5 Days Living In The Woods (with nothing but a backpack)

Today we are downsizing from the van to these backpacks, which hopefully contain everything we need to survive, because the plan is to walk into the woods and not come out for the next five days. My heart is beating so fast. Oh my gosh, there's... Do you mind to grab my knife out of this back pocket? What do we do? There's something really big in the woods around us. I know what some of you are thinking. I can see the comment section now. Not another one of Nate's physical challenge videos. Was that too much? That's about how I read them in my head. Well, stick around, because that is not what this is about. This trip is about spending uninterrupted time in nature, completely disconnected, and spending some intentional time together. Oh, it's very hard in the backpack. We're gonna take this trip nice and easy. Over the next five days, we're going to be hiking 31 miles, which means that we have to average about six miles a day, so we'll have plenty of time to enjoy the journey. No internet, just in the bears. You'll be hiking in the woods with your best friend. One of our snacks. That's not good. Today, we only have three and a half miles to hike until we get to our first campsite, which is good because we got a much later start than we anticipated. It is currently 4.30, which means it's gonna be pitch dark in three hours. There was a lot more preparation that went into this trip than I expected. Think all this is gonna fit in a backpack? Uh, I hope so. I think this leaf is magic. I'm pretty sure it's caught in a spider web, but it's just floating in midair. Getting some fat meat. That's pretty. I shouldn't be eating these of yours. Why? Because I feel like there's gonna be an argument about how many I had. Kara's biggest fear in the world, not just out here, but everywhere all the time, is going hungry. I don't know what it is. So this trip is playing on one of her biggest fears. We packed our own food separately, but I'm already snacking out of Kara's. This is absolutely gorgeous. It is also way hotter than I thought it was gonna be during the fall in the mountains. Doesn't help that we've been hiking straight up a mountain and this pack isn't exactly light. We actually weighed our packs this morning at my brother's house before we left. Okay, so I'm 159 without the backpack and I'm 192 width. 92 minus 59, anyone? 33. Oh, that's not so bad. And since then, I've added some more camera equipment and a huge water bottle. So I'm probably carrying about 40 pounds on my back right now. This is supposed to be relaxing. It's the sun. So this is where we just hiked and this is where we're going. I already feel like we've been hiking forever. Way too many miles to go. Little itchy. Part of the trail must not be used very often. I'm pretty sure this says Cosby Knob Shelter, but your guess is as good as mine. This smells amazing. Is it good? I prefer you to sleep on the outside edge to protect me from the bears. That cable pulls our bags up off, so we can't get to them, which is especially important in this campsite because this campsite specifically is under a bear warning, which means there's been recent activity here, which means that I'm probably not gonna sleep very good tonight. Wish us luck. Our very first night in the Boundary Waters last year. Nate and Dusty tried to manually hang our bags up. We didn't have this fancy cable. It is the hardest I've ever lapped in my entire life to this day. Make a decision. Okay, okay. America totally getting this. Good morning. Instant oatmeal out of the bag. Hot. Ow. Last night was a little awkward. We shared the top bunk with two ladies. The two ladies that we didn't know slept there and we slept there. When I first heard we were sleeping in a shelter our first night, I felt like not very excited because it seemed like cheating, but it's really not much. So the section of the trail that we're on right now is called the Appalachian Trail, which is a 2,000 plus mile trail that runs from Georgia all the way up to Maine and along the trail they have shelters that you can sleep in. So this is an Appalachian Trail shelter, which is better than a tent in some ways and last night we learned not quite as good as the tent in others. In terms of these shelters tend to attract critters. Mice. I think one landed on my arm. We admit it. I think it might have fallen from a rail. We're all like five seconds and Karen like levitated on her sleeping pad last night. That happened twice. Literally right as we're going about it I'm like, oh this is so nice. And our new friend was like, you know there are mice everywhere here. And I was like, what? I give last night's sleep a four out of 10. Nice poop. Going to the woods they said. This is my only hiking shirt I brought. We're not meant for the outdoors. How in the world did all this stuff get in here yesterday? I know. Little old bird getting me all nervous for no reason. I was fully prepared to go to the bathroom in the woods digging a hole this whole trip. I was totally fine with that. However, there's a toilet. Look at this privacy. Saw some bees. Follow me in here. This toilet seat goes straight to the ground. The only things you're supposed to put in here is your waste, your toilet paper, and these wood chips help everything just compost and go away. So this is our shelter and this is our water. I know it doesn't look like much but water is life and it's literally right next to where we're sleeping. Maybe all the places we're camping have something like this, this close, but I was very excited when we got here last night. My heart is beating so fast. There's something really big in the woods around us and I don't think we're gonna stick around to find out what it is. I will say it does kind of feel like it's following us. The woods are just so dense. You can't see anything but we just heard this movement. Like I don't wanna stick around but at the same time I wanted to know that we know it's there. Hey bear! I do actually wanna see a bear on this trip but on my own terms, not when it's coming out of the woods to find me. Real quick I wanna say a big thank you to Athletic Greens for sponsoring this video. Hello! Karen from the future here. You already know this but in case you missed it, Nate and I are completely obsessed with AG1 and we drink it every single day. I promise it's true. See? All of these are taking up valuable real estate in my suitcase. I only travel with essentials and AG1 is an essential and this isn't even all of them. I typically have my jar and shaker with me but in this special case, I packed 10 travel packs on my back into the woods to make sure we didn't miss a single day. Just one scoop contains 75 vitamins, minerals, whole food source ingredients, and prebiotics, probiotics, adaptogens, superfoods. Woo! All things we definitely weren't getting from our diet of peanut butter sandwiches and instant meals for five days straight. So whether we're backpacking in the mountains of Tennessee or cruising on a solar powered yacht in the Mediterranean, AG1 is the easiest part of our daily routine that makes the biggest difference in our health. It feels so good knowing we've covered all of our nutritional basis in just like five minutes. So if you haven't tried AG1 yet, what are you waiting for? If you use our link in the description below, you can get the AG1 immunity bundle which is an awesome deal. It includes the jar and shaker with your first purchase and a year's supply of these immune supporting vitamin D drops plus five travel packs for free. Okay, back to the woods. Oh my gosh. I've never seen a salamander before. It's like a lizard that has like fish scales. A flizzard. Oh! Wow, this water's freezing. I'm very excited about our lunch. There are two flies on the camera. I'm very excited about our lunch. Butterfly, look at it. We tried to keep things simple because we're carrying everything on our backs but it feels pretty gourmet for the woods. Hopefully it's good because it's what we're eating every single day. Dark chocolate chips, tortillas, and peanut butter. Every day. And lots of snacks. We typically eat pretty clean and healthy in our everyday life. So everything we get to eat right now feels like cheating. Cheers. There's a chance we go really hungry on day five. We're totally guessing on how much food we need. These chocolate chips are a game changer. It's like a Reese's peanut butter cup wrapped in a tortilla. Yes. Our friends Rick and Beck, you might remember from the Colorado Trail or from Rag Brite or from the Tuscan Trail or from Rafting Colorado or from the Donkey Race. Any of our biggest adventures they've been a part of. They hiked the whole Appalachian Trail back in 2001. Beck figured out that she was pregnant on the Appalachian Trail, like really close to where we are now, which means still well over a thousand miles to go before she finished. And she finished the Appalachian Trail pregnant. Like eight months pregnant. Multiple months. Can you imagine? Like I'm so tired and I'm only carrying me. There's light of air. I said yesterday that I planned a nice short trip so we could just take it slow and enjoy the journey. I'd love to make a coffee for lunch right now, but somehow we're out of time. The sun sets in six hours. Camp is six miles away. So we have to get going. Somehow we're still rushing. I've spent most of my time this morning thinking about how this was so close to being my life for six months through hiking the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine. I almost dropped out of college for a semester to come do this, but there were two things that held me back. First and probably the biggest is that Karen and I were dating long distance at the time and I was scared if I went out into the woods with very little reception and we didn't get to talk very often that she would break up with me. Second was I had a scholarship and if I took a month off, I was gonna lose that scholarship. So ultimately it just didn't make a lot of sense, but it's been fun to get a little taste of what my life could have been like had I made a very different decision. Nate's usually the one that comes back and gets the camera. I gave him a break this time. That was four miles straight up a mountain. One, went eight miles to go until we reached camp. No way. Where did they go? Oh my gosh, there's- Oh, you just scared me so bad. I didn't see it was there. Oh my gosh, there were two, they just ran across. I had no idea wild boar were here. So we've been walking by these giant like mud things and we couldn't figure out like, do bears do this? Like, and all of a sudden Nate's behind me and I'm talking, I'm looking up and he's like, did you see that? And I jumped and so I just got you back. Not on purpose. Oh my gosh. Are they dangerous? Yeah, they are. Do they like ram into you? Yeah, they have like tusks. Do they bite you? I think they're more dangerous than bears. Shut up. Do you mind to grab my knife out of this back pocket? What do we do? Just grab the knife. So about eight boar just ran across the trail in front of us. I have never seen wild boar in the woods before, but I think that I've heard that they're pretty dangerous. We'll fact check ourself on the internet when we get back. It does seem a little silly to be scared of something that just comes up to your knees. They were fast. And they do have super sharp tusks. I do not want to harm any animals. This is just in case they're getting attacked. So this is the last line of defense and if you can find the bear spray, that'll be first line. You wanna go first? Me? Well, we made it. This is home for the night. It smells so good up here. We're up at about 10,000 feet and the trees have changed to evergreen. So we're surrounded by these spruce trees and the scent. It's just filling the air. And tonight, we are climbing that for sunset. I honestly had not seen that yet. What are you thinking, like right here? Yeah. Since we keep doing these back country adventures, I finally splurged and bought a nice tent. This entire thing only weighs 2.8 pounds. But we did not splurge. Oh. And get the tarp that's supposed to go underneath it so that you don't get a hole in it. It was extra weight. It seemed pointless to buy the lighter tent and then add extra weight. Hopefully this goes better than the first night in Italy when we were trying to set up a tent we had never set up before. Eight people trying to put together one tent. Wow. It's just snapping into place. It was worth all $300. This is awesome. And kind of tiny. Look how tiny this thing is. Your snoring is going to be right here. Good thing we love each other. It's so easy. This tent is the best. This is so much better than a shelter. Kara has graciously given me the nicer of the two sleeping pads. Not only is this one thicker and more comfortable, but you can blow it up with your foot instead of your mouth. Good old Rocky Top. Woo! Rocky Top, Tennessee. This sleeping pad takes up the entire tent. They're literally gonna have to lay on top of each other at the bottom. It is cozy. Oh, I can smell my feet. I don't feel quite as protected from the bears in this. It's not that bad. No, it actually works. All right. Pocket. Amazing. Why do our feet smell so bad? I think it's mine. It's definitely mine. 0.4 miles to water. Turns out we were really lucky at our first campsite. That's 0.8 total. For those of you who can't do math, after our longest day of hiking we have to hike almost a mile round trip to get enough water to make dinner, breakfast in the morning, coffee in the morning. Thought I saw a bear over there. That's what I was looking at. And right because I only stopped to pee once today. Now everybody knows. This spider web might look really dreamy in the sunlight right now, but about once every mile, one of those will just catch me in the face while I'm walking and it's the worst. For the next 30 minutes, I just feel like I have a spider crawling somewhere on my body. Found it. Not much, but it's enough. So the way that we are purifying water on this trip is with this fancy water bottle. Basically, you fill up to this line with whatever water you want. Then this filter, woo, woo, sometimes squirts. You press the filter down through the water and it comes up into this portion of the bottle and it's clean. So good. That's supposed to be cooking water. Okay, so in order to be as efficient as possible with our water and also to hopefully make it back up to the top of the mountain for sunset, we're cooking our dinner down here by the water source. I've just boiled some water. I'm going to add it to our green curry and our chad masala. Ideally, these will cook as we carry them back up to the top. This is about the only cooking that I'm capable of. All right, back up the hill. Wow, this is steep. I'm not wearing proper hiking shoes for this. If you're scared of heights, this is not for you. I wouldn't even consider myself scared of heights, but my legs are a little shaky. Oh my gosh, it's shaking. Final steps. Wow. I don't want to step on this thing. I cannot believe they let people up here. Look at this. This is like a loose piece of plywood and then a hole that goes all the way down to the ground. Look at this view. Ow, I hit myself in the head with the top of the window. Hey, we made it before sunset. I know, look at the sun. I'm not sure if you can tell in the camera, but that shadow right there, that's actually the mountain that we're on. Can we eat now? Yeah, let's do it. Okay, camera, please do not fall on our heads. This is possibly our best dinner view ever. It always looks better when you really worked for it. I can't believe we're doing this. It's kind of hard to show in this fire tower, but the views in every direction are insane. Oh, I did it again. I'm going to open the window and show you the view and then right over that, not that slow. These are views to the west, to the south, to the east, and last but not least, to the north. Look at just how shaky this piece of wood is right here. I'm just leaning on this rail, like full trust. I'm sorry. Yeah. I was just sitting here going, Nate, do you want any chastic? And he goes, are you serious? Now I have to go hang this up in the tree. I suggested just throwing it in the wind, and he said no. We were already tucked in the bed. I'm sorry. This is so dangerous. Don't fall. I am not sure how it gets better than this. I have coffee and a waffle and Kara. Third. And an incredible sunrise. What a way to start the day. Just look at all those layers of mountains over there. This moment would be incredible anytime, anywhere, but knowing that we lived out of backpacks for the last 24 hours, climbed a mountain, and got a very average night of sleep in a tent, and all of those discomforts are what are enabling us to enjoy this moment, just makes it that much sweeter. The mountains look like islands that are jutting up out of the clouds. This is one of my favorite things ever. When I was in college, we used to come up to the Smoky Mountains to go backpacking occasionally, and this, I remember being one of my favorite spots we've ever stayed, and that's why I brought Kara back here. It is an absolutely beautiful day today. Little buggy. Today we have six and a half miles to hike, which if you take into consideration the amount of time that we have versus how far we're hiking, this should be our easiest day yet. The pigs have just made this part of the mountain their home. Here's another one of their mud pits, and you can actually see the fur from where the pig was just laying right here. I feel like the stereotypical view of pigs is they like to live in the mud, and it must be 100% true because they're doing it up here in nature. Some of you watching this are probably thinking that the only reason I'm out here this weekend is because Nate wanted to go backpacking, but truth is, this trip was actually my idea, and I think I'm having just as much fun, if not more fun, as Nate, especially since my backpack's a little lighter. I don't know when I started enjoying this outdoor stuff because when we were in college, I wouldn't say they were my favorite college memories, especially that one time it poured rain on us our entire hike out, but I'm loving it. Wish we could do it longer. Hungry? Lunch? Oh, yeah. That's kind of squishy. This is nice. Oh, it's like a recliner, nature's recliner. I think one of the reasons I've fallen in love with living in the outdoors, whether it's backpacking, camping, surviving, is because it's kind of like a gratefulness reset. Every time we do something like this, no matter how long, even if it's just for one night, when I go back to my normal life, all of these little luxuries that I've become so used to are all of a sudden so amazing. Like. Instead of having to walk a half a mile down a mountain to filter water out of this old rusty pipe and then purify it and then hike it all the way back up the mountain to use it. And then conserve it to make sure you have enough for coffee in the morning. Now, every time you turn on a faucet, you're grateful. And I wouldn't say we were ungrateful before. It's just kind of like resetting your level of like, how amazing is our life? Every little thing in life is so luxurious and it's just so mindless most of the time. But for the next week or two after this trip, every time I turn on the tap, every time I flush the toilet, every time I get into bed, it's gonna be so great. And I love that feeling. This is so delicious. Oh, sweet home. It's 3.30. We were so quick. Oh, you guys are so crazy. Mm. Were we gonna sleep in here? No. We slept so well in here last night. Especially compared to the shelter the first night. Probably because there weren't mice and spiders crawling over my body waking me up every five minutes. So, even though there's a perfectly good shelter, we're sleeping in our tent tonight. There are a few limbs. We're getting crazy tonight. We have mashed potatoes. We're boiling. Oh no, I'm not ready. And stovetop stuffing. Which means we are not eating a freeze-dried milk. But we're having a little disagreement. Nate thinks we should just put them both together. We're backpacking. Like a psychopath. We don't have a whole seat to wash dishes in. Here's what I'm thinking. We have one pot. We're gonna call this meal One Pot Thanksgiving. No. So, I think we pour the potatoes in this one and the stuffing in this one. Okay. Then you can be crazy and you can just mix them all in here when you're done. Everything to perish. They say a watch pot never boils. We're about to prove that wrong. This one does. Now I'm just gonna pour half the potatoes in Nate's bowl and half on mine and add water and hope it tastes decent. I feel like you didn't leave enough room for water. We're gonna find out. Instant. Like literally instant. Bon appetit, babe. Wasn't quite as easy. These are the best potatoes I've ever had. It's better than it is on Thanksgiving. Yeah, because we've been hiking for three days. Okay, this is a disaster. We're gonna end part one of the video here. I feel like we've been in the woods for too long. It's gonna get weird. Ah! I just blinded myself. Did that get brighter? How cool is this? I feel like it did. Does that have settings? Oh. Great. We have two more days left in the woods and you don't wanna miss part two of this series. If you don't like the next video, it was her idea. If you love it. It was also her idea. That was pretty good. I knew you were gonna kiss me when I was close to it. Never even opened them. How did you? I think you must take like an inhale before you're about to kiss me. Because I sensed it. Okay, try again. Did you hear it? See, you did it. Try to do it without inhaling. Okay. This is a good day. It just keeps getting weirder and weirder. Oh no.