is so freaking cool. Man, I miss being in the trunk of a car. Don't forget something back here, guys. All right, time to shower and get our heat fixed. I think I have to clear stuff out of my van to have the heat guy get to it. Can I put my bike in the back? Is that okay? Yeah? All right, we'll get the bike back and then everything else can go on the front seats. God, camper, your stuff is so heavy. Forgot stuff. All right, we are all set up for our repair guy, but it just started raining. All right, he's here. What's been happening is every time I've been turning this on, it's been kind of shorting and turning off on its own. Then about a week went by and then I started smelling something every time it shorted. Then the third time I opened the back doors because the bed was down so I didn't know it, smoke was pouring out of that box, like heavy, thick smoke. Yeah. Something was burning. It was like it was coming out of here or something. Some residue, I don't know what's inside. It looks like something's leaking and burning. All right, you guys, it's been a few hours of just replacing the controller and the screen over here and tightening up some stuff, making sure there's no leaks, seeing that the power supply is good. This is one of those moments I miss living in a Prius. It sounds crazy, but everything is simple, reliable, you know? All right, guys, sorry for the heat noise. I know it's a lot, but we're going to run this overnight and see how it does. Okay, maybe I was wrong. Yep, it's about to reboot. So we replaced the controller, we placed that, we're testing all this, we checked the batteries, we made sure all these connections and it's still not working. So this is still shutting off on its own. Okay, let's call AquaHot. We're on the phone with them now. It's still not working. Heat's still broken. They sent us a dead cable. I brought you some survival provisions. I think original one, it's working. New one doesn't work. What else I will do? I'm not a magician. It's ridiculous. Yeah, it's just turned on. All right, so back to the original gear. Hour five update. The cable that AquaHot sent us is a dead cable, so then we plugged in the old one again and it is working again, but it's still shorting. Back to square one. It will be working, but we don't know. Maybe it's shutting down at the middle of the night. I don't know. I have a feeling. I got a feeling. Nick's a magician. Did you leave your magic wand at home today? All my magic was there. All right, final verdict with the magician Nick. We seem to be back at square one. He replaced it with what he could. We checked all the wires, even checked Overland Van Project's work. They did absolutely fine, so it's not the van builder. It is the AquaHot system, so yeah. Nick, thank you so much. Thank you. Seriously. You guys, if you are in the Phoenix area, RV Eagle, Nick, he is absolutely amazing. I highly recommend him, and honestly, even though we need more parts from AquaHot, he was A plus. He spent six hours with us, so thank you. What a day. What a day. Who's ready for a box salad and a drink? Me. Thank you, sir. What happened? We are taking this in here. Yes, we are. Thanks for watching. Don't forget to like, comment, subscribe, share with your friends, and turn on notifications, and if you'd like all of our videos early access and during that time completely ad free, join our Patreon for as low as $1 a month. Have a great day. We love you all. Look at the frozen dendro. I would take my glasses off, but holy cow, my favorite person. Hey, good to see you. Nice jawline. Like house arrest in paradise. No matter how hard we tried, we couldn't leave. I love that. Oh, hello.