A Real Look at Van Life in Our Transit Camper by Storyteller Overland

Here's a real look into what it's like to live out of a camper van. Typically when the camera starts rolling, we've already cleaned up the van, put things away, Joe's already had his coffee. But today, since we're showing you kind of real life van life, this is what the van looks like when we wake up. But be warned, it's a hot mess. So come on in and I'll show you around. So like I said, it's a hot mess. The bed hasn't been made yet. Usually that's something Kate likes to do. And when we're sleeping at night, one thing we do do is we bring the toilet out from the basin and we leave it here. The reason is it's easier for both of us to use, especially me, because the toilet is just at the right height, if you get my meaning. I'm going to work on making the bed and cleaning up some of the hot mess up front, which Joe is going to show you. So here's Kate's towel from last night's shower, hanging up to dry. All of our stuff up here, trash, odds and ends, our backpacks and clothes. The reason why this front area is so messy right now is normally a lot of this stuff will reside on the bed. Man, Kate's fast. So what we do is at night, that stuff moves forward. We put it all up here because we're not going to use these seats. And then as Kate's doing now in the morning, we move all back so that we have room to sit and enjoy this area. It's kind of a lounge camping area. Toilet paper away. So do you want to leave the toilet out for camping mode or do you want to put it away? I say we put it away because we are on public land. We can go dig a hole, find a tree, you know, go outside. I do like to go to the bathroom outside. It is nice. My towel is not dry yet, so I'm going to let it be, but I will put your towel away. Thank you. Here, let me help you with that. There we go. And here's the other box that goes in there. So what I was saying is, I think one thing that people don't normally see with van life is, at least for us, there's a shift from morning to afternoon to night as we move things around and we kind of adjust the van to the different modes that we're going to be using it for. Oh here, let me give you my backpack. I'm going to move your hat up front. And then could you toss my sweatshirt on the bed? Thank you. Laundry bag, my belt and pants also on the bed please. How about your headphones? I'll put those away. We've said this before, a van life shuffle. It's a thing. It is. Now it's time to get into lounge mode. Yeah, so during the day, if we're not going to be sitting outside, Kate usually likes to stay there. I usually hang out up front, but one of the difficulties of the way we have our van set up at the moment is, the motorcycle is on the back of the van and our camping chairs are in the back of the van. So they're a bit hard to get to and if we don't necessarily feel like grabbing them, we won't bother and we'll just hang out in the van. So that's it. I mean this is really how things go every single morning. We get out of bed, the bed gets made, coffee gets made, things get shuffled around and now the van looks... I don't think that's the order. Usually coffee is made and then the bed gets made. True. You stay on the bed and let me make my coffee and then we can get the day started. Yes. So I'm thinking let's grab the chairs, set them out. This is such a beautiful day and then we can give everyone a tour of our awesome dispersed camping spot. It's kind of impressive how Kate manages to get in here. Practice. Thank you. The key is to sneak in here. See I definitely could not do that. I have a system. Perfect. So we're just outside of Sisters Oregon onto public land and I think it's going to be mid or high 80s today, but it's so peaceful. We've not seen anyone since we pulled in yesterday. So before I can give you a tour of our campsite, I actually cut my foot on one of the dead trees and things poking up out of the ground. Let me see. You want to put your foot in the sink? Let me see if I can physically do that. Hold on. You got to let go of my leg so I can get up. I'm trying not to bleed on the oh there we go. Thank you. Kate's my nurse. I tend to hurt injure myself quite often. Don't use the dirty towel. I cleaned it yesterday. See this is van life. As Kate's cleaning my feet I realized that the shirt I'm wearing is a few days old and it's a good thing we're not in smell-o-vision because it's a little rank and the reason for that is our laundry bag is getting a bit full and which means I'm almost out of t-shirts. We have a vent we're going to so I need to have some clean shirts for the public and in video it doesn't really matter. Right? But I'm not smelling anything because my allergies are so bad. It's perfect. I'm all perfect. You were saying you forgot something? I usually when we wake up we check our battery and things just to see where we are. So we're 80 percent capacity on our battery pack. We have 54 percent fresh water left. Okay. We started at 100 yesterday but Kate took a long shower. Hey I only used 20 percent and I washed my hair. That's pretty good. And it's 20 percent of what 21 gallons? Yeah. Okay and we came into camp with a full tank of water. We're going to be visiting friends so we've been a little bit generous with our water usage. Usually we'd be more careful but we wanted to be fresh and clean when we saw our friends tonight. I'll probably put on a fresh t-shirt by the time we get there. They'll appreciate that. Yeah. Okay now we can give the campsite tour. So this is our campsite. There is already a fire ring established so we knew this was an open camping area and this is where we ended up parking but literally there is nobody here. I don't know about you but I'm ready for some breakfast. Yeah we can get some breakfast going. You want um so we can have sticky rice or shiitake. Let's do the sticky rice with the Chinese sausage. That doesn't even require putting out food cooking equipment. Do you want to put out all our food cooking implements? Cooking mode. Okay then cook me whatever thing. Yes I know what it is I just can't pronounce it. I love that girl. Here's the induction cooktop. Don't break the van. I don't know if I can do this one-handed. Let's see. There we go. Okay here's the cast iron. Thank you. Now I did forget to check and make sure we have enough eggs. Let me see. I don't know it might be sticky rice. We can have both. We can have sticky rice later. I have four eggs. Okay perfect. You want to take those for me? So do you want to explain what chao chi whatever is? No one knows what that is. You can't say it's like something else that nobody knows. That literally translates to tomato stir fry egg. So it's a very what would you say like common dish that's made in a lot of in many of the Chinese households that I know and have grown up in. So it's kind of like comfort food for me. I usually serve it with rice or my favorite I like to eat it with noodles. I think today we'll just have it plain. What do you think? I want noodles now. You want noodles? Okay. We're having a signature chao chi that over noodles. No well I guess let's just have it straight. What? We're gonna have sticky rice later. Okay. There's a lot of stuff in here. Need a spatula. I'll grab some seasoning. Do you want to use avocado oil or? Yes. Avocado oil. Let's use avocado oil. There's avocado oil. Sure. Okay. Or do you want to use sambal? Oh sambal is better. Okay. We'll put some so instead of five spice I use 13 spice and soy. All right. Do you want to make this? Or you want me to make it? Um sure I can make it. We'll let Joe make it. He's really good at cooking. Oh it smells so good. I hope my egg folding has been done properly. It's gonna be spicy. Yes it will. I just realized that I wasn't thinking and made the spice and salt level on this to be put over rice or noodles. So maybe we should make noodles. Okay. That was my unconscious saying yes I really want noodles. Grab my instant pot. The only noodles we have right now are Lanzhou noodles. Oh twist my arm. I love these noodles. All right well I gotta oh shoot I just realized um we haven't filled our water system. So let me do that so we have enough water to make noodles. The water pressure for the shower faucet is so good that it's very easy to drain this tank when you're taking a shower. When we're cooking making coffee tea or just drinking water everything comes out of our Berkey water filtration system. So if we don't manage this properly sometimes it's a little bit of a wait to get water. Do we have any more water in our water bottle? We do. I might have to use some of that. Let's grab the water bottle water. Where is it? It should be up front in the cubby. Oh there it is. Uh it's empty. It is? Okay. What about the water in the fridge? I have backup. Just right. Let's see how our battery is doing. Not bad. All right now we wait for the water to boil. Although I just thought of something. Maybe we should put the water in your water kettle. Do you think it'll boil faster? I think that would be much more efficient. Smart cookie. This will boil the water in a fraction of the time. Well my chow whatever egg tomato thing is done. There you go. Those noodles look good. I think the noodles are done. I have to say though I've been sitting here watching that instant pot and wondering if and when it's going to fall off the counter. Hey it's good. Just don't bump it. Having the noodle dream. Reading out of that? Yeah. Well I guess when in van life. Listen it works. My legit noodle bowl is in the back there. I don't feel like squeezing back in there to grab it. Thank you for making us lunch. You're welcome. Thank you for the noodles. I will need some chopsticks though. That came out really well. So what do you think of my 西红柿炒鸡蛋? It's delicious. I had a taste and I'm impressed honey. You've learned this dish very well. Thank you. So good. Good. 西红柿. Now we're in lounge mode. Yes. That was amazing. Thank you. You're welcome. For making my noodle dreams come true. Now it's uh time to do some dishes. Since we only have a 21 gallon freshwater tank. One of the ways Joe and I conserve water is when we're done eating lunch. We actually don't wash our bowls if we're going to make dinner as well. Um just keep on using the bowl. We don't care. And then we'll wash it at night and then have clean bowls in the morning. Do you want to explain the uh sink drain to everybody? Oh yes. So we have a sink drain pump. So I've got to push the button to drain the sink. Nice thing about this is you can put stuff down the grain like noodles and it'll get all mashed up when it goes into the gray tank. Nice thing with cast iron is you really just have to get it wet. Take the stuff off and as long as it's well seasoned you're pretty much good to go. And our cast iron is very well seasoned. I feel like it's beer 30. I think so. Let's see. I've got nitro style, Budweiser, Dale's Pale Ale. All right. Cheers. What are you up to? I'm just getting some work done. Yeah. Well I think I'm gonna put the book down and I'm gonna go take a nap. The beer has made me a little sleepy. All right. Well you're gonna have to shuffle all that stuff. I'll just climb over it. Okay. All right. Nap mode engaged. Yes. Hey look who's up. How long was I out? About 20 minutes. That's a good nap. It felt like hours. I'm guessing it's coffee time. You're guessing correctly. Okay. Coffee gear. While I'm waiting for this to come to temperature I'm gonna go use a tree. If you'll excuse me. I don't think you need to film this part. So I have a dirty secret to tell everybody. Out of necessity I had to buy pre-ground coffee which is an abomination in my world. Well to be honest I've come to love it because in van life my grinder gets stored under the bed and it just becomes an extra thing to pull out, put down, put away, take up space. I think when we're in the van from now on I'm only gonna get pre-ground coffee. As much as it pains me to say it it's almost as good as the whole bean stuff. Freshly ground. Well it was freshly ground a couple weeks ago when I bought it. It's not fresh anymore. Oh well. By the way I just noticed while we're filming that you have three different bags of coffee right now. Nothing wrong with that. Probably better putting this away than I am. It's a good thing we're filming this because if you ever have to solo RV you can go back to the video and figure out how to put the induction cooktop away. I would be lost without Kate. Where do you put that guy? I put it in a bag. And does it go in the shelf? Yeah it goes in the GSS. You just gotta feel it out. There it goes. Okay. I don't even have to look. I'm gonna get back to video editing. Are you working on this video already? Well you know. Knocking it out. I like to stay ahead of it. So that's kind of the way these days roll is today is more of a relaxing day. Kate decided to get some work done. I've just been sitting reading my book enjoying the outdoors. Plus yesterday was like an adventure travel day. We got cherries. We went hiking. Saw beautiful waterfalls. So today is a good day to just like you said recharge. Unwind. I also want to say that this is one of the few times today that Kate has been wearing pants or shorts. Just because I'm having an underwear day. Yeah so we have these things we call underwear days which is you get up you relax you don't necessarily need to put all your clothes on if any. So Kate's just been lounging around in her underwear and I think the one non-real thing about today is that Kate has bothered to put on shorts when we start filming. It's for your own good. Y'all will be happy to know that behind the scenes Kate has gone back to underwear mode. Man. It's just not all the secrets today. You're just telling everybody about my underwear day. I'm still amazed that no one has come to visit. No there's absolutely no one out there. Well if we've learned anything today it's that if you see us camping in the wild stay a fair distance away unless you want to smell something. I hope you all had fun today. This has really been kind of a chill day in van life. We you know just hanging around having an underwear day enjoying ourselves and this is just kind of a snapshot in the life of what it's like to van life for us. And I think we I mean I love those campsites so I say we stay another night. Absolutely. And we'll go visit our friends tomorrow. Sounds good to me. Well that is it for this video. Thank you so much for watching. If you enjoyed it please give us a thumbs up. Subscribe if you haven't already. And if you want to see more cool content head on over to our website at we'retherussos.com and we'll see you next time. Bye. See ya.