Vanlife Camping, Fishing, and Cooking Steak over the fire

I've been putting off doing my laundry for, first of all, completely out of underwear and socks. Actually, I think I am completely out of socks. First things first today, I gotta get my laundry done so that I can have clean clothes again. So for those of you who follow along on a weekly basis, we are continuing our journey northward. We are in Pocatello, Pocatillo. I was just here a few weeks ago. It's that place where it's illegal to not smile. It's just a quick pit stop to get some laundry done. On our way further north today. I don't know if you guys can see it, Outer Limits Fun Zone. We got golf arcades, laser tag. If I had friends, maybe we could go check that out. But since my last video, which I was in Salt Lake, I had to wash the entire underside of the van off because there was so much salt all over it. So the van is nice and clean now, at least on the outside. And mostly on the inside too, but if I had left that salt on there, it would have just corroded away at the underside of the van. So it's nice having it clean now, but I've been doing my best to get up north to escape the heat. But it seems like no matter how far I go, I just like cannot get away from it. I think there's a heat wave coming through right now. So it's a little bit hotter for the next week. Currently it's 91 degrees in the back of the van, which isn't ideal, but it's a drier heat. So it's not too bad. I don't think we're staying in Pocatello, Pocatello, Pocatello, however you say it, Pocatello today. We're going to drive a little bit more north, find somewhere to camp. Hopefully on a spot by some water. I think I found a spot. I think it's more of like a pond than it is a river, but I might still take out my fly fishing rod and practice with it a little bit. Right now, we're just waiting for laundry. There we go, just like that. Laundry's done. So we will deal with this later. Holding this is a problem for future Ryan. But I think before we go find our little plot of land for tonight, I gotta go to the grocery store because I'm going to get some firewood and some other stuff and do a proper camp out tonight. I haven't done proper camp out in a while. So I think we're finally out of the areas that had a fire restrictions because for the last four or five days, I've been driving through kind of drier climates, areas that are a lot drier than it is up here. So we haven't been able to have a fire. Oh, this is actually the Walmart that I stealth camped in. I stealth camped right there. A few videos back. Oh, a pull through spot. Nice. Love it when that happens. Let's go see if Walmart has everything we need. So I was going to do a tomahawk over the fire, but they don't have any tomahawk. So I think I'm going to do a good old T-bone steak, but this Walmart does not have firewood for some reason. So we're going to have to make another stop before we go to camp. I also think I'm going to make some pudgy pies, which if you haven't seen or don't know what a pudgy pie is, you'll learn tonight. We're going to have ourselves a proper feast tonight. We got steak, potatoes, shishito peppers, and pudgy pies. I'm not going to really put away anything I don't need to put away, because I'm just going to have to take it back out anyways. All right. Let's head to camp. According to my maps, it's only 45 minutes away. So I will see you guys when I get there. All right. I think we've made it. At least we're in the vicinity of where we can bait. I've been driving down a little pond. I've been driving down, this road is so dusty. Nothing but country roads for 45 minutes. But what I'm going to assume is potato farms, but the spot we're looking for should be right up here somewhere. I think this might be it. This looks decent enough. Look at that. I actually scratched that. I pulled back to another spot I saw on the way to that spot I was just at, because this one's a little bit more private. It's not at a junction. Like the other spot that I was at was kind of in a crossroads. There was two roads that kind of intersected right there. So there was a lot of traffic that was going to drive kind of right through where I was camping. And this spot just looks honestly a little bit nicer. Got a little place for a fire tonight and then my own private beach. And I do see some fish. I don't know how fly fishing from the shore here. I know that these are going to be fantastic skipping stones. As a matter of fact. How's it going? Good. I'm excited to get my rod out, but you can see even right here. I don't know if you see them on camera, but there's a bunch of little tiny fish. I think those are sunfish or something, but that's promising. Anyways, before I get ready for cooking dinner tonight, while we still got some sun, I might get my rod set up and cast a few. Guy that I was talking to on the boat said that there's another guy down there fishing with a fly rod and he's had some luck. So maybe today's the day that we catch something on this channel. But the guy on the boat was saying that this area where I'm at, there's like five or six different lakes in this area and a bunch of rivers. The Snake River runs right past here, but he was saying that these lakes that I'm sitting on all used to be separate lakes and then they broke down the levees and connected them all. And he said it kind of messed up the fishing, but for now this spot will do. So I don't really remember how to set this thing up or what the best way to do it for a pond is, but I got this paper from the guy who sold me the fly fishing rod. So that's what we're going to use. Also a hack I found on YouTube is to take your reel and put it in your hat. Because since this thing is so long, it's impossible to string up without letting go of this end. But if you put this in your hat, when you're pulling the line out, keeps the rocks from getting all up in your spool down here. So first we're going to try out is this little streamer right here. Looks like nice and vibrant. I should have asked that guy what they typically bite on out here. That's the biggest thing with fishing new places every time is you never know what works best. So you kind of got to just use trial and error with your lures. All right. Let's go give this thing a shot. No way. It just ripped off on a tree. All right, gotta go string up another one. It's small, but it counts. Little sunfish, I think. Look at that guy. Give me a kiss. Let's send him back. We got one. I know it's super small, so it doesn't count the most, but be free, little guy. Wait, oh, there you go. All right. I wasn't really fly fishing. I was just kind of like dangling the line in front of the fish that I saw. So I don't know if that really counts, but hey, I'll take it. Any day of the week. I think my casting definitely needs some work. I need to watch more YouTube videos. You have to have so much patience to fly fish. This is ridiculous how much the line gets tangled up when I'm trying to figure out what I'm doing. All right, I'm starting to get hopeful that I'm going to catch one out here. I got a new rig on. I got a bobber. I'll let it kind of hang out there for a little while. Longer, so I don't have to reel it in so fast. Little bobber. Fly on the end. I can't catch any of these big fish, so these little tiny guys keep biting it. Keep catching these little guys. My cast is just so bad, I can't get it far enough out to get it away from the little guys. All right, so extremely good news. I realized I had a spinner reel in the van. I completely forgot that I had one under my seat. So this will give me a little bit better chance of casting out there and catching something that I'll be able to cast more consistently. So let's see if we have any luck with this one today. All right, so no luck other than those little shiners tonight. I'm getting kind of hungry for dinner, so I'm calling it. I might wake up super early tomorrow and head out again and try to catch something, but for tonight, I'm gonna call it and just be happy that I caught something. So before I get started with cooking anything, I'm gonna go ahead and get this fire started. While that gets up and going and nice and hot, I'm gonna start getting dinner prepped up and ready to go, especially before it gets too dark out, then I won't be able to have my door open because I think it's starting to get into mosquito season, which can make living in a van pretty miserable if they start invading my space. But for dinner, my favorite meal to cook over a fire, good old-fashioned steak and potatoes. And I think I'm gonna do potatoes just over the open coals, seasoned up, and just wrap them in tinfoil because that's kind of the easiest way to do it. So I think what I want for my potatoes is like little potato coins. So I feel like that's how you get the most flavor and crunch out of these small little potatoes. Just cut them up into little coin-sized pieces, season them, throw them over the fire, and pretty much good to go. Now that we got our potatoes all cut up, we can take out some tinfoil, throw our potatoes on there, hit them with a little bit of oil, some seasoning. All nice and mixed together. These are all prepped up, ready to be thrown on a fire when we're cooking. As for the steak, it's super easy. I'm just gonna cut it out of the packaging, get it covered in seasoning, and then that's pretty much it for the prep work for that. So I forgot to press record, but I just coated this steak in a healthy amount of oil. If you don't know what this seasoning is, it is the best seasoning, in my opinion, for steak. Makes them taste so good. Buttery Steakhouse by Kinder's. I've said this before, I'll keep saying it. It is fantastic on a steak. There we go. Steak and potatoes prepped. Fire's going nicely. Sun is setting. It's beautiful out tonight. I think I have a grill that I can cook over in the back of the van somewhere. I think so. Nice cast iron grill to cook over. Looks like someone came out here and burned their schoolwork. Someone who graduated this year. There we go. Everything is pretty much set up. Here's some coyotes off in the distance. But now that the sun is behind that, honestly, it looks like a storm cloud. I'm hoping it's not gonna rain. It's a lot cooler out. Water's so still. And before we get started cooking, I'm gonna grab my camera and take some pictures. Mosquitoes are definitely coming out. I'm biting on my arms. I wish I had bug spray. Fire should keep away a good amount of them tonight, but that is the one thing that sucks about summertime living in a van is the bugs. All right, so I've got a rough two-zone fire here. We got some direct heat on the left and then indirect on the right, where I'm gonna cook the steak on the right and then sear it on the left. So I think I'm gonna get this steak seared up and then move it over to the non-direct heat side and hope we get a steak that cooks pretty evenly. Usually when I cook over a fire, it's not going for perfection. It's just going for edibility. So that's what we're going for. And then these potatoes might take kind of a while, so I'm gonna toss them down in there too. Get those cooking. I think that side might be too hot. There we go. Beautiful night. There's steak over the fire, fishing. I did find some bug spray too, so the bugs are staying away. I sprayed my door, like around the edges. I don't know how much that'll help. It's like a salt circle to keep demons or bears away, but instead of salt, it's bug spray. Good thinking! All the experts say it's the only defense against a sea bear attack. Well, I pretty much immediately abandoned my two-zone fire cooking idea. Oh, we do got a nice bubbly sear going on that steak. Get some on the top of these potatoes. There we go. Now I'm just gonna eyeball that until it's done. I just realized my mic was off for the last 20 minutes, but I think this is the most quintessential van life night that I've had in a long time. Beautiful sunset, fishing, campfire, cooking over the fire, camping out in the wilderness, birds chirping. What a night. So I woke up a little bit later than I wanted to, so I only got to fish for right around like 10 minutes and didn't really catch anything notable, so it is what it is. Breakfast makes perfect, and we'll get it next time. So I did get out my fudgy pot cooker for breakfast this morning, but I'm not gonna light another fire. Wish we'd make it over the stove this morning for breakfast. All right, so while these finish up cooking, we're gonna get our pie all set up. So basically, this thing breaks into two, connects together, clamps shut. Take either side, put a little bit of oil in it. That's honestly enough for both. Or butter or whatever else you wanna use. Get that nice and spread out, coat it all over the whole thing, and you can lay your two pieces of bread down in there, like so. And then you fill it with your ingredients. In this case, egg, some cheese, a little bit of ketchup, a little bit of mayonnaise. We can throw that other piece of bread right on top of that. Link the two together. Try to fit as much of it in there as you can. And then on the end of this thing, there's like a little hook that you slide over, and it keeps it nice and clamped closed. Now, once you get that, basically you can just turn your fire on, or you do this over a campfire, ideally, and just set it on there. It's basically a cast iron closed cooker. And the cool thing about this thing is you can make pretty much whatever you want. You can do savory, you can do sweet, you can do breakfast, you can do anything you wanna put in there, you can put in there. Today, we just so happened to do breakfast. So I'm gonna let that cook for like two to three minutes each side, and then it should come out, hopefully, nice and perfectly toasted, as long as we don't overcook it. Beautiful. This thing is also really, really good for grilled cheeses. There we go. That's it. It's kinda like an encrustable, because it like seals all the corners in. But I know it's like a lava on the inside, so I'm gonna wait a few minutes before we crack into that. I mean, it's just an egg sandwich, but it is good. Cheese is nice and melted. Delicious. We did get kind of a late start today. So I think I'm gonna eat this sandwich on the go, since I'm heading back into the city this morning to go to the gym. As always, I truly appreciate you guys watching. If you haven't already, think about clicking that subscribe button. It really does help out the channel. Thank you guys so much for following along for this long. I'm really glad that you guys enjoyed the videos and I can take you along my travels for my full-time job. So just really grateful. But yeah, I will see you guys next time.