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can you imagine what a pet friendly hotel with that view would cost this is why I love
rving [Music] we're Lloyd and Mandy a Canadian Aussie couple that spent the last 18 months
traveling as digital Nomads through southeast Asia and Mexico now we're in North America
having a crack at full-time RV life [Music] all right we're just packing up to head off
we've been staying on this cool little campsite on the lake in Flathead Lake here in Montana
for a couple nights we've been trying to do more boondocking or off-grid camping because
we prefer it it's much more peaceful it's a lot more privacy I don't know if you can
see behind me there but we showed up here two days ago and we're the only ones here
and then on the second day five other RVs showed up and parked right next to us and
it sort of took away our reason for being here because it was really peaceful really
quiet really nice to swim in the lake and have some down time but once people get really
close to you it gets a little bit much it's not that they're not nice people or anything
or we don't want to be you know talking to people or anything but when you step outside
your RV and you're making eye contact with someone who's outside there Avi it's not really
what we got into this for we're going to try and find someone that's more isolated just
us and we can have some peace and quiet
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how you going good we had to get out of there hey yeah I don't like necessarily mind being
near people but um when we're boondocking it's not really the goal defeats the purpose
of what we're trying to do yeah we're in docking we're not really quite set up for it yet because
we don't have Wi-Fi I've got our phones but we can't really hot spot them for work so
we need to sort that out we don't have a reliable power source like this thing we can go for
like two or three days but after that we need to drive around or something now we can't
charge a lot of stuff without draining the battery so the other problem is to get all
this stuff we don't have an address a physical address to send everything to so we just spent
two days at an RV park um which is pretty expensive it was like sixty dollars a night
we paid that because we thought it had a swimming pool and a hot tub and a sauna and we thought
it'd be a nice relaxing time none of that was open we were able to order a new generator
which we got delivered there so we've got that now we're going to go find somewhere
to Boondock on our own without anyone else around and we should be able to stay for a
few days
Montana is stunning lid and I have fallen in love with it here so much like the climate
is just incredible not too busy at the moment but now that it's coming into summer more
people are coming out with their RVs so it hasn't been as private as when we first got
here but like honestly can't complain I hopefully we find somewhere that's not so busy for this
weekend [Music]
hope this is the one it looks pretty quiet so this is big um Big Arm unit of flooded
Lake oh it's a state park we've had pretty good luck with state parks we just gotta find
somewhere where
not too many other people hopefully show up it's a Tuesday so I shouldn't be that busy
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it's a bit more expensive here 28 bucks way quieter here okay I have no idea which way
to go but we're running away it's beautiful this is a sword here it's pretty cool
let's see if there's a more hidden one
toilets do you want to be near the toilet um not really looks like mostly 10 swords
here yeah I think just down this way maybe this is what's up there cool we have to get
one of them I would live in a year I don't live anymore I would why not
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thank you
we hit the right side to begin with of course they've got it on the right side they know
what they're doing we don't now we're gonna have to back over there that was pointless
who he had the correct way for us to pull in perfectly without turning around or anything
and we thought the awning was on the other side God we're so embarrassing [Music]
this is the best one we've ever found yeah so we have people there might just be hikers
I don't think they're actually camping there it's just a car even if people do show up
it's pretty well separated yeah let's get this awning out
foreign [Music]
[Music] thank you
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foreign [Music] after looking around for a few weeks we discovered this VTO man mainly
because we were looking for a small size generator that we could charge through solar and that
had all the features that we needed this thing actually comes in at roughly half the price
as competitors such as jackery which is a really famous brand that makes generators
like this and one of the key things that stood out for me was that they do free shipping
to the US and Canada and it even said on their website that it would arrive within three
days I was calling [ __ ] but it did it showed up it took us about two or three hours
to get a full charge off the 200 watt solar panels it did come with 80 charge already
but we only had it in the sun for a couple of hours and it got a full charge one of the
best features about it is we can charge this off our 12 volt input in the front of our
van and charge it while we're driving so we don't even need to worry about using the solar
that's really only if we're going to be somewhere for a longer than a few days so with a full
charge you can charge your phone 140 times a drone 35 times a laptop 24 times you can
run a fan 40 times you can run a fridge for 31 hours you can charge a camera 87 times
this is all just off one charge according to their website it has over 3 100 life cycles
until it gets to 80 capacity so we could be using this thing for a couple years easily
[Music] foreign [Music] we're gonna go for a walk and check out this local campsite but
we're going to put this generator to the test we're going to try and charge all of our stuff
at once and see how much juice it uses it's fully charged now well it's not fully charged
it's about 95 but that's high enough and we're going to plug everything in and come back
and see how much it's used if everything's charged up and good to go we'll know if this
generator is really good as much juice as it says feels so good to have free energy
if it charges everything up and then doesn't use too much power we can charge this generator
in like six or seven hours in the sun it's awesome
I'm gonna put both of our phones on there both computers our other camera because we'll
be using this one I've got a beard trimmer and our drone that's pretty much everything
we use right yeah I'm curious to see how much quickly it'll go down yeah because it shows
the amounts of like percentage that it's at on the screen I want to see how like if it
goes like yeah let's check it out okay it's got this little Quick Charge thing here which
I guess charges up USBS quicker than just your regular USB so I'll put my phone on that
where's your phone no
oh some of those little cars you've seen all of our stuff on the table yeah if we're gonna
get broken into while we're gone
all right it's a bit of stuff oh yes all right it hasn't budged yet is it all charging yeah
yeah let's see what happens when we get back okay [Music] all right
ready to go babe
so we've been staying at state parks and we've stayed at a couple of RV parks so far so far
we haven't had much luck with the RV parks because it kind of feels like doing the really
touristy thing when you go like overseas like when you go to Mexico it's kind of like staying
at the touristy all-inclusive and not getting the full experience of like what's actually
out there if that makes sense like actually being out in nature that's just our opinion
not everyone will agree with that but that's just how we felt and there's really no privacy
at RV parks like we just felt like little sardines sort of even when there wasn't many
people there we find that we always get put right next to the other people that are staying
at the park I'm not sure why the RV parks tend to do that it's easy for them if everyone's
in the same spot yeah I guess so but the thing with the RV parks is it's just not really
camping it's good for cheap accommodation and if you had like a really nice luxury RV
where you know they got like the windows one-way Windows where no one can see and so I hope
the energy to be good but if you don't have that it kind of sucks I think it's more of
an option if you just want to go and see a new place and you've got somewhere to stay
yeah and and you still yeah have the amenities and you're not yeah roughing it as much but
if you're looking for camping that's not it it's not it definitely not this is less than
half the price of the RV park that we stayed at and it's way better this state park is
just down the street from the RV park that we were just staying at and I would choose
this 100 of the time this is actually right on the lake in the RV park made it sound like
it was on the lake but when we got there it actually was Inland and there was no water
access to the lake so that was a bit misleading as well and as we mentioned the pool was closed
which is not going to stop talking yeah so you can probably tell by looking at our van
it's not a finished product we're sort of working with what we have and figuring out
what we need to finish it and get it fully set up especially for boondocking but it's
really hard because we don't have a physical address so right now all we can do is like
figure out where we're going to be in a week or two's time and order something online having
your generator is going to make it a lot easier because now we can have a Wi-Fi setup and
we can keep working but I think what we're learning is that everything's just a step
like we're taking it step by step and getting this thing more and more comfortable and suitable
for doing this kind of camping and hopefully I don't know in a few months it'll be a finished
product
foreign
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I reckon with this new generator we could probably Boondock for a week or more or more
that's awesome because our propane lasts us like over a month our water's the big thing
we just have to be sparing with our water but we could do that yeah especially with
a lake when you're going swimming every day you don't need a shower every day no no and
lots of dry shampoo that might be a good challenge to see how long we could go off-grid I'm not
going to do it yeah [ __ ] but we're not going to do it yet because we've been told
we need to get down a Yellowstone before it gets too busy with school holidays and the
summer camping period starting it's like mid-may at the moment and apparently end of May is
Memorial Day and after that it just gets flooded with tourists so we're on a bit of a mission
now to get down to Yellowstone in the next like week before it gets too crazy
thank you
all right it's been about an hour and a half of charging yeah your phone's fully charged
so is mine so that started on 94 and it's on 88.
let's use six percent of the battery so we'd get like 20 charges on this thing awesome
what a beast
oh my God
it's so loud
thank you
this doesn't look like it yesterday Waterfront living didn't last very long last night was
insane how fell from the sky about this big bear was freaking out all night because of
the thunder and lightning and we could see lightning cracking on the Hills there and
now it's just covered in Smoke I guess it probably started a little Bushfire I don't
think it's very big so our plans for boondocking here for a few days probably changed we're
gonna head south now to Yellowstone let's get to Yellowstone Park I can't wait me too
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