It's been over three months since we've lived out of our camper.
And now, it is time to get packed and get ready for our 2,500-mile cross-country road trip.
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold on a second.
I still have to change the oil,
check the tires, filters, and all that stuff before we do anything else.
- So let me do that and then you can get packed. Sounds good? - Okay. Sounds good.
Thank you to Storyteller Overland for sponsoring this video.
So one thing I put on all of our vehicles is a Fumoto oil valve or drain valve.
I love these things. I've used them for over 20 years and they make oil changes super simple.
Got it.
When we winterized our van, we moved almost everything out.
Today's big project will be to move all that stuff back in and get it organized.
Let me show you what the van looks like right now.
The garage space is empty, and that's going to be
one of the first things I tackled today.
I'll need a little help from Joe to get the next two items in here.
- Thank you for the help. - You're very welcome.
- I might need your help with the Truma fridge as well. - Sure.
That's what I'm here for.
All right. We're all set.
If I may make a suggestion, let's bring the fridge in later,
because if you're gonna be loading this and the cabinets and everything else,
you probably don't want the fridge in your way, but I will put the
D-rings in for it.
Thank you.
You're welcome.
Some of you might be wondering why I'm not helping Kait pack.
Well, I'm helping her get the heavy stuff in, but she loves to pack.
She loves to organize. It's a passion of hers,
and many times, I will come into the closet and find all of my stuff reorganized
because she felt like reorganizing.
So I'm letting her have all the fun.
All right, y'all. There's a lot more to do, so I'm gonna turn the camera off and get to work.
I have my coffee, which means it's time for me to explain
why Kait and I are going on a 2,500-mile road trip to the West Coast.
In essence, we are repositioning the van.
Our first stop is going to be down in Birmingham to see the folks at Storyteller Overland,
and then we are gonna make our way south along the 10 to Los Angeles.
That's where my mom lives, and we are taking the van out there
because most of our van trips this season are gonna take place around the West Coast.
So we figured what better way to do that than to drive out,
leave the van there at my mom's house.
Thank you mom for allowing us to do that.
We'll fly home and then when we're ready, we'll fly back out to Los Angeles, grab the van,
do all of our travels, and kind of make our way back here to Southern Indiana.
So that's it and that's the reason for it.
Plus, it makes visiting family a whole heck of a lot easier.
I'm just about done. It's time for Joe to pack his stuff. I've left two cabinets just for him.
- Thank you. - And we're leaving my cabinets
at home base, because I really don't have that much stuff and I'm gonna put it all down here.
I certainly appreciate all the extra room Kait is giving me
because my clothes, as I always keep telling her, are much bigger than hers.
But I'm gonna finish my coffee and then I will get to packing.
I have to giggle, because
Kait and I were full-time on the road for six and a half years. I mean, we lived out of these things.
Now that we're part-timers, it's like we're starting all over again, because,
uh, we're now having to acquire doubles of things
so that when we take the camper out if we have to fly back, or like in this case,
we're leaving the camper out west,
when we come home, we still have our pillows here
and we have pillows in the camper.
So for all of you seasoned part-time RVers, you know exactly what we're doing right now, which is
doubling up on a lot of things just so we don't have to fly back and forth with it
and it makes life easier when you're packing the van.
Okay. Well, time for me to get all this stuff packed,
get the garage organized, and then we'll be pretty close to being done.
It's one of those things you're never done until you're driving off and you realize you've forgotten things
and you're just like, "Eh, we're going anyway. Let's go for it."
So the reason we're bringing our Truma is we're gonna use it as a freezer,
and when we roll through Alabama, we're gonna get a bunch of Conecuh sausage
and we're bringing some frozen food along with us.
So this will be perfect for that.
The nice thing is it runs off of 12-volt power.
Let me just plug it in.
If you've never had these from Buc-ee's, they are perfect for travel day.
We usually stock up on a lot of these when we roll through a Buc-ee's.
I'm downstairs in our studio and thought I would use this as a little confessional.
I'm getting very frustrated at the whole situation of packing,
not at Kait or myself, but just in general,
because for some reason, we always wait until the last minute to do all this packing.
We get to a point where there is so much to do and so many things to remember,
it just gets overwhelming. And I get frustrated about the whole process. I'm sure Kait does as well.
But I think it's worth remembering when you're going through a situation like this to
step away, take a breath, have a cup of coffee, relax,
and try not to leave it till last minute like we do.
Um, I think if we had been more prepared this week,
it would've been a lot easier today, but we've gotta take off early tomorrow,
so it's just a lot of like rush, rush, rush, try to remember everything and get it done.
All right y'all. I think it is time to call it for the day. It's dark, it's getting cold.
Just got a winter advisory that we might get two inches of snow tonight and 35-mile hour gusts.
So I'm gonna close up shop, put the heater on. I also brought in the electric blanket to stay toasty.
I am going to spend the night in here just to make sure everything is working properly
before we get on the road tomorrow.
Oh, it looks like Joe already put the heat on for me.
I'm gonna bump this up to,
let's see, 58.
And
freshwater tank level low. That's fine.
Says it's still the middle of winter here in Southern Indiana.
We are going to wait till we get to Alabama before we dewinterize
and add water back into our freshwater tank.
I'm looking forward to spending the night in here. We have
a new five-inch replacement mattress that we're testing out.
This cross-country road trip will give us a good idea if this is a better fit for us
compared to the stock mattress that came in our Storyteller.
Now, the key with the electric blanket is I put it on
under the comforter and I turn it on before I crawl into bed
so the bed is nice and warm.
And then I don't even use it in the middle of the night.
This is just a nice way to get the bed warm.
Oh,
I forgot the sheet.
Okay, let's try that again.
Since Joe won't be sleeping with me, this will keep me nice and warm.
Okay, good enough.
Now, you may be wondering to yourself why I'm not outside in the van with Kait testing everything out.
Well, when you live with someone, you work with them 24/7,
you take what little breaks you can get and tonight is one of those breaks.
Just in preparation for that 2,500-mile drive across the country.
I did not wanna get out of bed this morning.
Okay. So here's a quick recap of the three things I discovered last night.
First thing is the outlet in the kitchen is not working.
That's why I went out this morning to see if I could reset the GFCI outlet in the outdoor kitchen
to fix this. So far, it hasn't worked.
I'm gonna need Joe's help for that one.
When the battery system in our camper reset last night,
I forgot to reset the heater, which was running.
Because of that, it was blowing cold air all night and I woke up
pretty chilly this morning, so it was a little hard to get out of bed.
But when I told Joe about the heater, he came in here within less than a minute.
He had the heater back up and running.
Based on the things that came up last night, I feel like Joe should have spent the night in the camper.
I'm gonna go grab him and see if he can help me with this outlet.
I have a feeling it's probably user error.
- I need your expertise. - Yeah?
- I reset the GFCI outlet for this plug outside - Mm-hmm.
and it's still not working.
- And the other outlets are working? - Mm-hmm.
Let me check.
What are you checking?
To make sure you reset the outlet correctly.
I like how you got me with my sweatpants on and...
- One last thing to check is, did you check the breakers? - No.
Okay. Let's see here.
Oh, look at that.
Off, off, off.
Hey, I learned something new today!
Hey, if you're gonna be solo-RVing at all, you're gonna need to know this stuff.
- Thank you. - You're welcome.
Now, it's time to go finish packing.
Luckily, we didn't get any snow, which means there won't be any ice on the road today.
All right. Freshly showered.
Let me give you a quick tour of the camper all packed up.
That garage area that was empty yesterday is now full of all of our gear.
Not much change up front, just some of our
essentials that we need access to on the drive,
but we're ready to roll.
Hey, look who finished making coffee.
I can't believe this moment is finally upon us.
We're officially moved back into the van.
- I'm really looking forward to our giant cross-country road trip. - It should be fun. - Mm-hmm.
We got to spend last night apart.
I was telling everybody that when you have those moments, you take them.
Yes.
Sunglasses.
- And we went through our camper checklist, so we're ready to roll. - Okay.
All right, y'all. Well, thanks for watching this video. I hope you enjoyed it.
Don't forget to give it a thumbs up. Subscribe if you haven't already.
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Hold on.
We brought something to show everybody.
For those of you who are new subscribers or you just haven't noticed,
welp, backwards.
I wrote a book.
This is the first one. I've got two, and if you're at all interested, you can find 'em on Amazon.
- Yeah. Or, go to-- - I'll put a link in the video.
Or you can go to our website, weretherussos.com.
- We really appreciate it, guys. Thank you! - We'll see y'all on the road!