 know is that I took a little break after the road trip with the boys I've kind of been parked in the same spot here with Jamie and enigmatic nomads and Nick who rolled up on us in his pretty awesome van and made friends but I'm all cut up on my vids I'm gonna head north towards Alaska and one of the reasons I was kind of hanging out to it's been super smoky a couple video videos ago we drove through the smoke well it's still it's still on fire a week later so anyways about to jump into a burger here Jamie made us some burgers cheeseburgers and I've been doing like a bean vegetable diet trying to get rid of my keg and and also cut costs for all of the new viewers who have come to my channel the past month or two I want to introduce you guys to Jamie also known as enigmatic nomadics I know that there have been several people who have expressed interest in the van life this guy's been doing it for how many years five and a half right now I started January 1st 2012 mm-hmm and all in the same vehicle here all in the astro van yes yeah so I get a lot of questions how do you start the van life wow that's a complicated question because usually we have all kinds of financial entanglements and family obligations we might have older parents that we're taking care of or younger children we're taking care of or at least that we need to get out of there's all these things that need to be taken into consideration but I would start with just researching what you think the right vehicle would be for you and setting up a slow pragmatic strategy to leave on the right foot we don't want to leave in a huff and leave people hang in leave responsibilities hanging not give proper notice at work or you know the proper notice in your apartment or whatever those things are we want to leave under the right conditions so we feel good about it we have as much money saved up as possible but I would start with just writing down you know what kind of vehicle you think you would need you can probably get into this lifestyle for less than you think and then just research things online I've got a lot of stuff on my channel enigmatic nomadic stuff people that have different vehicles I interview them what they like what they don't like and what they like about the lifestyle what they don't like about the lifestyle so that's one place to start but yeah I would definitely check out some of his videos if you're interested in this kind of stuff and also I feel like a agree or disagree I feel like the van life is something that you could always add to it like you know if you need more electricity for example you can always kind of add as you go absolutely when I started out I didn't have solar I didn't have my van wasn't lifted I just got out in a van that I bought off a craigslist for $2,000 and built it up from there and so wherever you start is fine there's something that I want to communicate that I've never really said in any of my videos before and I just think it's real important I'm probably gonna make a video about this at some point but if you watch what I do it looks a lot like I live in a van and I camp out in the wilderness but at a closer look I'm not really camping for camping sake what I've done is I've cut out all my overhead such as a mortgage or an apartment and the electric bill and things that would be associated with that so I can spend more time working on my purpose in life and that's really what this lifestyle is about camping is fine you know I don't usually sit around a campfire I don't usually you know drink alcohol and you know yuck it up with a bunch of people every night I don't think I've had a spore in five and a half years the point that I want to make though is that you know this isn't for me this isn't about living some camping lifestyle it is fun to go to national parks it is fun to drop my dirt bike off and or my mountain bike off and do those kind of things but really the reason I chose this lifestyle was so that I would have the free time to focus on my purpose in life rather than be out camping for camping sake so it's home full-time freedom that basically sums it up and this is what I agree with here as well I have I basically drive an apartment around and I'm full-time free absolutely and we can go within our budget we can go where we want to go I've been in Mexico a couple times now I'm gonna be going back down at the end of the season this year for a couple of months it doesn't really cost that much more when you do it the right way but you still are able to enjoy all of the things that everybody else is able to enjoy that is you know paying the expensive fees at the resort hotels and things like that so it's really just a matter of as Timothy Ferris would say finding the hacks and all these things but it's all available to all of us and so that's one of the extra things I really like about the lifestyle you forget people looking at you funny like your homeless or anything like who's this guy I had a guy once I was on my dirt bike bringing groceries out from a grocery store parking lot and this guy came up to me I'm not kidding and he said I know you're not asking but here's a couple of bucks man I hope things get better for you and I was just wondering my bike looks like a rat bike it runs it's a great bike but I was just wondering what is it about me that looks like I need a couple of dollars so you know I guess sometimes but if you keep your hygiene up and you keep your clothes clean you just blend in with everybody else mm-hmm yeah so what you had one incident basically in like five years of somebody confusing you for a homeless person and he gave me money without even asking that's awesome well it's been great catching up always a pleasure to see you so guys if you're interested in the van life this guy is a pro I've learned a lot from him go on over and check out his account his channel and we're gonna hit the road shortly I would be out of here I've been the blaziest I've been in I don't know a couple months but it was well needed that was a very long two road trips after VidCon so we've been like I said hanging with Nick Nick has this thing called the Travato this is kind of like a pre-built van life situation here so here's the cockpit and the whole back thing and this thing is made by Winnebago correct right it's a 2018 Winnebago Travato it's on the Ram 3500 chassis it's got a V6 280 horsepower it gets about 20 miles per gallon wow 20 miles per gallon man you're killing me and there's a also a shower in the back a toilet and a shower which is pretty awesome and Nick was just saying how he transitioned to this lifestyle but give us a quick breakdown of why you did this let me come around the other side all right this lifestyle started back in 2014 ish came back from Kuwait retired from the military and I had originally my Dodge Ram truck a bumper pulled toy hauler and two motorcycles which was fine until I decided I want to do a lot of traveling and I could not maintain all of those separate entities and the gas so sold all that ended up in this and killer ever since cool and the reason why you got rid of your stuff is because spending all the money on all your toys in your house and your everything it didn't allow you to travel correct exactly exactly how spinning I had you know trying to stay retired your income is this and you need to live within that bracket so this was the most effective way to do that I like the all-in-one solution here you get to live in it you get to go in it and basically do everything in it exact so high five for the van life all right man nice hanging with you thank you we'll see you next time all right what's this I'll zoom in here you can get a little bit better view but this is obviously closest sunset and it's really nasty out it looks like a bad day in Southern California the Sun is right over that little hillside right there it hasn't quite set but that just shows and I hope you guys can see this because it's a very small monitor I'm looking at on my camera but that just goes to show how thick the smoke still is out here it's absolutely insane visibility is probably I don't know you can see about a two miles ahead that's about it time lapse going up here but I just wanted to zoom in and capture this with the big camera because I have never seen anything like this before in my life we have smoke up top we have some clearing in the middle and then of course we have the sunset with the mountain straight ahead it's so eerie looking it's so crazy part of the smoke as you can see on the left hand side it's really intense that's where it's coming from but further up beyond this one there's more friends is it for today I think I also kept track of my mileage today so I will let you guys know next time I calculate it how many miles per gallon I got but I was going it at driving with AC on into 40 mile per hour wind so take that into you know factor two oh also I got my drone back finally I'm not sure if I let you guys know because there were some comments saying hey you shouldn't have flown your drone at Palouse falls my drone's been broken I just got it back today so I technically didn't fly my drone I didn't fly any drone really anyways happy about that also this little Wi-Fi device which you can't see I used over 110 gigs so far and it is completely unlimited not throttled no data prioritization it's $22 in one penny a month it's insane so I feel like I should make standalone videos so people can find the information that they're looking for and so it can reach more people instead of burying it in a vlog so I think I'm gonna play with a couple standalone ideas tips tricks how to use life hacks from being on the road otherwise thank you for your time and I was valuable and I will see you guys not on the road tomorrow I gotta fix up some things here with the bus oil change possible coolant change gotta help my sister move and stuff like that