Van Camping - Our First Campfire in Months

Well good morning folks. It is a gorgeous morning here in Wyoming. Beth and I have spent the last few days traveling to get here. We left Oregon. We traveled through Idaho and then we arrived here in Wyoming yesterday. We're in the Bridger-Teton National Forest. Found a beautiful little campsite here right along this creek. It's a great place for us to kind of sit back for a day or two, recoup from all the driving and then plan some adventures that we plan to share with you guys on our combined channel, Grit and Glam Adventures, but we are going to spend the next couple of days here just enjoying this campsite. I plan to cut some firewood, have some campfires, but yeah just kind of have a little recoup after several days of driving and then, like I said, you will be seeing a bunch of new adventures coming on Grit and Glam of our travels through Wyoming. So to kind of get our morning started I'm going to go ahead and make some breakfast for Beth and I. Breakfast is, like I said before in another video, one of my most important meals of the day and Beth also really enjoys starting off the day with breakfast too so that's really nice. But man what a gorgeous day we have here. It's really sunny. It's just coming through the trees, lighting everything up. It's really beautiful. Now according to the weather forecast, they are forecasting here in a couple days that it is supposed to kind of get cloudy and rainy here a little bit, but right now I'm really enjoying it. Very beautiful morning to sit out, have coffee, and yeah I think it's just going to be a great day to hang around camp and cut some firewood and have a little campfire. Alright so that's breakfast done. Just did some eggs and a couple sausage patties, melted some cheese, toasted some bread. That makes a quick easy breakfast both Beth and I really enjoy. Pavardi cheese? No? Pepper jack? Different seasoning or something? No. Tastes extra good to me. Maybe I'm just extra hungry. Well it was made in Wyoming. Is it an elk sausage or a moose? Just the only difference is it has the Wyoming air. Alright so I'm getting the chainsaw. I'm going to get it ready to go. Now this is the first time I've actually used the chainsaw this year. You know we've been in fire ban in Oregon so I haven't had any need to use it for campfires and I haven't been in a position where I needed to clear a tree out of a road or anything. So things just been basically sitting on the back of the van for the past few months. So I am going to check it over, make sure to do some maintenance on it, make sure it's all good to go before we start going out and cutting some trees. Now I have looked out in the forest here a little bit and I have found some down trees that I think will work out well for us. So I'm going to work on one of those once I get the thing going. But another thing too that is really important is to check fire bans. Here in Wyoming in the National Forest where we're at here, it is open. They just opened it back up to campfires and dispersed camping like two or three days ago. So you definitely want to check that in the area you're at, the state, and not only in the state but the National Forest to make sure that you can't have campfires. Because I know that certain areas like especially in Oregon are probably still under fire ban. So one thing I think gets overlooked a lot when people are using gas chainsaws is checking the air filter. You can get sawdust up in these really easy and that will clog your airflow and make your saw run really bad. So it's just a really easy thing, at least on my saw, for me to just pop this out and I can see that there is quite a bit of sawdust and stuff already on it. And I just keep some carb cleaner available with me and then that makes it just really easy for me to quickly clean this up and get it back up and running again good. So normally I would carry these pieces up to the truck, get them closer, then split them into a bunch of small pieces so it wasn't so much to carry. But admittedly I've been having a little challenge with my hip. It's been bothering me a little bit so I'm just going ahead and knock them down into a little bit smaller pieces here make it a little bit easier to manage. All right so now that I've got all the wood stacked in that I'm going to use for tonight I'm going to go ahead and just rebuild this fire pit. It's just kind of a mess. It's a little bit close to the band the way it's set up and I want to make it a little bit better for cooking over tonight. All right so I think I got this thing all set the way I want. I like a nice u-shaped fire pit because I can have my fire at the back. I have a nice open area here where it's easy for me to kind of stand and warm myself. But better yet I'm planning on doing some cooking tonight. It just makes it easier for me to be able to pull some coals forward, be able to cook. I've got a nice rock slab here where I'll be able to place my skillet when I don't want it in the fire. Now I'm going to admit this still feels a little bit close to the band but because it's not very cold tonight I'm not too worried about it because we're not going to have a massive warming fire. It's really going to be for ambiance and cooking and I think it will be nice because I can go right from where I'm going to be prepping things right down here to cooking and it's going to be close and convenient. All right folks well this is a real treat. Beth and I went for a little walk just outside our camp just up the dirt road from where we're camped and Beth spotted a moose and so we're just kind of sitting here and he's just kind of munching away over here. He's in some brush so you can kind of just see the brush moving and you can see some pretty good shots of his head and his back and everything. Yeah he's pretty young he's pretty young but not bad for our first day in Wyoming. What do we have right in front of us? There's a baby bull moose. Well he's young. Yeah so he's the same one we were just looking at. He's the same one when he's standing up over here. I hope he's the same one. Well we came around to a different angle and now we can see like he's just like right out in the sun. I mean we can see him full body now. And this is your very first moose in the wild. This is my first moose in the wild. I've seen them in Montana and Wyoming but this is my favorite animal in the wild. So this is really fun and awesome to see but it's also a major reminder that I have to keep a really good eye on Ben because there are wildlife here that aren't in Oregon like moose and grizzlies. So I do have to make sure that he stays a little closer and tighter to us as we hike around up here. So it was our intent just to come up here and check out this lake and there's a beautiful little mountain lake up here. You can drive up to this but uh yeah this is gorgeous. Especially not bad when you get to come up and see a moose for the first time and then be able to stand out here and look out over this. Not a rough way to live, let me tell you. It's going straight up, that's nice. Okay, old poppy has a little lap boy. All right so we've kind of settled in a camp for the evening and I've got the fire going and I'm gonna start working on some dinner. I've got some boneless chicken thighs and I'm gonna cook them over the fire and then I also have some powdered potatoes I'm gonna cook up real easy and then I haven't decided yet I gotta look through my drawer but I'm either do some like green beans or corn or something like that along with the side. Other than filming it, it's pretty easy. The potatoes are the easiest. Well did you enjoy your dinner? I did, it was delicious. Did I earn my little whiskey for the night? You earned your whiskey. That's good. This is a good one too. This is a special one that they sent me. It's a seven year rye. It's very good. Did you want to try just a tiny sip? She's not much of a rye person. That's good for you. It's good for me. It is actually really good. I really like this one but it's been a great day. Yeah we had beautiful weather. I was able to get some firewood cut. We went for a beautiful hike. Saw a moose. I mean our first our first full day in Wyoming. We saw a moose. We're sitting here. We've got a nice fire. We've got the river flowing beside us. We've got a little sun coming through the trees. It's beautiful. Pretty nice. Anyway folks, I think we are going to wrap up for the evening and just enjoy this beautiful night. I hope you guys did enjoy this video and if you did please do leave it a like. If you have any comments or questions leave those down below and we'll catch you guys again outside. You got a stick? You got a stick? You got a stick? You got a stick? You're gonna go get the stick? Go get the stick. Don't die.