I Tested if My Family Could Survive 48 Hours Camping

This is the great outdoors. It's where childhood memories are made and where boys become men. I'm a young American dad with two babies under two years old, and I've never taken them camping before. He can't even grow a mustache! So my goal this summer is to prove to my wife and my kids that their dad slash husband can in fact be a man. That he knows how to pitch a tent, start a fire, and bathe where the bears do. Here are the rules. Rule number one, I must achieve 10 badges of eminence to prove my capabilities in the wild. Rule number two, I only have two days to fulfill the requirements for every badge. And rule number three, I must complete every challenge with my sweet wife by my side. And last but not least, if I break any of these rules, the mission is compromised. And where we go, ye know not. But since you're watching this, I'll tell you where we're going. Malibu Creek State Park. First order of business, load the car and forget nothing. Okay, can you say hi? My name's Jay. Who's excited? I am! Jay, are you excited? First things first, load the car. All right, let's drive. We made it to Malibu Creek. Jay really wanted to hold the microphone, but our campsite is equipped with a fire ring. And a lot of shade. We have two large oak trees spanning the entire, what do you call that, radius? Spanning the entire campsite. We're approximately 25 yards from our nearest neighbor, who's not here, thank goodness. Jay, what do you think of the campsite so far? It's pretty. So what do you think of the campsite so far? Fantastic. Now the reviews of this place are pretty mixed. You've got some really positive ones and some really negative ones. Kevin M says, with over a million people having immediate access to this place, it's just too darn peeply. Peeply? I didn't even know that was a word. I guess we'll find out on the trails. We'll probably find out before then. Epic Detour says, jaw-dropping beauty and hiking in one hand. Squirrels have invaded. Loud teenagers everywhere. And $45 a night still leaves you feeling ripped off. Good thing we like squirrels. I'm not making fun of you. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not. No, whoa, chill. Chill is a joke. It's a joke. Sydney says, other people ruined it. Blasting speakers and zero trail etiquette. Not worth it if you want to hike in peace. I do not like blasting speakers either. Hopefully that doesn't happen. We'll see. So far, I haven't seen any of it. And Lisa T says, groups of 20 plus arriving after 10 p.m. Bees were terrible. Bathrooms weren't clean. Do yourself a favor and choose another campground. But I don't know if I believe this one because she uses an em dash and it looks like it was written by ChatGPT. Well, it's time to set up camp before we have some dinner. Do you want to help daddy unload? Good, good. Put it right here. Jay, it's time to do the tent. You want to help me with this sleepy bag? More is all done wood. It's all done wood. Jay, you got to trust your daddy. Okay, you put that one right here. There you go. Fantastic. Did you see that? High five. We did it. Hi. New badge unlocked. There you go. We got the tent set up. Now we just need to fill it with sleeping bags, kids' beds, and pillows. And everyone's getting hungry and the sun's going down. So let's do this quick. So it was already 7 p.m. and we spent too much time setting up camp and everyone was hungry. So I just had to make do with my resources. Can we get two $4 meal deals? You want a cheeseburger? We'll get it. Can we do one with the McChicken and then one with the cheeseburger? All right. I know McDonald's isn't very wilderness explorer of us, but we always have tomorrow. And on the plus side, Jay really liked his cheeseburger. But I think SydneyM, we just debunked your review because if you listen closely in the background, there's some teenagers playing music and the volume is moderate. Not blasting whatsoever. Five stars. And if we successfully sleep through the entire night, we get a new badge unlocked. Really? Yeah. A sleeping in a tent badge. Oh, awesome. New badge unlocked. Because we arrived late last night, we didn't get a chance to check all the amenities out. So that's what we're up to this morning. Fantastic. Oh, fantastic. Sink, shelf for and chocolate. Jay and I will use this one. Fantastic experience. So on today's schedule is breakfast, hiking, campfire, more eating, more cooking. Shoot. We better get going. Yeah. See you there. Oh, that's hot. That's hot. Can you hold this one for daddy? Oh yeah. Oh, we did it. Good job. Our water bag is filled. Fizzy. No fizzy. We're going to unlock four new badges. Number one, visiting a landmark. Cat impersonation, insert here. Badge number two, wildlife. We're going to go find all the wildlife that they have listed in this park. Supposedly there's lots of wildlife. Badge number three, we're going to whittle something cool and helpful for the camping experience. I don't know what that means. Like a little dog or something. A bunny. Cat is expecting a lot out of my whittling. And badge number four, tin foil dinner. Now this is kind of an elite dad moment right here. We have to really figure this one out. I'm not sure how it's going to go. We better get moving. We just arrived at the main trailhead parking lot. Right now we're going to be hiking to where MASH was filmed. I haven't seen the movie, but we're going to have a chance to learn a little bit about it today. Say, let's do it. Let's do it. Oh, there's a bird. Should we take a video of the bird? Oh, there's birds. First animal. Bird. That is a new bird. We haven't seen that kind of bird before. So far we've seen two different kinds of birds. All we need is one more kind of animal to get the wildlife photography badge. Wildlife photography badge unlocked. This is where Planet of the Apes was filmed. This is where the monkeys were in the monkey movie. Okay, let's go. Let's finish. Jay's cranky. It turns out Jay was just a little bit hangry and needed some energy to get to our next destination. Look at this. That's awesome. High five. Let Jay go see it. Hi, truck. You want to drive it? Do you have a license? Can I have it? Two feet tall, blonde hair, blue eyes, not allowed to drive. I'm going to have to give you a ticket and take you to jail. After unlocking another badge and walking all the way back to find a perfect walking stick, I had to face my most daunting challenge yet. The fire. And to be honest, I was pretty nervous for this badge because if I can't light this thing, everything I'm working towards in this video is pretty much failed. As I mentioned, this is where boys become men. And I still need to prove myself as the amazing young father that I am. Will I do it? Will I fail? Am I the great wilderness explorer dad that I set out to become on this trip? Will I finally grow that mustache? First try. First try. Well, it looks like I was the only one proud of myself. Anyways, it was time for dinner. Here's our first one. Ooh, that looks yummy. For dinner, we had some delicious chicken, vegetables, and potatoes, all packaged by Katia and cooked by me and Jay. Thank you, Jay. Thank you, Jay. That counts as doing the badge with my wife, right? New badge unlocked. Very good. There's no better way to wrap up a day of camping than with some s'mores. Jay had only tried making s'mores a few times in his life, and let's just say he's hooked. Good night. Good morning. What do you want to eat? Eggs. You want eggs? Yeah. Let's go make some eggs then. Jay's a simple guy. His diet mainly consists of bananas, eggs, applesauce, and whatever else we seem to have on hand. Yeah, now we're going to get the burner on there. Wow, these eggs are going to be crazy. Not necessarily in a good way. Okay, don't expect much because I have to stick a butter in these eggs. Oh, Jay's doing something crazy. What are you doing? Come here, let's eat breakfast. We all filled our bellies pretty good, and we were going to need it because this was our last day at the campsite, and Jay was going to have to overcome a fear so that we could all unlock this badge together, our biggest badge yet. We're back on the trail we were on yesterday. Today, hoping to find a swimming pool. Now, it's called Rock Pools. Supposedly, there's a waterfall and a cliff jump. We'll see. Hopefully, we can find it. Yeah, I said this badge was going to be scary, but I meant it. We are going to the swimming place. Yeah. With a waterfall and a rock, and you can jump on it. Yeah. Are you ready to go? Yeah. Okay, let's do this. We've been waiting all trip. Let's go. Jay has never jumped off something this big in his life. You're going to let him jump off that? That's crazy. Oh, Jay. Oh, it's nice. One thing that this trip taught me is life doesn't really wait around for you to be ready. I mean, we planned this trip for weeks, and nothing went to plan. We got lost a couple of times, ended up eating McDonald's for dinner, and this was my first time ever filming a long-form video like this, so there were a few learning curves along the way. But somewhere in the middle of all that, this trip stopped being about accomplishing badges, and it just became about us, our family. We realized we didn't have enough time to do everything we wanted to, so we stopped checking the time. Jay helped us set up camp. Kathy and I got to be together the entire time, and Sarah, well, Sarah's just Sarah. She's perfect. Here's the thing, though. Jay won't remember much of this. Sarah definitely won't. They're too little, and I used to think that made our family adventures pointless. Why go through all the effort just for them to not remember it? But that's exactly why we capture it, not just for you guys, but for them, so one day Jay and Sarah can sit down and watch this back and see it for themselves. See where they were, see who they were with, and how much we all love doing it together. That's why we make these videos. They're not going to remember this place, but for their entire lives, they're going to remember the feeling of it. Being outside, being together, and feeling safe enough to jump in the water without checking it first. And I got to be here for all of it, every single bit. So if you've got people like this in your life, go find some water, dive in, and don't think about it too hard. Hi, thank you for watching our first YouTube video. Hope you liked it. We have a big announcement. We're doing a giveaway with electric e-bikes since we just hit a million subscribers. Thank you all for being a part of it, and thank you, Electric, for making this happen. If you want a chance to win this e-bike, all you need to do is, one, press subscribe to our channel, and two, comment on this video what you liked about it. We'll see you in the next one. How high was it? Was it really high? Yeah. Really high.