Hi I'm Alyssa. This is Hailey and this is our home. Our cargo trailer
that we live in full time.
Well, we started off traveling on the road with just the pickup truck and
then we actually had a truck camper on top of it. It really wasn't the right fit
for us because they're super top-heavy. The cargo trailer you can build
everything yourself, so there's a lot less stuff that's gonna break, and for
us that was a really big deal. It's just like keeping everything as simple as we
could because we didn't need all that stuff. With a box you just put the things
in it that you want. Luckily our pickup truck has a solar panel on the roof so
we've got power tools. We just built this thing, living in the back of the pickup.
So it's been over a year and we just finished it and if, you know it's never
done. You're never like, "Oh it's done." It's like no, of course there's projects still. The
entire build has happened on public lands pretty much. We did our
countertops at a house so that was like a place that we had shore power but
besides that the entire thing was just built on public land with our solar panel.
This is Jess , the truck. This a 2000 Ford F250 Super Duty. It has the 7.3 liter engine
which is amazing. If you don't know about it you should look into it if you're
looking for a truck of any kind because this truck is amazing, it's bomb-proof. We
did install a front hitch on it so we have this rack. Really just for storage
purposes most of the time when it's up here, but we can take it out and we can
throw it on the back when we're not hitched up to the trailer and then we
have extra storage when we're just in the truck, which is really nice. We've got
190 watts of solar. Right now I think there's 160 amp hours of
battery storage. So we have a couple AGMs back here and then we have 12 volt
and we have 300 watt inverter and so we can do like computer stuff from
back here too. We built in some storage in here, which is really nice, so we got
that extra tall camper shell because we wanted to be able to have storage and
then sleep back here and we would still fit comfortably and be able to sit up
and all that. So this right now is just where we keep our clothes. There's a lot
of times where you're like, "Oh, I want to go swimming and I don't have my swimsuit", well I
do have my swimsuit. We have a crash pad in here that just folds out. It's like the
three tier crash pad and so that's our bed which is really kind of nice to have
things that are dual purposed. That's huge on the road to just have something that
does a lot of different things for you. It's nice to have two different options
like you can be like super comfortable and fancy with the trailer and then you
could also be like, "okay, let's really, really downsize and do some roughing it."
So this is our cargo trailer that recently has been named, at least for me,
I'm naming it The Beast because of what it was capable of. I took the wrong road
and ended up having to do stuff with this that I wouldn't have really even
wanted to do with just the truck and the cargo trailer did it. No popped tires.
I am so grateful and this thing is a beast so this is now The Beast. It's a 7
by 12 foot cargo trailer, but the nose actually makes it more like 14. We really
like having dual axle. We think it's actually better for off-roading. We heard
that it was not as good, but because you have a second tire to be on the ground
if the other ones not on the ground, you kind of stabilize a lot better
that way so for us it was good. The back tire here is really close to the back
end and so if you're doing stuff where you're off road that back end is not gonna
hit the ground as easily. Another really big thing with this trailer is that they
make them in like cool colors and like black and like silver and all these
things, but when you go inside of those trailers (we were testing stuff out when
it was really hot out) those trailers get so hot like even silver it really makes
a difference to have a white one in terms of temperature control. On the top
we have the Renergy 400 watt solar kit and then we also just have an antenna
that was like somebody, one of our friends leftover antennas, and then we
have a cell booster inside and so that connects to a cell booster so if we're
in a place that doesn't have great cell reception we can still get a little bit.
The car trailer itself, like empty, was like 4,700 brand new a year and a half
ago so they're really not that expensive, but the build out process was kind of
expensive so I would say all-in we're probably just under 7,000. This was
something that like I had to have for the cargo trailer. I wanted a deck.
So this is our house, welcome. We found really cheap paint that was for like a
garage floor and so we just bought that and we've painted it like ten times with
that bucket of paint.
The kitchen. So we have a little sink. I don't eat meat at
all so this makes things a lot easier, but it's really easy to clean stuff. What
I do is just use a spray bottle with regular water and like that mist like
that is really efficient for cleaning stuff and so I have just regular water
and then this just has this much Dr. Bronner's in it or some type of
castile soap and then the rest of it is just water and then I can just spray
that the same way and it's amazing. I can wash my entire three days
worth of dishes with like five tablespoons of water so if you're
looking for ways to conserve water and not have to use so much water that's a
really good one. This is just like a remnant from Walmart or whatever like
they have those little like, "here, we're throwing this away. Take it." and so I
found this and installed it with Velcro. This can also be used for water
in the sink, but it's actually meant to be a shower. It's stainless steal and so you
can just throw it on some type of a heat source and you can heat it up and
then you have a pressurized shower. This is a pump
and then I just have it threaded through into the sink and you have a nozzle. This is
my Kombucha setup. Let's talk about the walls.
I was probably reading Walden and thinking, "I love this book so much, let's
just make it wallpaper", and so this is the entire book of Walden, which I now
call Walden Paper. It really was super easy to do. It was just a big tub
of Elmer's glue and sitting with a little exacto knife and like cutting out
the pages. So each chapter is contained like you can read a full chapter from
the wall. It's put in places that are out of order from the way that the book goes.
So in this area like this is the Ponds because this is our water area and then
the Bean Field is up here and then this area is kind of like, like I'm standing
here a lot to be cooking and stuff, and so this is Where I lived and What I
Lived For, which is like my favorite chapter of all. And then the sink is kind
of interesting how it's not holding up, but I kind of love that. That it's like
deteriorating and it makes me really happy. It's like a fast paced version of
what's happening all the time. We actually have two counter top heights
because I am 5 foot 3, my husband is 6 foot 1 and so it's nice to have a place
where you're both comfortable. And then underneath here we just have a bunch of
storage. It's arts and crafts time for the adults because this is all like not
fancy like pretty, beautiful, like I'm not a carpenter, but I can make it work, you
know? So these are just like hand-built drawers like this is all my bedtime
stuff. So this is our heater. This is a Wave 3, it's like a catalytic heater, so
it doesn't produce as much carbon monoxide as like a Mr. Buddy. So these
ones will work really easily at any altitude so that's another really big
positive with these is that if you're up in the mountains and whatnot they still
work totally fine. And we have just a Dometic fridge
which it holds a ton of stuff, like it really does. We had a fire in this
trailer because of our own fault, really. There were wires that were not fused and
so we ended up having a fire. Dometic heard about it and said, "can we do
anything for you?", and they out of the kindness of their
hearts just sent us a fridge. So not only is this like an amazing fridge the
company is an amazing company. Water storage. This is just drinking water for
me and for Hailey and coffee and tea water. I would say with the amount of
water that I can carry and the food I can keep in here, having power wherever I
go, I can probably be completely off grid and not have to go to a grocery store or
anything like that for about two weeks. It's just really pleasant. That's a good
experience to have if you have the opportunity. It does a lot for you. This
is kind of the garage area. This is kind of like the crazy wire area of our solar
system. Everything comes in. This hole was already in the trailer. It's
like a vent because this trailer is meant to be for like carrying things
that usually run on gasoline like dirt bikes and ATVs and that kind of stuff.
This area is the office. We have like a big monitor cuz I do work here and so
this is my office and it's really nice to have a big screen to do work from
like just makes it so much easier. I am a consultant in the energy industry and
the big picture of renewable energy systems and saying, "okay, how do we take the
resources that are available and connect them all in a way where you could
actually produce the type of power that you want for a certain scenario?" So I
have an outside light. If it's dark out I can turn that light on before I go
outside. We're in the desert a lot of the time and places with coyotes. It's
really nice for me to be able to flip the light on and say, "hey, is there a
coyote out there? Can Hailey go play outside right now or go pee?", or whatever
she needs to do. So this is bed, couch, and also folds all the way up to the wall
because we do have an ATV that we have in storage right now, but travel with a
lot and so when that's in here it takes up all of
this space. It is a twin extra long and we are two people and we do sleep on
that and it's actually pretty comfortable. It just depends what your
sleeping habits are like if you're okay cuddling all night then it's good. If you
need to like be sprawled out and crazy then it would not be good because we
also have a dog who sleeps in the bed with us cause she's kind of spoiled.
We use a ratchet strap to hold in place when it's a couch and it works really
well. Then when it's a bed this just folds out and you just kind of *kicks* and then underneath I just
throw all of our blankets and stuff so it's really super multi-purpose for us.
Fear is a place where we're scared we're gonna be uncomfortable.
That's a natural reaction. I think that we're humans and being scared is part of
what we are, we need that. The things that we're scared of are usually based on
like how we've lived our lives and the world that we've grown up in and holding
ourselves accountable for our fear in a negative way I think is very unhelpful
but for me if I'm in a situation where I need to be aware of my environment and
that level of fear keeps me on edge to keep my awareness like it's okay for it
to be there but to have the fear take over everything means you're gonna shut
down and so if you let the fear take over and you shut down you can't move
forward and so it's this balancing act of saying, "okay, it's okay that I'm scared
but that doesn't mean that I need to let it control everything." That's all you've
got and you've got to keep your eyes on what's coming next and planning for the
next thing and that's the only things you can think about. You cannot
prioritize the fear or else that fear will shut you down and you're not as
effective, but then there's fear like, "I'm not scared that your camera is going to
come attack me", or something, you know, but I'm still scared so there's a
different way of dealing with that which is just like, "okay, that's a thing"
moving on. And then it pops up again. It's like, "okay, that's a thing", moving on.
Thanks for watching this week's episode. If you enjoyed it be sure to like
comment and subscribe. And if you're curious to follow along with my travels, and my husband,
and our dog Hailey you can find us on Instagram @outdoors_is_free. Have a great week!