VAN TOUR, GIVEAWAY, & THANK-YOU'S!

Description

** Stuff/Gear I Mention in this Video **

Zpacks Food Bag - http://www.zpacks.com/accessories/bear_bag.shtml

UGQ Bandit Quilt - https://youtu.be/Ki7zSyrE84Y

Pinhoti Trail Gear List - https://youtu.be/EsCCh6nGwlM

AT Gear List - https://darwinonthetrail.com/2016/05/03/darwins-2016-at-gear-list/

*** WAYS TO SUPPORT THIS CHANNEL ***

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/darwinonthetrail

(Help Support my 2018 PCT Thru with a pledge as low as a $1/month)

Visit our Etsy Shop! - https://www.etsy.com/shop/TravelandTrail

*** Gear Used to Shoot this Video! ***

- Camera -

Canon EOS 77D - http://amzn.to/2zf5OQ9

- Lense -

Canon EF 24mm IS USM - http://amzn.to/2zeJuWU

- Sound -

TakStar Shotgun Mic - http://amzn.to/2kMsAnM

- TriPod -

Targus 360 Trigger Tripod - http://amzn.to/2kMsU5Y

------Intro & Animation By: BlackStrap Media------

https://blackstrapmedia.com

------- Music By: Mike Boren --------

DISCLAIMER: This video and description contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, I’ll receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. This helps support the channel and allows us to continue to make videos like this. Thank you for the support!

Contact information:

Website: www.darwinonthetrail.com

Instagram: Darwin_Onthetrail

facebook: www.facebook.com/darwinonthetrail

Tags: Van Life,Van Dwelling,UL Hiking,UL Backpacking,UL Hiking Gear,Pacific Crest Trail,PCT,PCT Thru Hike,UGQ Bandit,Zpacks,Zpacks Food Bag,Giveaway,Hiker Trash,Van Tour,Ford E150,Long Distance Hiking

Video Transcription

hey guys it's Darwin so I'm about to go start my thru-hike of the PCT in like two days

but before I went out on the trail I wanted to make one last video to say a few things number one I wanted to say thank you thank you so much for supporting this channel watching my videos liking videos even disliking videos commenting being a part of the QA sending me emails all of my patrons out there people that follow me over on Instagram thank you so much for supporting what I do and helping me grow a hiking community here on YouTube when I started my channel back in 2015 it was simply because I wanted to continue to be a part of a hiking community that I wasn't going to be near anymore so I created this channel to share opinions and ideas and gear reviews and hikes and and everything with all the people that I love being around and that is the hiking community and over the past year since last April I have seen this amazing growth tons of subscribers and viewers and a lot has come out of this past year and I just wanted to say thank you thank you so much for supporting what I'm doing just by watching the videos just by leaving comments whether they're funny or whether they're positive or whether they're even snarky thank you so much I just wanted to say that before I got on the PCT because I'm about to go do another big hike and it just it amazes me that there's that many of you out there that are gonna be following me on that hike and just like what I do so thank you so much the second thing that I wanted to do today is I wanted to give away some gear so it's been a while since we've done a gear giveaway here on the channel and I have a few pieces of gear to give away so number one about a month ago I had to buy a new bear bag or food bag and hanging kit because my old one finally took a dump on me so I ordered a newsy packs food bag and while I was doing that I decided to buy another one so I have bought a brand new Z packs Cuban fiber food bag and that comes with a rock bag and a carabiner and 50 foot of Z line so it's the full-on kit and I want to give that away to somebody out there in YouTube land and then the second piece of gear that I want to give away is this ugq bandit ten degree down quote so ugq gave me this about four months ago to just kind of give my thoughts on it and maybe do a review test it just let them know what I thought about it I took it out the field a couple times it didn't really meet my needs however it is an awesome down quilt I'm sure that there's somebody out there that will absolutely love this it's pretty lightweight it's ten degree this is a long version I did a full review of this do you guys want to check out that review I'll put a link up here in the corner but I do want to give this away to another lucky YouTube viewer YouTube viewer a viewer so if you want to win the ugq bandit down quilt or the Z PAX food bag hanging system the only thing you have to do in order to enter to win is leave a comment in the comment section below but make sure that you are subscribed here the channel and that you're following me over on Instagram I'm going to be posting a picture a day from my thru-hike of the PCT as as long as I have signal so leave a comment down below with your Instagram handle saying that you're subscribed to the channel and telling me that you want to win and at the end of the month I'm going to give away the bandit quilt and the Z packs food bag hanging system on the trail get your name in you have about two weeks to get it down there and then I will pick two winners and then the last thing that I wanted to do before I went out and hit the PCT was I wanted to give you guys a tour of our van so I've been getting a ton of comments and questions if I'm gonna do a tour of the van everybody wants it so I figured I might as well do it before I leave for the PCT

so if you guys don't know the story of our van we had a a minivan we called the Black Stallion that we've had for years and years and years we lived out of it at one time and then we pulled a small five by eight cargo camper trailer behind it and at the end of last year it finally died on us it had a lot of miles on it had a lot of problems and eventually all the band-aids that we put on it didn't fix it anymore so we had to buy a new vehicle so we got rid of the Black Stallion

and we bought a 2002 Ford e-150 van even though it's a 2002 it only had 42,000 miles on it so we picked this guy up for a song we picked it up pretty cheap and I decided that I wanted to convert it so not only did I wanted to use it as a tow vehicle for our trailer but I also wanted to convert it into a living space and then eventually sell our camper we decided to go ahead and build out the van before I hit the PCT so I've been working all month and getting it built out it's finally ready to go and I thought I would give you guys a small tour of our simplistic van build-out so without further ado here you go all right so here she is this is our 2002 II won 50 east and for Econoline and it is a Ford overall on the outside we didn't really do a whole lot to it we did put new tires on it when we originally got it it had some just normal street tires on there but we put more of a light all-terrain tire on there because we do you know we drive a lot on dirt roads and gravel roads and stuff getting to trail heads so we wanted something was a little bit more Universal we did paint the front and rear bumper they were an old nasty grey had a little bit of rust on there so we actually painted them kind of like with a little bit of a Plasti Dip and then we added the two front fog lights inside of the grille we just wanted a little bit of extra light when we are going down a gravel road or something at night and then we'll probably end up adding another light down that little spot on the on the bottom of the bumper there probably an LED light bar for whenever we're really offroad and it's night we also added our top box that came from our other van so that top box was on our minivan it's called

black stallion so we just transferred it over we put that ladder rack on there don't know what type of ladder rack it is it just came off of Amazon it's kind of cheap and then attached the top box cruising onto the back I do apologize if it's a little bit windy out here I'm literally out in the middle of the desert in the Mojave so it's probably pretty windy on your end and I do apologize for that so on the back we've added a ladder so we could access our top box a little bit better because it is much taller than our minivan was and then we have a Swing Out bike rack because snuggles and I both are avid cyclists and we wanted to make sure that we could haul our bikes around on the back of this van as well and then the little step-up thing on the top of the bumper here we actually sprayed that with like a truck bedliner to give it a little bit more grip and just make it a little bit tougher for kind of utilizing it every day a couple of really nice features about this van whenever we first got it was at number one it had tinted windows on the back and on the side which was really cool and it didn't have all of the extra windows that you typically see in a passenger van so we didn't have to black anything out which which was a pretty big plus when when we bought it it does have a sliding door but it has this little pop-out window here that allows a lot of airflow and then if it's raining or something it still adds protection and doesn't allow rain to get inside which is really nice and the last thing that is on the outside of the van would be our solar panels which are up here and those are two 100 watt flexible flat solar panels the last thing that we actually want to do and it's probably going to not be until I get off the PCT as we do want to install a vent and we'll put the vent right up here between the panels and the top box it's something that we really wanted to do when we first got the van but the vent that we wanted was out of stock so we weren't actually able to get it but we will eventually put that vent up there because you definitely need a vent if you're gonna be living in a van alright so let's go ahead and open it up and I'll show you everything on the inside and kind of our setup so when we bought the van it had big subfloor in it and it had carpet and carpet on the walls and a bunch of upholstery we pretty much stripped all that out we put down reflectix insulation we put down foam insulation Spray insulation in the baffles of the ceiling we really insulated the crap out of this thing because you know we've had a van in the past and we've had to sleep in it in the past and we know how cold it can get in a big metal box so we really wanted to make sure that we did this now it took me about just under a month to do this conversion and I'd say it's about 95% done I do want to add that vent but after the vents added and a couple little cosmetic things it's pretty much done on my end alright so let's go ahead and come on in you'll notice I put down a blocking wood vinyl floor I am really happy with how that came out we have our bed in the back there which is kind of between a full hand a queen-size it's kind of a random size that's kind of how this stuff works you just kind of work with the space that you have and then I wanted a big long counter that had some cabinet space in it I've seen a lot of people do a lot of different band builds a lot of different ways but this was just kind of what I had envisioned I wanted something that was really simplistic and you know didn't take a lot of thought there wasn't a lot of stuff to convert because with our trailer and our other van you know we had a bed that converted up into a bench and we had to go outside to cook and we had to do a lot of things with that to just be comfortable in it and my main goal for this build was just to make it absolutely as simple as possible something that we could just pull up to a spot crawl in the back and go to bed so that's really where this design was was based off of my complete need for simplicity all right so let's go ahead and get into the first cabinet essentially all this cabinet is our electronics so our entire solar charging system is all in here that is a v-max 125 amp our 12 volt battery so that's pretty much where we store all of our power and above that is the charge controller to keep everything nice and regulated so how essentially it works if you're not familiar with solar as the panel's go into that that goes into the battery and then the battery goes into the inverter and that is a 500 watt pure sine inverter that transfers the solar and turns it into power for Asda to be able to plug stuff up so there is a cable that's running out of there and coming up to this little guy which is a little USB and wall plug box that is actually mounted to the counter that way we can plug in all of our electronics and whatever else we need power off of whenever we're boondocking that is our main power source I wanted to put that up there because in the trailer all we had was the inverter to the same inverter and we would just plug things into the side of the inverter so this is nice because it keeps everything tucked away nice in this cabinet to where we don't have to see it and then we have our power outlet right up there all right so let's shift that one and open up these two devil cabinets here there's not much in here right now I eventually plan on building some shelving but there is a little three drawer box that holds all of our utensils and little tools and scissors and anything that we need to cook with and then we just have some fritter Joe's bags that that's where we keep our food we keep all of our food in there the other one has our plates and our cups and pretty much all of our dishware so nothing too fancy in here yet again I do plan on building some different storage in there to make it a little bit more efficient but that works for right now cruise over to this last cabinet and pretty much all that is in there is our mini propane tank so we keep that propane tank in there I need to strap that down actually and then another bag that we just keep food in just just a place to kind of store some food bread and and chips and and different meals and stuff that we can cook with so speaking of cooking the biggest thing that I wanted to do in this trailer like I said I wanted to keep it simple was originally I wanted to mount a stove up top here and have a permanent stove in there but I really got thinking about that and about the small space and the ventilation and you know we utilize a lot of campgrounds and picnic tables and stuff like that so we actually just have a coleman two burner stove it's kind of like a little briefcase that we can take that out we can put it on top of our counter up there and cook off of it or we can put it on our cooler right here in the middle of the floor or we can take it outside and use it on a picnic table so it made a lot more sense to me to have something that I could take wherever in case I don't want to cook inside the van and that's why we just ended up going with that it was a lot cheaper I didn't have to cut another hole into the counter and yeah it just makes a lot more sense okay so next up on the tour is our bed nothing too fancy about this there is seven inches of memory foam under there so that's a seven inch memory foam bed and then a bunch of people have been asking me about that quote because you guys seen pictures on my Instagram that is an enlightened equipment a Taska quilt and that is a 7d material kind of like a queen sized comforter that enlightened equipment makes we got that last year for our trailer because we really love our and lighting equipment quilts so we got that to kind of just use everyday and it's been great it's funny we we do so much hiking and stuff we just get really used to using that type of stuff so it makes sense to use it in our everyday life as well and then this was kind of a last-minute thing that I built there are two cubby holes up here and really what those cubby holes are for is to store our clothes so one of those is for my clothes the other one is for snuggles clothes it's kind of like our little closet so we keep all of our clothes in there and that way we can grab them real quick we can throw them on and yeah it keeps it simple it keeps everything up there got a bunch of hooks everywhere cuz you know you gotta have hooks to hang stuff and then the last thing on the inside of here is this little three drawer container or I'm sorry four drawer container we are currently missing one right now it is inside of our friend's house and it has all of our toiletries in there so you'll notice there are a few exposed insulation spots and this is what I was talking about with doing some final cosmetic stuff eventually I'll get to all that kind of doctoring that up and making sure that you can't see it any more so it's there you know there's a little bit of it up here in the corner if you can see that it's kind of dark and then back here up on the on the top there you can definitely see some of that insulation so eventually I will Pat all that off but for right now it's working good no sense in doing it now no sense in rushing it so yeah that is pretty much the the main inside again I just really wanted to keep this van build simple I didn't want anything special or crazy I wanted to keep it simple because simple is always key whenever you're you're traveling or you're hiking or living in a van having a simple setup really goes a long way it just makes life easier so that's why we went with it and I like it quite a bit and then there's nothing special up there it's just the you know the cockpit the front of the van where we drive or we do our thing there are curtains we do have two blackout curtains that we can pull to completely kind of block off the front there and make it a little bit more private you spot some really cool block out curtains and then snuggles did some hemming on them and making them the correct length so those are really great and they also act as kind of a thermal barrier oh and for anyone that's wondering because I saw some comments on Instagram that is not a real Arizona Trail symbol I did not steal that off the trail that it was actually made by someone in Flagstaff they sell those at an outfitter but I thought that was really cool we had that in the trailer so if that's in here so no I did not take that from the Arizona Trail and the painting over here was actually done for us by a friend in Albuquerque she's an awesome artist and she painted that force knuckles and I that snuggles and myself and a really awesome landscape she made that for our trailer when we first built our trailer so we had to transfer that in here it's kind of a centerpiece of our van we really dig that all right so the last thing that I want to show you guys on the van is something that I really wanted for quite some time I knew if I ever did a full van build that it was gonna be kind of one of my main centerpieces for the van because we are such big gear geeks and we test a lot of gear and we have a lot of gear I wanted a really efficient way to store stuff so we definitely do store stuff up in our top box up there some bigger items but we wanted kind of a space where we could get two items very quickly and efficiently so what I did was I built the bed on top of a box and the box is actually storage so there are two big pullout drawers down here I'll put one of these out for you and show you kind of how it works but they are massive gear drawers again we have a lot of gear so these go back pretty far they go the width of the bed and there are two of them so we have this one over here that's mainly for all of our hiking gear stuff that we test and then over here move snuggle shoes out of the way here this one is mainly all camera equipment and there's some tools back there and stuff to work on the van and pretty much everything else that we need this was kind of whenever I went to build the van I I wasn't a hundred percent sure on everything that I wanted to do it was kind of all just figure it out as you go the only thing that I was very adamant about was building these drawers I knew that these drawers had to be in this build because of how efficient I saw them being so that is kind of the coolest part of the van as far as pumpkins and that the part that I'm the most proud about and here's another shot of kind of the inside of the van with those cubby holes if you guys want to see those kind of a little painting shot of the inside of the van there so if it's a little bright and that is it again very simplistic design nothing crazy I wanted to keep it simple simple simple simple just because simple is the most effective as far as I'm concerned all right guys so hopefully you enjoyed that small little tour of our van if you guys have any ideas for me on some things to maybe add to it in the future or if you liked it or if you didn't like it or if you would do something differently leave me some feedback in the comment box below and let me know your thoughts I'm about to go hit the PCT and snuggles will be doing a big road trip up and down the west coast in this guy so if you found any value in this video go ahead and hit that like button subscribe to my channel if you haven't already and as always guys thanks for watching [Music]