First Campervan Adventure! - Chain Lake Shakedown Trip

Guess what? We're going camping! We didn't think we'd be going camping this soon, but we had an invitation that we just couldn't turn down. You ready for an adventure? If you watched our last video, you might be thinking to yourself, wait a minute, there's no Starlink. Well, I've been kind of busy, so our new Starlink Mini is still in the box. But with a camping trip coming up in two days, I really should probably install this. All right, let's see what we've got here. Easy visual instructions. Now check out this Starlink Mini. It's so tiny! Also, before I forget, I should give a big shout out to Quarko that sent us some extra long Starlink Mini cables to try out. Thank you, Quarko! So finally, in addition to the Starlink Mini, I've got a magnetic mount. And I'm hoping this will go on the front of the van. And these magnets are supposed to be strong enough to hold it on while driving. We're not going to try driving with it on our very first trip, but I do want to see how well this mounts. Okay, so I'm actually going to follow the directions here. This is the original holder. All right, longer, short. This part here has to come out. I hate things that clip. You always think you're going to break them. Can I get it out again? Goodness! Okay, we got our metal plate back on. All right, now to put these super magnets on. All right, now we just do that four more times. Final magnet. Time to go outside to the van and give her a try. I'm up at our van roof now, and wow, I just noticed our solar panels are so dirty already. I'm surprised they're generating any power at all. But anyways, our builder left me these nice Starlink cables that go to the inside. So these are going to plug into our Starlink Mini. My concept is it's going to go on the front. I don't know. I think that's like a reasonably good idea. Okay, so let's see here. Whoa! Okay. Yeah, that's a strong magnet. Maybe more like... Whoa! Yeah, that is really solid. I wonder if there's some trick to getting it off. All right, so now I need to take this base off and plug her in. As you saw before, this base is not easy to remove. There we go. All right, we've got 12 volt power and ethernet. Okay, so put this through here first and reattach this. Okay, we're in business. It's searching. It's determining alignment. All right, we're looking good. We're online and downloading an update. And now it just says we're connected. That was pretty fast and easy. It's only using 21 watts right now. That's pretty good. Let's, of course, do a speed test. Seems to be pretty all right. So yeah, only a few minor snafus. Now we've got Starlink. I have to say I am loving driving this van. It's so nice. It drives like a car. It is so much less stressful than driving the truck with the trailer. We're going down a winding mountain road and it feels like we could just be like in the Mazda. There's way less stress about towing, hitching up. We literally got in and started the engine and drove off. Benny really likes traveling in this spot up against the passenger side door. It's not ideal, but it's what makes him feel comfortable for the moment until we can figure out something a little more secure. All right we've been driving about an hour and a half. Got about a half hour to go and just figured we'd stop and have a little stretch, which we can do like anywhere. The novelty has still not worn off. Oh and look at that. I'm already in the camper. All I did was get out of my seat. Oh no getting out of the truck. No having to transport Benny us literally two minutes to get set up. We've got our blocks over here. Set up was so fast. We love it. Benny's already made his way over to the bed, so I'm going to magnetize our bug wall. Keep them from getting out and we might close over the door a little bit just to make them feel a little bit more comfortable. And it's also kind of cool in here out here so we'll just bring that like that. And there we go. We're ready. We're set up. We're camping. Let's go take a look at the back here. Yeah all of our stuff. Now that table is a bit wedged. Our chairs kind of fell but overall I think Jay, who did most of this packing, did an excellent job because we were driving. We were doing lots of turns. It's a windy road to get here and we barely heard a sound from things shifting around. So bravo Jay. All right we're having savory s'mores. Baby bells on the fire with salami between crackers. And that's how you do it. And you have your choice of cracker if you want plain or rosemary. I don't think it's going to have to go for long because honestly that was so hot it melted the cheese going in. This is all an experiment. We've never actually done this before. So we don't actually know if it works. So what are you going to do? Tell us how you're doing. I'm going to heat up the cheese and then I'm going to put it between two crackers with a piece of salami. Okay good. And eat it. Oh yeah look at that. It's browning. Will it catch on fire? So how did you get this? That's the question. Fantastic. I have a feeling putting it through two pieces, two of the stems would be better. Okay. All right. And we've got. All right now you should eat it. And now you eat it. Look it's even melting a little bit. And? It needs to be melted more. That's good. Yeah. I would blame it longer. I'm going to do a bit higher one because I want to try and see if I can melt it so that the inside is also melted. All right we've got a pro doing this now. Get a little bit of flamage. When it starts dripping off that thing that's when it's ready. I may have rushed mine. All right I'm going to do one now. Oh let's see how yours turned out. Oh sweet. Is that for me my love? Look at that. Thanks baby. Very nice. Thank you sweetie. Put your order in. Order up. Thank you babe. Delicious. Thank you. Oh no. This is actually. Oh you see I failed. Yeah mine's gonna be cracker ready. But you shouldn't. Oh yeah that's melt. You've got the technique Julia. She had her cheese and cracker and meat all ready at once. Oh look at that string. Oh this is a genius idea. That's really good. My cheese is a bit mutant. Oh yeah. All right everyone. Yes. Van life. Van life. Cheers. Cheers. We hung out mostly around the fire on the largest site. Similar to the free Christmas tree permit we used in a previous video, you can also get a free firewood permit to harvest firewood for personal use only. We'll leave a link in the description below. Like what what am I eating? Like cookie. It's cookies with ice cream in the middle. I have never in my life had this. Like how do I eat it? Do I just like put it in my mouth? Do I just eat it like a burger? I'm watching the muddle. Chocolate ice cream. Yeah I just make two cookies and then sandwich ice cream. Have you ever had those honey? Never. Never? I've never had homemade ones. Okay. Oh my god. And now it was time for an adventure. This side by side can take six people comfortably and even has a heater. We went along the kettle valley trail past link and then stopped at Osprey Lake. It was so quiet and serene there. We then continued to Thirsk Lake, a reservoir that also has a few camping sites around it. Our friends were such amazing hosts. We felt like we were at an RV resort with them cooking meals and taking us on excursions. Look at this amazing breakfast our hosts have been making and slaving over all morning. And we get to have this awesome view. But all good things must come to an end and they needed to get back to the city so we said farewell since we were staying one more night alongside a friend who is heading north. All right one of the other purposes for coming out this weekend is so that we can test out our paddle boards. Make sure there aren't any leaks. Make sure they work. All right let's check it out. I think I have a sea turtle. I have a dolphin. Mel and I have different assembly techniques. I've kind of moved all the accessories out of the way and I'm just going for like the main paddle board part. Also Mel reads directions filming this drone footage for us. Before we get into talking about how the paddle boards went I'm just gonna say I know what you're thinking. We are getting life vests folks. Please don't worry we just wanted to quickly test these out. We were well within swimming distance of the dock. And under supervision. Yes we had someone there to supervise and there were boats nearby if needed to be rescued. So please don't worry for our safety. We are getting life jackets. But what did we think of the paddle boards? Okay so about the paddle boards. I think they are going to be absolutely perfect for what we need for going on little adventures on the water. Mine I felt was very comfortable. The pad like the surface to stand on is like nice and kind of a little bit soft and cushy in my feet. But I still felt super supported. The leash was very helpful. The paddle was comfortable. I love the size of it. Like it's got this massive elastic area here at the front that we could put I don't know a bag or something underneath or any gear. And then it's got these awesome little toggles too. I need to figure out what I'm going to use this for. Yeah they're great. They're they're amazingly light. Like I thought it was going to be heavy because Mel's surfboard the inflatable surfboard was heavy. But these ones you picked it up and you're like. I picked it up with one hand almost threw it over my shoulder because I thought it was so light. I was like putting a lot more muscle into picking it up than I needed. Yeah now I was not quite as stable as Mel. But I think that's because she does yoga and I don't. Gotta work on his core. I need to get my balance going. But at least I didn't fall right? And I'm also really excited at some point to try yoga on my paddleboard. But I'm going to wait until later in the season when it's warmer. Maybe on a warmer body of water. Because if I fall in you know I don't like to be cold. So yeah it is only like 15 celsius today and the water has got to be I don't know how cold but very cold. Sure it was seven. Anyways so that's our paddleboard test. Yeah and they work. They're not going to be returned. Nope we're keeping them. It was cold out but we were able to get the fire nice and warm and play Well good morning. As you know or maybe you don't know but this is usually about the time during our videos where I give you a little camp tour. So let me show you around Chain Lake while I have my tea. All right so for our first adventure with the van we've come to Chain Lake Recreation Site and it's a fairly basic campground but it's perfect. Why? Because it's directly on this beautiful peaceful quiet lake. Now the one downside is there's a road. However it's a pretty quiet road. So with your campsite there's a fire pit and a picnic table and that's it. You hang out here there's some pretty good sized sites. I think you could probably easily fit at least in this one could easily fit a class a into that. Then down here where we are we are right on the water. I believe there's about 24 sites in this park. There's no garbage pickup. There's no dumping station. There's no hookups of any kind. There's an outhouse so if you need to use that you can use that. But yeah otherwise you pack in and pack out all your stuff. All right so here we are on site number 12 and you can see there's all these perfect smaller sites for vans, tents, small rigs, maybe a small class c could fit into these and they're right on this spectacular lake. You guys we were watching eagles, loons, we can see the fish in the water. That's how amazingly clear and calm it is here. So definitely worth checking out. Let me show you a couple of the other amenities. Over here on our site anyway site 12 there is a small little lake access point right here. How perfect is that? And then further down here towards site I believe it's nine there's actually a boat launch with a small little dock so you can have small boats. I think electric motors and just paddle boats are all that's allowed in here so you're not to be bothered by any kind of an engine. But yeah check out this little dock over here and a little boat launch too so that's perfect. You can go fishing here. From what we hear it's very well stocked. And here's one of the outhouses just to give you an idea. Now the way it works when you come here you come you pick your site you park and then someone, a park attendant, will come by usually once a day to collect payment. So it's cash only so come prepared with some cash. I believe it was 10 maybe 15 dollars a night. Not expensive so really really awesome. Yeah that's Chain Lake Recreation Site here north of Princeton BC. And with that it was time to wrap up our very first van adventure. It was a bit last minute but honestly it couldn't have gone any better. Thanks so much Eden, Debbie, Darian, Julia, and Tom for making it such a great time. All right folks that was our first camping trip and man it was amazing. We just love being able to just throw stuff in the van and go on an impromptu trip with friends. Man it was great. It was so fantastic. One of the best parts about having this van this weekend was being able to reposition super super easy. For the first night or so we had parked and leveled the van very close to our fire pit but that was because we weren't using our fire pit. We were going to our friend's but then after they left we realized we needed our fire pit and so we had to move the van. But it was so easy. We were able to drive off the blocks, reposition the van, re-level the van on the blocks in less than I don't know five or six minutes. Yeah and if we'd had the trailer we just wouldn't have bothered because it would have been way too much hassle to try and move the trailer. We would have just had no fire. So you might be wondering how do things go with Starlink? You probably remember I was too chicken to leave it on the van while driving because I just don't trust the current mount that I have because it uses the Starlink pole mount that attaches via this plastic clip that I hate because it's impossible to get it out but I still don't trust it in high winds. So I'm going to be looking for a different Starlink mount going forward. One of the biggest challenges I faced with the van this weekend was the door. The sliding door at the side here. I don't know why but I have a lot of trouble getting the right amount of force to close it properly. So I can't tell you how many times I would open it and then have to close it four times before it actually latched. So I'm adjusting to that if you have any suggestions. Now one thing I thought about a lot before we had the van was these overhead storage bins and how to pack them because they're very tall and they don't have like a separate shelf. So for my clothing I use these packing cubes that I got off of Amazon and they actually work pretty well. I'm going to keep them. It's pretty nice to be able to just take down the whole cube thing, set it on the bed, go through your clothing, and then just put the whole thing back up. Now our front cupboards on the other hand they are a complete mess. I tried to organize them a little bit just using like big plastic freezer ziplocks. I'm sure there's better solutions out there so if you have any suggestions about that let us know. And then finally you might be wondering how Benny did on this trip and he was a little stressed but he has found his favorite spot for our travel which is just in the wheel well or door well here next to me. And when we are in the rig with him he's relatively comfortable. He comes out, he walks around, he eats and drinks etc etc. When we walk out of the rig I think he gets a little bit more nervous and we found that he would be in one spot. We would go out and then come back and he'd be in the exact same spot. And so I think with time though he will adjust. We are playing with some music to have kind of drowning out background music or background sounds rather outside and help him just feel a little more comfortable. We'll see how it goes. Yeah but overall this was a success. Yeah we had so much fun. A really good shakedown trip. Had so much fun with friends. So glad we could do and yeah many more to come very soon. So we will see you shortly. Bye. So we're saying that we've arrived and we brought donuts? Oh all right. Make sure you don't miss the next video by liking, subscribing and turning on notifications. Oh and don't forget to check out our website and sign up for our weekly email blast. Thanks for joining us and we'll see you in the next one.