In today's video, I'm going to answer some of your van live questions, so let's go!
What is going on YouYube, greetings from my van in Missouri! I'm actually on my mother's
property those of you that have been following me know i came here to take care of my mother
she got coveted i avoided it for a week or so but eventually i got it i've got it right now
i'm in quarantine but i'm doing pretty good so don't worry about me i do live q and a's weekly
but lots of times people can't attend and they're pretty long and so i put out a call for questions
that people have about vanlife full-time travel all that kind of stuff and you guys submitted some
questions and i figured i would go through and answer those three okay so let's jump right into
this the first question is what's it like living in a van with covid so my answer to that question
it's like having covet anywhere let me preface this by saying i do have covid but i'm very lucky
my symptoms are very flu-like very minor some people have no symptoms like my aunt
got covered had no symptoms and some people have severe symptoms like my mother she had to be
hospitalized her oxygen levels fell to dangerous levels and hers was actually life-threatening i'm
kind of somewhere in the middle of that i kind of have the flu so i'm taking my doctor's advice i'm
getting a lot of sleep a lot of rest i'm taking over-the-counter cold medications so my case
wasn't severe enough to get any of the antiviral stuff so nyquil at night day cold during the day
i'm taking a bunch of zinc taking a lot of zinc actually a lot of vitamin d a lot of vitamin c
gummies these things are great probably not good for my keto diet but whatever and then when i have
a headache or i feel feverish i take ibuprofen so thanks for all your concern thanks for your
concern for my mother she's doing great but yeah it is what it is and i'm making it through it
okay so this first question comes from one of my chat moderators 15 eramos she asks do i need to
clean my solar panels on my roof and if so how often do i do that so i've talked about this a
lot the volta system is great it's a huge system and while it does have solar and solar provides
a little bit of energy it's not the primary way to filter batteries the primary way to be honest
with you is to drive or do an auto start because the alternator is so robust that it fills up my 12
000 usable watts in like an hour hour and a half so solar is kind of like giving a whale a tic tac
that's usually how i describe it or spitting in the ocean it doesn't bring a lot of power into my
rig but it does bring a little bit of power into my rig so i'm not super worried about keeping them
clean so whenever i clean my van whenever i you know spray it down at a car wash i'll go on top
of the roof and i'll spray down my solar panels but to be honest with you they stay pretty clean
most of the time so it's not that big of an issue all right so my next question comes from andrew
he asks in what way has the rv community kind of affected my rv experience and will that
impact whether or not i rv forever i guess so the biggest influence and impact the rv community has
had on me is introducing me to boondocking when i decided to start this full-time van life lifestyle
i thought i was going to be a campground camper mostly luckily my friend amber from storychasing
invited me out west to a boondocking location in salida colorado and i fell in love with it i got
on freecampsites.net i started looking for my own spots and i just kept traveling and boondocking
out west and i really fell in love with it and after coming over here onto the east coast and
staying mostly in campgrounds i definitely would not continue this lifestyle if it was
just a campground lifestyle the boondocking out west is what i really love and why i'll continue
probably traveling in an rv for the rest of my life in some form or fashion as part of my travels
okay the next question is from miss backroads she actually has a couple questions so let's start
with the first one she asks do i plan my travels with like some kind of bucket list or something
like that so i'm not a huge planner but i do kind of have a general idea of where i'm going
like you know i love the beauty and all the sights in utah so my upcoming trip my plan is to go to
southern utah i don't know exactly what day i'm gonna be at what spot but i know i'm gonna head
towards southern utah and i'm gonna hit up all those really cool cool places that you see in
all the pictures in southern utah i do have a bucket list of places that i want to go so i do
kind of go down that list but also a lot of it is just me surfing instagram and seeing a friend of
mine somewhere really cool and saying hey where the heck is that send me the coordinates and then
going that way especially when i'm out west okay so the next one is a question i get a lot
do i limit the amount of miles i drive in a day uh i try to keep it pretty short actually to be
honest with you i don't like driving more than three or four hours a day i have driven as much as
14 hours in one day and like i'm gonna drive up to iowa it's a seven hour drive i'll just drive that
all in one day when i do do long drives like that i usually get up at like four in the morning and
leave really early i'm not a big fan of those long drives though so when i'm out west and i'm just
hopping from boondocking spot to boondocking spot i try not to drive more than two three maybe four
hours okay so first nana has a question by the way my mother goes by nana with her grandchildren she
did not want to be called grandmother or grandma so she goes by nana as well first nana asks if
you were to buy a new van now what would i buy so a lot of people knew the answer to this question
i would probably buy a storyteller the reason for that is it kind of checks off all the blocks
for me my van that i have right now checks off most of the blocks it's almost perfect but there
are some things about it that annoy me that are fixed in the storyteller one of those things is
it's all electric so there's no propane so the portable stove is an induction cooktop
the heat comes off the diesel tank so you don't you just don't have to worry about propane which
i really like it also has a cassette toilet so i don't have to worry about a black tank has
much bigger freshwater tank and it has a really cool shower that like comes out of the cabinet
and those that have been following my channel for a while know i don't really use my shower in
the back it's kind of unusable and i think with a storyteller i would actually use the shower we'll
see i'm going to take one out hopefully this month or next month so if i was going to get a new rig
right now i'd probably get a storyteller maybe a revel or some other 4x4 type of van i'm just
really high on storytellers right now so desiree taylor has a question she wants to know how long
do i spend editing videos so i spend a lot of time editing videos for every minute or so of
a video it's probably somewhere between a half an hour to an hour of editing so if it's a 10 minute
video you're talking about 10 hours of editing i'm getting better and more efficient at editing
it used to take me a lot longer actually and i actually really enjoy it it's very therapeutic
for me but it takes up the most time so i probably spend if i'm putting one video out a
week i probably spend a good 20 hours editing the video if i'm putting out multiple videos a week
it'll be 40 50 hours a week and i also spend a lot of time answering comments i try to answer every
single comment if you don't believe me comment below right now and you'll definitely get a reply
just a really quick break if you're enjoying this video make sure you hit that thumbs up button it
helps more people find it and if you enjoy van live content like this i put out a video every
single week i do a couple lives every week so make sure you hit that subscribe button i also have
channel memberships you can hit that join button and you'll get like little cool things like emojis
silly stuff like that so um let's go back to the questions so the next question comes from lisa
gray she says so you've mentioned that you're open to dating on a road on the road what do you look
for in a date so i don't know if you're talking about what am i looking for in the person i'm
going to date or what i'm looking for in a date so i'll try to answer both of those so the person so
first she's got to be okay with like dating a bald guy that travels full-time and lives in his van
like i'm not sure those are qualities most women are looking for but she's got to be okay with that
obviously she's got to be a little bit adventurous someone that wants to go out sometimes on a road
trip and you know go camping also someone that wants to travel internationally because that's
a big part of my life i haven't really been able to do it lately but once i can start traveling
internationally again i'm going to start doing that living in countries for a month at a time so
i'd like to meet someone that has the flexibility to be able to do that sometimes i mean she doesn't
have to come with me everywhere i go obviously i want her to have her life i have my own
separate life i'm very much an introvert that's another thing that a potential person i'm dating
has to understand about me like i kind of need some alone time things like that so you know all
the all the normal things you know someone cool someone relatable someone that's fun to talk to
oh god that question makes me so uncomfortable um but if you're asking what would i look for on
a date like the specific thing like a date i don't know like you know i don't cook much so just going
out for a good meal you know having a good beer like an ipa at a nice little pub or something
somewhere where we can talk i don't know even just go out on a hike like hey i know this great
hike let's meet there and get to know each other on the hike i think that's a cool way to get to
know somebody because you're out there walking you know for two or three miles you have nothing
to do but conversate it's a great way to get to know somebody i think hopefully i answered your
question not too awkwardly okay so brian hayes asks a question i get a lot he wants to know
you know what does it cost to live this lifestyle and he asks can it be done for 2 500 to 3 500
a month so those are two different questions and you're going to hear me answer questions
in a similar way it just depends on what kind of lifestyle you have if you're in a million dollar
monaco rig staying at very very high-end rv resorts i mean this lifestyle can cost you
30 000 a month it can cost you as much as you want it to cost you right or you can buy a minivan like
foresty forest did build it out yourself in a home depot parking lot and live this life on five six
hundred dollars a month but i would say in order to live this life you know kind of comfortably
you need somewhere between a thousand and two thousand a month i think is a good number to
shoot for let's say your vehicle is somewhere between five and seven hundred a month um eat on
three hundred dollars a month which i think is is fairly reasonable some people you don't weigh less
than that if you're out west you don't need to pay camping fees but let's say you know you want
to go and grab a shower every two or three days or let's just say you're gonna have a planet fitness
membership so you can go grab a shower anytime you want or an anytime fitness membership that's going
to cost you anywhere between 20 and 50 a month so there that takes care of all your showers and
everything so we're not even up to a thousand dollars a month yet if you're traveling every
single day you know fuel costs might be 500 a month but if you're staying and boondocking for a
week at a time your gas costs might only be about you know 50 to 100 a month so you can definitely
keep it under 2500 for sure and if you're spending 500 a month you're living pretty la vita loca out
here in the van life community to be honest with you i hope that answered your question all right
so the next question comes from my good friend ava we met in forest city iowa i'm actually going back
there pretty soon ava to get some work done ava asked what do you spend on gas every month i kind
of answered this in the last question it really depends on how much you move when i was in florida
i was staying at campgrounds for two or three weeks so i was only spending about i don't know
50 to 100 a month on gas maybe even less than that when i was out west and i was moving every single
day i was spending anywhere from 250 to 500 a month depending on how far i was going but yeah so
it just depends ava i'm sure you know you travel in your van it just depends on the price of gas
you know if you're in california gas is much more expensive so if you're traveling in california
all month it's going to be much more expensive than traveling in texas all month because gas is
usually cheaper in texas so it just depends but i would say somewhere between a hundred and
three hundred dollars a month i think is a good estimate on how much you're going to spend on gas
okay the next question is from another friend of mine lori she asks what is the biggest epiphany
you've had about yourself while traveling to be honest with you it's really been about how much
i love full-time travel itself in all of its forms whether it's in my van whether it's hopping from
country to country whether it's on a cruise ship or whatever it is i just love the full-time travel
life and i want to continue to do it hopefully for the rest of my life i'm very fortunate that i've
kind of turned it into a business the business is still growing but um yeah that's been my biggest
epiphany how much i love it and how much i want to continue to do it okay so the next question comes
from another friend of mine joanne she asks what happened to your bamboo plant that was right here
that's what this uh vase right here is that's where my bamboo plant was
so when i went out to the desert i didn't realize how quickly water evaporates there and i was
filling this thing up about every two or three days that wasn't enough out in the desert and
my bamboo plants died unfortunately so i'm gonna replace it with something i didn't move
the vase i kept it here it's still latched down with sticky putty but at some point
i'll get something else in here so thanks for that question joanne oh wait a second joanne
wants to change your question that's okay i'll leave that one in there as well but joanne asks
basically what would i do if i was an rv maker or manufacturer to make a better rv it would make
the fuel sources you need as limited as possible so you need electricity and you need some way to
heat your van i would make one big giant battery bank like a volta system and everything would be
powered off that that could be powered off that and then everything else would be powered with
whatever kind of fuel i needed to pump into the tank anyway whether that's diesel fuel if i have
a sprinter or if you have a promaster or a ford and you're putting regular gas in there everything
else needs to be powered off that so the heating system needs to be powered by either diesel or gas
and so then you don't have to worry about filling up other things i'd also minimize the amount of
tanks i would have i would have fresh water tank obviously and i would have either one big giant
gray black water tank so just one tank not a black and a gray or i would have a cassette toilet and
a gray water tank so that's what i would do i would combine as much as i could so there are
less moving parts less things to worry about bigger tanks so you have to fill it less often
things like that okay this next question is from katherine murphy she asks when you're camping on
blm land national forest land how do you figure out what spots you're going to use do you plan out
a couple spots in advance so the answer to that is yes and no sometimes i plan them out in advance i
have a lot of escaper friends so i get a lot of my boondocking spots from my friends so i'll ask
my friends that have been to colorado hey i'm going near the salida area the buena vista area
the leadville area you got any good boondocking spots and a lot of times they'll come back and
be like yeah go here here's the coordinates and so i find a lot of spots through my network of
friends that travel but the primary way i find my spots is through freecampsites.net
anyone can use it www.freecampsite.net it's like an old website but it's still the best
out there it's better than any app i've used that's where i go that's the first place i go
so let's say i'm boondocking at a spot and i'm like okay it's time to leave i've been here three
or four days i'm ready to go somewhere else maybe i'll send out a message to my friends ask them if
they know anywhere in the area but i'll also jump on freecampsites.net you know look at my location
kind of blow it up a little bit see what's you know an hour or two away click on it read the
reviews if i see a spot that looks promising then i'll jump on campendium.com and i'll go
and check out that same site on campendium i like campendium's format and a lot of times there'll
be a lot of reviews in there so i read the reviews the most current ones usually i see what the cell
phone reception is a lot of people on campinium put that in there which is great and then i'll
head to that spot the next day sometimes i'll plan out two or three spots you know
have maybe a starting spot i'm starting in salida colorado and i'm going to end up in green river
wyoming and so i'll have those two spots mapped out and then there's all this space in between
and then as i'm going i'll just stop at spots that's what's great about being out west you
got all these spots to camp at so yeah that's how i that's how i normally how i normally plan it out
i also use ioverlander as a way to find spots it's getting better it's still not as good as
freecampsites.net though okay so the next question is kind of related it's from txm i'll just stop
there i won't try to say it i'm assuming you're from texas which is cool because i'm going to go
down to texas sometime this year he or she asks how far ahead do i plan my itinerary i usually
don't plan it too far ahead to be completely honest with you i've been burned by that in
the past like i planned out eight months of 2020 i paid for airbnbs i was traveling all over the
world and then covet hit and it was such a pain getting all those refunds i eventually got most
of them but it was a huge pain in the butt and i kind of learned a lesson there not to plan too far
in advance because you never know what's going to happen in the world if covets taught us anything
so i usually don't plan too far in advance you're asking about 2021 my plan is to go out west soon
and to be honest with you i'm thinking about parking my rig and going down to mexico for a
month or two doing the old 30 in a wake up living in a little town in mexico for 30 days maybe
and then maybe head back up grab my van drive around a little bit more then hop on a plane to
hawaii that's my loose plans right now spend uh 30 days in hawaii see the state of the world and
maybe hop on a plane to thailand you know spend 30 60 days in thailand hop on a plane back to
the us jump in my van drive around out west for a little bit but uh yeah normally i don't plan
too far in advance but i know i wanna i know i wanna go to hawaii i know i wanna go back out
west especially to utah southern utah and i know i really really really wanna get back to thailand
i'm craving thai food so bad so i definitely want to try to get to thailand this year as well so
yeah so i have loose plans usually of places that i'd like to get to so we'll see if that happens
okay thank you for all those questions it's been awesome um this stuff really uplifts me i'm sick
right now i don't know if you can tell but i'm pretty sick after this i'm gonna go i'm gonna
go collapse but doing the live streams doing this video interacting with you guys really like lifts
my spirits i appreciate all the well wishes for myself and for my mother she's doing great by the
way so thank you for watching and if you enjoyed this video make sure you hit that thumbs up button
subscribe if you haven't subscribed yet thanks for watching see you next week