CALIFORNIA ROAD TRIP on $10 Per day - IS IT POSSIBLE? // Hasta Alaska // S04E04

Last time on Aster Alaska, we turned our Kombi Adventure Wagon into an off-grid mobile editing studio so that we could grow our YouTube channel by working full-time off the grid in North America. This time we're taking you exploring on the central coast of California and we're going to see if it's actually possible to road trip the USA and still stick to our super tight budget. Let's go exploring! Let's start this episode with a question. How long would $10 USD last you? For some people it could last days, but we'd hazard a guess that there are some of you who could easily spend $10 before you've even finished with breakfast. Since embarking on this road trip a staggering 3 years earlier in South America, we've been inching our way north on a budget of around $10 USD a day and believe us, that is easier said than done. In Latin America, free places to park are available in abundance and because there aren't too many people living the van life down there, it isn't difficult to find surfside camp spots. However, in the US regulations are much tighter and this is particularly true in California. This beach here basically is a county beach, which is different from a state beach. Not that we have a pass for that, but $10 USD is about what I spend on food and everything during the day. It's so expensive just to come to the beach for a couple of hours, you know? I know. I agree with you there. Do you mind if I just do a spin and go out? Sure. Thank you very much. $10 USD to come to the beach. This just seems to be another bracket of beaches that we have to have a pass to pay to get to. We don't even want to get to this beach, we're not interested in the facilities they have there or whatever else they are justifying the $10 USD charge and the $3 USD charge for Alaska. Oh my god. We want to go to a beach further down here, but we would need to park down there to walk along the beach to get to it. So apparently you used to be able to just park up on the cliff up here a few years ago, but now they've put in all these signs saying you can't park up here because they want you to park down there and pay $10 USD, which just seems a little bit unfair. So sleeping at the beach for free in California was definitely out of the question, but apparently it's usually possible to sleep in a Walmart car park for free. But really, how much fun can you have in a Walmart car park? We've been following the Pacific Coast North for the past 1000 days. The ocean was our home and where we wanted to be. What we really needed was the advice of a local, a local who understood what we were looking for. But what are the chances of meeting a local who could possibly relate to us? It just so happened that fellow Pan-American adventurer Adam from Our Open Road was in town. An opportunity to meet a like-minded explorer was not one that we'd be passing up in a hurry. Adam drove his VW the opposite direction from me, south, from the US all the way to South America, and he's been on the road since 2012. But unlike me, he didn't start the trip alone. I have a wife and we have two daughters now, but when we left we had just one daughter, Coco, Colette. There's four of you now living in the van? Yeah, there's four of us. Emily and two girls, two little girls, living in the van, just on the road. Another really great positive about doing something like this is the amount of time you can spend with your kid, and expose them to real life experiences rather than learning about stuff in a classroom or whatever. Just being able to be free, like really be free, and being on the road full time, there's nothing like it. It's the best life, you know? It was like a dream, it really is my dream come true. I think if I was really rich, making ---- tons of money, then I would probably do the same thing, you know? I'd probably do exactly the same thing that I'm doing now. We were really lucky to be able to meet with Adam. He'd normally be thousands of miles to the south, but the family was taking a short break from the van life and so we were able to explore Adam's local surf scene in LA and catch a wave together. There's a cool kind of loop I feel like you could do if you do LA. Up the coast, there's amazing things along this way which I'll point out in a minute. Adam showed us that free camp spots in California do exist, and he filled us with excitement for what was to come. LA had been fun, but a little crowded for our taste. If it was less people we wanted, then north was the direction we'd have to travel, and north was fine by us. The longer we spent in the US, the more skilled we became at finding free places to spend the night. But what about food? How can we manage to eat and still stick to our budget of $10 per person per day? Well, we do our best to avoid eating out. Typically, we try to prepare most of our meals in the combi, and usually the more people we have with us, the better we can eat. So when our crew is small, we just have to make do. This can of beans, 50 cents. This can of chilli, 79 cents. Some rice, factory free. Plus more to feed Alaska. We're living the dream, guys. We also try to supplement our diet with food that we can find or forage along the way. This also has the benefit of providing entertainment as well as a meal. We might have lost the path. Had a blazer trail down this cliff, and it's kind of a bit of an avalanche happening, landslide style. No different way. Come on, let's go. I told Leah that these things that we're looking for are absolutely delicious. They're not. Lunch. I travel with this Japanese girl in Australia, and in Japan they eat these little sea snail things, and they're absolutely delicious. Cooking with soy sauce. It's like the sweetest, most awesome meat. Hey, look. We found a mussel. Keeper. Check that one out. That's the king catch. That's like lunch for two, that. What is for lunch, Leah? Snails. How do you feel about eating snails for lunch? Try. Good thing about having a dog is at least Alaska will eat them if we don't. I mean, why would we not? They're delicious, right? How do you pick them? You eat them raw. You just put them in your mouth. Dip it in soy sauce. You've got yourself a snail kebab. It's pretty good. Your turn. Oh, those guts. Yeah, that's the bum bum. Do you eat those? Sandy. Don't you feel great when you eat what you find? Alaska, do you want some? That's actually got me a little bit worried. She doesn't eat it. Alaska, please. With our bellies full-ish, our focus turned to preparing for an absolute gem of a Californian adventure. So you come up the one, go to Cambria up here, and then this is where I made this little map. I hand-drawn a little map there. You get the whole view out there, yeah. Totally. For sure. Have fun. The 76 miles of California Highway 1 that runs through Big Sur is one of the most beautiful drives on the planet. We can lose it in the heat of night. We should take it to the wall. Let's find a clearing in the cost. Not only is Big Sur a stunning landscape, it also happens to be one of the most remote areas in Cali, and makes for the ideal place to wake up. Now this is definitely better than a Walmart car park. California. We heard that the Big Sur coast is littered with jade, so we headed out to see if we could find the elusive greenstone. I didn't think she could actually do it, but we found some before I'd even caught up to her, straight away on the beach. It's that easy to find jade here in Big Sur. It's about the best I could do. Mia has well and truly kicked my ass. That's awesome. It's that easy to find jade. I've got a whole handful. Mostly rocks I think. We suspect that most of this is not actually jade, but hey, we still had a lot of fun on the beach. California dreaming was turning out to be not all that expensive after all. We were having a ball meeting like-minded folk and creating our own free entertainment. Exploring in our Kombi was as fun as it had ever been, but in these remote lands, not all adventures are accessible by vehicle. To say all our worldly possessions are in this tiny Kombi, you'd be astonished how long it takes us to locate and pack our belongings for an adventure. Awesome hiking sticks. Check. Insanely excited dog. Check. Let's go hammocking. That slack lining's paying off. We'd heard about a hike with a special reward at the end. We're not going to tell you where it is, but we will tell you that the locals call it Big Sur's worst kept secret. What just happened? A snake ran over my foot, or slid over my foot. I thought that's what these things are for, to scare off the snakes, yeah? Yeah, that's why I'm walking in front, so that you have to deal with all the stuff that I scare out of the bush. You okay? Yeah. Are the snakes dangerous here? All snakes are dangerous, you should know that. You're Australian. Yeah, in Australia they are, not America. Yeah, but here they're probably packing heat. Back at the Kombi we keep an ample supply of washing water and of course, baby wipes to keep clean. But by far our favourite and most frequent method of bathing is in nature. Woo! What the F is that? It's like another toad coming out. As you can see, Big Sur is not only blessed with an impressive coastline, it's also home to the majestic coastal redwoods. Sore necks are guaranteed, but man, is it worth it. Morning. It was so cold last night that we jumped in for a spoon train, hammock style, keep warm and survive in the Big Sur wilderness style camping experience. Even Alaska joined in. Oh, it was real chilly. I don't know how we're going to survive in Alaska. So we're starting to realise we might be a little bit under-prepared for this hike. We didn't bring any wet weather gear, because it's California and it doesn't rain, right? And it's raining. So we're hiding in our hammocks again. Day two, we're surviving off mouldy bread, peanut butter and some pasta we cooked two days ago, which is running out very quickly. And we're like 10 miles away from the car. One piece of bread left each, Leah. Not a good situation. Low on supplies, low on energy, freezing cold and far from home. Luckily there were some beautiful natural hot springs to warm us up just a couple of miles away. Hopefully we've timed this just right. For sure there are some days that cost us way more than $10 and there are some days that cost us nothing at all. But by now you should have some idea of how we managed to travel full time on a budget of about $10 per person per day. We've shown you how we eat, we've shown you where we sleep, but what we haven't shown you is how we pay for gasoline. Regular viewers of this Astra Alaska series will know that our project is to provide accommodation and adventures to people that we meet along the road, or in the forest as the case is sometimes. We do this to push ourselves outside of our comfort zone, but also as a way of funding the trip. Don't get me wrong, we never charge people to travel with us and accommodation is always offered for free. But each member of the crew contributes equally to the cost of food and gasoline. So for example if we have 6 people in the Kombi, each bringing $10, our temporary travel family has $60 for that day. And that can get you a long way. For sure you can have a much more comfortable Californian road trip with a higher budget, but hopefully this video shows you that a cheap Californian road trip is indeed possible. We've managed to stick to a similar budget and crossed half of the planet, but living on a breadline whilst travelling long term is extremely challenging. Our $10 budget that we've shown in this episode covers a travellers 3 core expenses. Transport, food and accommodation. Paying for new engines, caring for sick puppies and running a YouTube channel are all some of our additional expenses not included in our lifestyle budget. We never know who we'll meet next, or how long they'll stay. When you live in a Kombi together you become friends very quickly. And as I always say, the hardest part of travel is saying goodbye. This was Lee's second time in Kombi life and it was getting harder to say goodbye. But don't worry guys, we have a feeling that we'll be seeing her again. But for now, we're pursuing adventures in opposite directions. Happy travels! Next time on Asta Alaska, we host some VIPs in the Kombi. For the first time in my many years on the road, my family is coming to visit me and we have a jam packed itinerary of Californian adventure. Everyone's excited about this one, apart from Capito.