This Adventure Van Is Welded Up and Ready! Back Into The Mountains

Hey guys, so before we do any adventuring at all, we need to fix the muffler and the last time I came up here with a broken muffler, we just band-aided it and I got back on the road to keep traveling. I'm like, oh we'll deal with this one of these Mondays and Tuesdays that he's at the shop and then it broke again and then now we're back in a rush so we can go out and travel again. You like my fixed job? Nothing like plastic cable ties. Take all the cables out of the cable tie zone. Sorry for all the mud underneath here. I know that's your favorite kind of vehicle to work on. Oh, it's fine. Nothing like working on a vehicle and you got mud falling in your teeth. I think you might have caught this on a few things. The front one's broken off there too. That's the bolt. Did you take out the bolt or did it break? It just broke. All I did out there was took some cable straps because it was burning the inside of the van. Oh, okay. Darryl was saying the front clamp up there is broken too. Not anymore. Now we can go adventuring. Look what that thing did. It just burnt all this stuff. That's awesome. Darryl got us fixed up and on the go. He did a little bit better than a band-aid this time. He actually welded those pieces in place. They should be good for a long time now. Until Chromie breaks it. Cruzy. Hey, I see you got your campfire. We're going to go play in the bush for a few days, alright? Alright, now that the muffler is all fixed up, we're just going to stop at the grocery store in Port Alberni, B.C. And top up on some groceries, get some fuel, and I need to pick up a fitting for my airline hose for my compressor before we head out into the bush today. It's been a good day, man, but I'm not sure how long it's going to hold out. It's been sunny for most of it, but now the clouds are starting to roll in and we're getting a few little raindrops here and there. So, fingers crossed on that. Welcome to Port Alberni, B.C. Alright, let's get some groceries. You know me, always going for the easy stuff. Asparagus. Strawberries. For my American friends. Eggs are a normal price here. I heard they're super, super expensive down in America right now. Alright, good to go. Oh man, I go in to get groceries and you should see what happened outside. Now, look at that. That's the way we're going to. That sucks. Alright, one more stop with Lurco Auto Parts to grab a fitting for my air compressor. Good to go. I haven't had a cozy shack pudding in a long time. These things are delicious. Let's dive into the sponsor of today's video and that is Jackery. This is more of a message than it is an advertisement. Because right now being prepared at home is so, so important. With everything from like the huge wildfires that just happened down in California and the crazy wildfires that happen here in British Columbia every single year. That wipe out power in communities and all the flooding and stuff that's been going on. Being prepared at home has never been as important as it is right here, right now. And Jackery has you covered no matter where your entry level is at. Or if you're doing full integrated home systems like the Jackery 5000. That thing fully integrates with your home. You can connect it to solar panels. It's got this box that mounts to the wall. And the Jackery 5000 unit and all the batteries you attach to it. It's like this but just on a much grander scale. When the power goes out, simultaneously it switches over to your backup Jackery power system. And it powers your entire home. So whether you're doing a full integrated system like that. Or you just want to get yourself started in some home preparedness. I would highly suggest a unit like the Jackery 1000 version number 2. It's a great entry point. This thing's an absolute powerhouse of a battery. And imagine when the power goes out in the neighborhood. Nobody's got internet or anything like that. But you, you can plug your Starlink internet into here. You got Wi-Fi. You can keep your neighborhood connected. And people can reach out to their loved ones at your place. So having something like this that you can run induction cooktops. Charge your cell phones on. It's just a great way to get started being prepared at home. Jackery, thank you for helping people stay a little bit more safer out there. And helping everybody in all the wildfires that just happened in California. I love working with you guys. You have such a big heart as a company. So anyway, I encourage you guys to go click the links and stuff down below. If you're looking at getting your home a little bit more prepared. Jackery, thank you for always having everybody's back. And sharing so much love with the world. Thanks for sponsoring today's video. All right, trusty Lordco. Hopefully you have what I need. That's gonna be good help for me. Okay, let's see if this works. I'm gonna need to hold this. Take this one off. They don't have that part in there. So what I need now is a coupler to go from here to the end of my other hose. Okay, never mind. I think I found a temporary fix. It brings it out a long way. But we could put this into here and then plug into there. It's a little janky, but... And then I got this end, which fits onto that coupler I just bought. I'm gonna change these out. The end on this one's a type A, which does not fit in that one. So I bought a type T fitting and a coupler. All right, here we go. We are in business. It's gonna clear the door. We're good to go. This is a lot bigger than my last setup. When I bought this in Port Alberni, it was just one of those panic moments. Where I'm like, well, we should probably carry one. It's big, but it's longer. I think the last one was only 25 feet. At least this one I'll be able to run it to someone's vehicle that's maybe across from me that needs some help. That air compressor comes in handy for that. Like if you're in a parking lot, some ladies go to low tire, you can be like, Excuse me, ma'am. Can I fill your tire up for you? I did that once before. She was tickled pink. One more stop, homie. One more stop. And good timing too, because my fuel light just came on. I know. I know. I see you there. Low fuel light. That snow on those mountains looks incredible. That's really, really pretty. That's it. Full. What did we get? From E to full, $194.84. This thing gets hungry sometimes. Where is the thing? This is the end of the public road. Next fuel service, 84 kilometers. It feels good to be back to a point in my life where we can come out here whenever we want to. After a good solid year of hard work trying to get my future all set up, I'm finally back to a point where I can unplug whenever I want to unplug. And today is just that day. And I'm glad we came out here because we only have a couple more sunny days left and then it's going back to rain. And I found the most epic camp spot tonight. There's a tower up that telephone pole. Look at it. It's like a walkway up and a viewing platform. I wonder what that's for. There's a stairwell going up there too. I've never seen that before. It's beautiful out here this evening. The weather is kind of mixy. Not sure what it wants to do. I recently met a vehicle dweller that works five days a week in town, but lives in the backcountry every single night after work. He said he doesn't come to the same spot. He likes to change it up once in a while. But he doesn't like people very much, so being out here is where he feels the happiest and the calmest. But he does. He works with people all day and then drives out here somewhere, pulls over, makes a campfire, and enjoys a night. And man, if this was your commute home every day, I would take it. I remember before I started van life, my commute was like an hour, hour and a half long, with horns honking, angry people, road rage, accidents, and middle fingers. And then I meet this van dweller guy that says no, this is his commute home every day. I think everybody needs to end their day just like this. I need the workplace to be better, and the world would just be a better and more happier place. Because tonight, after me working at the shop all morning, was a perfect way to end a day. I'm not going to pass that spot up. This road doesn't go that much farther anyway. I don't know if you guys are ready for this. Check out that camp spot. No way. No freaking way. Wow. This is beautiful. I'm definitely pinning this one on my own personal map. That is mighty damn perfect. Well, maybe let's get out of these and put on something a little bit more, you know, appropriate. That's better. Alright, let's see if we can start a fire. My camera's dead, so we got it plugged into the Jackery. My camera's pulling 24 watts right now. That's a perfect night tonight. That's the ocean down there. You can see the sunset reflecting off the ocean. I kind of don't want to go back inside the van. I did all of my laundry after my last camping trip. Washed all of my bedding, and I haven't put any of it away. My bed's not even made. It's just a raw mattress. It's a piece of foam, no covering. We got to put all that stuff away before we go to bed. Kruzy is literally sitting on a pile of clothes and a pile of blankets and stuff. I'm going to have to move them off. I'm going to stay out here all night. I was a little bit worried about this fire when I first started it. I didn't think it was going to go. She's good now. You know, I still don't have a camp chair. That one that was covered in mold that I got at Costco for like $20. I got rid of it. I didn't want to go through the fuss and hassle of cleaning. It was moldy, like really, really moldy. From my back spare box on the back of the van. I got to get myself a camp chair. A little log will do. See, spots like this I'll be able to get into with a sprinter van, no problem. So, you know, I don't think I'm going to miss out on too much. Like from the short roof van to the big van. It's the bushwhacking that I'm going to miss. Can you make the bed and put all my clothes away, please? I'm sorry, pal. See that low-lying fog over there all glowing? I think that's the lights from the logging camp. But it sounds like a bazillion frogs down there. There must be a little river or creek running down to the ocean as well. Those frogs are so loud. And you can't tell on camera, but that moon is so bright. It's actually casting a shadow around the van. I wish the camera would pick that up. It is so bright out here. All right, cruisy. Hey, let's make some food and clean up this mess. Cruisy's lost in all the clean clothes. We've got to get off. Hey, we've got the mats for the front of the van all cleaned up. I bought these from Costco. And these are what go on the driver and passenger seats. And they wash so good. I love them. They keep my bum warm. And it takes the dog smell out pretty good too. I didn't think these were going to be very washable. But literally, in and out of the wash, usually every week or two weeks. Oh, they're so good. Are you feeling the same way as me? Are you feeling the same way? As soon as I got out here today, my body just went... Oh, this is it. This is it. Oh, I think it's that time. All right, somebody told me that you can put your Starlink into sleep mode. If I have to reset, bypass. Yeah, someone in my comments the other day said you can set it up in sleep mode. That way it just goes to bed at a certain time. Yes, you can set up your Starlink to automatically shut off during a feature called sleep schedule within the Starlink app. Open Starlink app, navigate to settings, select Starlink, then select sleep schedule. Conserve power by scheduling your Starlink to sleep. Starlink won't provide internet or melt snow while sleeping. Enable sleep schedule. Let's do that. So let's wake it up at 4 a.m. That saves me five hours overnight. Because I usually go to bed around 9, 30, 10. That means it's only on for a little bit after where I am. And then it wakes up in the morning when I wake up. Perfect. This is cool. Thanks to whoever said that in the comments or the 20, 30 people that said that and I didn't read them. I don't know if you guys can see the flickering of the lights. But as soon as we shut this thing off, as it goes into the power down, the lights go a little bit. And it does that on startup. I don't know how many watts that heater pulls on startup and on shutdown. But it's like this whole van's falling apart when it does. Because all the lights go. Like someone's going to electrocute it in here. It's so dramatic. Speaking of power, let's see where our batteries are at. Because we've been at the shop the last stack of days. Sleeping inside of the Mercedes and putting in those bump outs and the bunk windows. See what our power is at. When we don't do a ton of driving, we usually take a big hit in power. Oh, let's go. Here's my power system. We're at 92%. Battery voltage is at 13.16%. Currently right now we're pulling 197, 95 watts. That's a large power draw. We're charging the drone batteries, so that's probably a good chunk. All my lights are on and I can hear the compressor on in my fridge. I'm happy about that because it would really suck to start a little bush adventure with some dead batteries. Today was a perfect day. I had an awesome productive morning working at the shop. Then when I was at Daryl's place, me and him had been working on some bumper projects for Van Toys. I got to see the prototype bumpers today. It was so hard not to share that with you guys. But I don't want to share them until they're done. Because right now we're still in the planning process. I've seen them today. Now we're making a few more design changes to them. We're designing a basic front bumper for the Ford Econoline. My gosh. My whole day he was trying to talk to me. I'm like, those things are awesome. Those things are awesome. Just freaking out that when you have images in your head and you finally get to see the actual tangible, touchable item. It's so good today. But this was a perfect way to end a day. I can't believe I found this spot. I can't believe it. I've driven past this side road on this backcountry road many times. But a lot of logging trucks are always coming in and out of here. So I never ever turn down it. And I'm glad I did today. Because this one has to be one of my favorite spots that I have found close to my shop in a long time. This one is awesome. And I'm stoked to head out of here tomorrow and go out and play a little bit. There's a bunch of lakes up here I haven't been to. So that's my plan for tomorrow and the next day. And we'll see what the weather turns out like or whatever. Tomorrow is the only day that matters. We'll see you guys back here. I'm trying to upload as much as I can. We'll be back with another one tomorrow. Alright y'all. Peace out. We done. Bye. See ya.