this week we take the campervan to Quartzsite Arizona on a driving tour of
of RTR, chat about van life and share our RV living tip for surviving in a
small space. we are off to quartzite and as we've learned from previous
boondocking experiences it is very good to stock up on fresh fruits and things
like that before going out to the desert right leo
I always get a bit nervous when cake goes into the store by herself she tends
to find a lot of stuff she really wants and brings a lot more back than she
probably probably should and we're gonna head to Costco after this to stock up on
a few other things so be interested to see what the sprouts haul is today all
right let's see what you got what'd you get you know have you ever seen an
avocado this big no it's a pound feel it oh my god
I got eggplants okay from broccoli and ten cans of sardines
so we're all set all right we are headed to the X capers
annual bash out in quartzite we've never been out the quartzite before so it
should be a lot of fun everyone said it's one of those things you have to do
at least once I also heard it's kind of like the
Burning Man for our views Italy who gets to go to quartzite
is to lay off the dirt day long
we made it we finally made it there's something big going on right down there
so I think let's take Leo for the for a bathroom break and then we can walk over
sounds good but can we take a moment yes
I think I'm gonna go with a keeping experience today got your new kettle I
love this thing I just set the temperature and let it go to counter
what tea are you making me oh great can you hand me the pop-up light that our W
chair family member gave us Shannon if you're watching thank you for our lucci
light there you go this is Rick his pants match my hat we became instant
friends they're in the Winnebago paseo across the way and Rick you were saying
of what about Class B life let's be alive is fantastic guys
I think like this is huge you've got the whole world around you you can go
anywhere and everywhere no confinements nothing I love that you
have your back doors open it it makes it even bigger inside doesn't it
it is huge we call it our hillbilly curtain
so we can just bring it filling it up and down and especially at night it's
kind of nice when it gets colder we'd like to have the extra blanket to you
know keep the cold out and it works well I mean this is like literally a five
dollar ballmart blanket with two clippies that we've got there and we
just put it between the between the screen here I don't really drink the
only thing I like is this home bear had double I recommend it to anybody
so came back if they if they see this video at some point just sent me a check
for the advertisement but we really like the lifestyle it's much easier much
simpler no space now the only space that you might if it's like hey the thanks
get fooled we need to done but that's that's pretty much distress level that
we have so do you guys our in your rig yeah we do okay however not that often
commonly what we do is we go to our V parks or state parks to do things like
laundry taking long showers because obviously if the limit of our capacity
it's you know you take a navy shower you want to see the film to spell it now of
course it is a slight mess because we are actually living here oh I like this
thing yeah I believe you just got another like a vault mark or something
okay and we fell counter to the to the floor so it stays in in place
big old penny out here and then our clothes go here my wife's clothes go
here mine go here for today's we got storage out here you know put some pans
that that sort of stuff oh this is a shower okay a place where
we hang our trash I mean we put our trash - everything is multifunctional
and you know multi-use you know every everything that we've got in this egg
has at least you know two or three uses that is just that's just how it goes I
love your sticky note this is b-positive be truthful and be helpful yeah love
many tests you do wrong to now on and with that you
know life is life is good
got your name badge I do gotta grab my chair though really excited about all
the seminars going on me too so this first one is going to be free camping
and the next one is boondocking
talking to a group about boondocking they're all Boondock
day three quartzite it's been a lot of fun over the escapers convergence
however we are on the other side of quartzite from RTR so we figured we'd
drive in today let's go see the madness
like that just a tiny little sign uh-huh target er do you know how far were
supposed to go the maps at one point four miles
I don't think we'll have any problem finding
welcome to RTR thank you we made it but Leo you made it to RTR what do you think
this looks much more organized than all the reports I'd heard from other people
and it looks like a lot of fun it's just really crowded
everyone is parked right on top of another each other I'm some really happy
we are where we are but I'm glad to have made it down here taking a tour around
the sea but that response further out where there is more space yeah I think
with any event the closer you camp towards the center the more crazy it
gets mm-hmm if you're looking to convert your own van I think RTR is the place to
go
I'm sure a lot of you guys are familiar with them I care there they're gonna
talk about van life and their transition from downsizing what did you guys have
before we had a Class A and towing a Jeep
oh nice so now you guys don't even have a tow vehicle or anything like that well
I'll let them give you all those details I won't ruin it but we're excited to
have them here and I hope you guys enjoy Thank You Melanie and Travis for having
us and letting us do this chat back in 2015 we quit it all and we hit the road
in our class a we had a 30-foot new mark we were towing a four-door Jeep around
and after a while we realized that the Newmar was just way too big for our
needs we were passing up a lot of spots we weren't going to places we
necessarily wanted to so we decided to go through a process of downsizing and
looking at other options and ended up with the Class B five months into
full-time RVing we did a sort of spring cleaning and looked at all the stuff
that we brought with us and realized we had empty cabinets cabinets we've never
even opened a funny story I like to tell is Joe was looking for some socks and he
couldn't figure out where they were during our spring cleaning
I found a drawer in our motor home opened it it was all the socks he had
been missing and we were on the road for five months before we open this drawer
and that's when we realized holy cow we have so much stuff we brought with us we
could go smaller we can minimize even more by four I'm hoping this is
subliminal soak it in hey I'm already sold on the 4x4 motorcycles
we were actually joking that I could drive the van and Joe could drive a
touring bike and I'll be his chase crew travel his motorcycle fix one tip we
wanted to share with you for anybody considering living smaller is you know
the thing we talked about which is how do we keep from killing each other and
number one tip we have for everyone is to communicate communicate and then
communicate some more but communicate well and communicate again yes what you
don't want to have happen and we're talking from experience is things will
start to build up and you live in such a small space that if you don't
communicate that you don't let that out with your partner or scream at yourself
if you live alone it'll build up and eventually it bursts you don't want that
to happen because there's really no place to go escape you don't have a car
to drive off you can you know take a quick walk but you're going to be coming
back and ninety square feet feels really small when you're upset at each other
you know they're still on the other side shameless plug
so we have a book it's called take risks one couples journey to quit their jobs
and hit the open road it was kind of a passion project that I wrote we wanted
to tell this story about everything we went through leading up to getting on
the river so this was from day one when Kate came up with the crazy idea to
actually live this lifestyle to us quitting our job selling the home you
know just downsizing the home to make it into the motor home and in that first
day on the road so it's the first book in a series we have flyers if you'd like
to take one but the book is available pretty much on any digital platform I
also have paperback copies if you would like a signed copy here there are other
fellow van dwellers so if you guys are seriously interested in downsizing to a
van or even a small RV I really encourage you to talk to all of them
I've had a lot of people ask me about coffee and tomorrow today and at our van
I'm gonna do a little coffee demo you guys will get to see in person how the
coffee works we're gonna see if we can draw the battery down enough so that if
you're there and I'm running my kettle you'll see volts starting action
thank you guys for coming and we do have a travel video series about what it's
like to live in a camper van full time if you're interested in checking it out
it's at our YouTube channel where the Russos and we also share tips and tricks
on our website so thank you guys really appreciate it thank you
our session went really well yesterday it did the Q&A lasted almost as long as
the session we're gonna put the full seminar up on patreon for our wtr family
so check it out over there if you're interested and I've got to get set up
for a coffee down
poor tights been a lot of fun checking out the RTR it was really interesting
but it is time for us to get going we have a lot of work to do we're not
getting anything done here because this is just a fun party for everybody so
we're packing up and we're heading out
I've never seen you pack up so quickly motorcycle ride Joe is getting all of
his motorcycle gear
and I haven't done this and Wow
and to think a nice to do this almost every day cleanses the whole step
because it's actually a raisin clutch in there and it's a 320 millimeter front
runner I mean you brought sport bikes they had really good brakes but people
use of dual sports it's not an obvious but I mean they're they're good so we'll
just go up the road there's some a little bit of twist of turn not a lot
but you know up the road here and just take a ride
I want to say a huge thank you to Dan and Sarah from 2-wheel rambling
you guys are awesome Dan thank you so much for letting me take your bike out I
had an amazing time and it was it was the best way to end our experience here
at the escapers annual bash in quartzite but now we've got to get to Vegas
so you guys thank you again enjoy the book and we'll possibly run into you
again in Texas all right my love
thank you guys so much for watching if you enjoyed this video please give it a
thumbs up subscribe if you haven't already and ding the bell for
notifications for new videos if you'd like to see the seminar we did on
campervan life in its entirety head on over to patreon and become part of the
#WTRFamily if you'd like to see the campervan series from the beginning
click right up here and we will see you next Wednesday
bye