 Hello and welcome back to the channel. I'm coming to you today from the camper van where we spent five days in Joshua Tree National Park experiencing and having a taste of van life and this actually was the second time. The first time we experienced van life was back in Nevada and we had such a great experience both times and so in this video today I want to share with you some lessons learned and some tips to help you especially if this is your first time planning to go out there, rent a camper van, have that unique experience and do it on your own. It's not something that you are comfortable with but you do want to try it. So these tips are some lessons learned and we want you to be as prepared as possible. So tip number one is for sleeping. The first tip is to plan where you are spending your night. Now even if you are driving your home you pretty much in a camper van, you have your home with you, you have a kitchen, you have a bed but you can't just sleep wherever you want. Things don't work this way. So if you are going for example to a national park, you can't just pull over and sleep in the middle of the road, you have to spend some time researching and knowing where you are going to be sleeping. So for example in a national park if your plan is to sleep at one of the camp grounds make sure that you make your reservation ahead of time or if you are relying on first come first serve. Make sure that you get there early in the morning because some campgrounds are very competitive to get to. Now the only thing with spending time or sleeping in national park campgrounds is that the cost is going to add up. Every night it's probably $10-$15 and the cost is going to add up day by day. In this scenario if you want to be more cost effective and you don't really care about a particular campground in the national park you can be thinking about the BLM land. BLM stands for Bureau of Land Management and this is usually public land that only charges you a very minimal fee to no fee in a lot of scenarios. You can just drive your van up there and spend the night and this is what we did during our stay in Joshua Tree National Park or maybe if there is a Walmart in the area you can be spending the night in their park a lot which is very common between people who adopt van life. Now the point with the first tip is to make sure that you know where you are spending the night where you're gonna be sleeping before starting your trip. Tip number two is to pack a sleeping bag with you or covers. Now when we did rent this camper van with the company Escape Camper Van there is an option to add a bedding kit and this bedding kit comes usually with two pillows and one bed cover but if you are camping in an area where it's going to be colder probably this cover is not going to be enough for you so make sure that you do have your bedsheets you have extra covers you have a sleeping bag if it's necessary just to make sure that you are having a warm night of sleep. Alright next tip is about planning your meals before your trip so for example as we stayed in the National Park for five days it's important or it's efficient to plan your meals beforehand then you know exactly what you're gonna be eating for breakfast for lunch and dinner. Why? That's going to avoid the driving back and forth between where you are in the park and where the grocery store is because a lot of times there aren't really any grocery stores in the national parks and the drive can be 30 minutes away sometimes one hour away depends on how large the national park is so if you plan your meals ahead of time you know exactly what you're gonna be consuming your three meals for the day what you're gonna be eating you get all of the groceries ahead of time have everything stored in your camping van and that is going to save you money and time. Next tip is to shop for spices and oil the first time or the first experience we had renting a camper van we got all of the groceries we got everything that we need but we forgot to to bring olive oil salt and pepper and that kind of took away from enjoying all the meals that we made so make sure that you get all of these things ahead of time so I do recommend this spices wheel that has many spices salt pepper paprika and more you can get it just take it with you and that's going to be enough and for olive oil there is actually this new olive oil capsule that I just discovered the other day at the grocery store just little capsules that look like olives you can open it and just use it to do all of your cooking I'm going to leave links to those in the description box if you guys are interested next tip is to have all the necessary cooking kids that you need again with this particular company there is an option to add a cooking kids and the cooking kids pretty much covered everything that we need and all the basics we had we had the pan we had some pots we had silverware cups dishes you name it all right next tip on the list is about organizing and cleaning in the camper van and that is to pack just what you need do not over pack as you guys watched in the review that we did for the camper van and if you did not you can check the link in the description box there is not a lot of storage in this particular model of the camper van so do not over pack and just make sure that you have exactly what you need this way you're not going to struggle with making sure that everything is clean tidy and organizing the camper van in this trip it was three of us and we felt like we kind of over pack especially with bringing three yoga mats we thought that we're gonna be doing some yoga outside in the park but it was pretty cold so just make sure that you do not over pack next tip is to pack or ask the rental company for a broom that's a very small thing that you probably don't think about but when you are using your van let's say you are hiking and exploring outside when you come back to your van your shoes are not the cleanest and you are bringing a lot of dust in there with you and so it does get dirty pretty quickly and pretty easily so get a broom make sure that you clean from time to time that is going to keep your van clean and tidy next is to take the time weather permitting to air all of your sheets bed covers and pillows for us for example we spent five days that is already a long amount of time and there is not a lot of or enough air coming to the van all the time so if it's sunny and beautiful outside make sure that you take all of your bed sheets all of your covers air them out leave them in the sun that is going to make for a healthy bed first step is to make sure that you do have a car charger for cigarette spot preferably with two spots here to charge your phones or your camera this is important just to make sure that you do have enough spot to charge your electronics and a pro tip with batteries and electronics when it's called out especially overnight do not leave them out on the dashboard or the table because the cold is going to eat away from the battery life so make sure that you hide them maybe in a bag with your clothes or just sleep with them this way you are going to preserve the battery life and that takes us to the next tip and that is to pack a power brick or some sort of portable charger this way you don't have to keep the vehicle on if you want to charge your phone or electronics overnight we just purchased a very powerful power brick that we've been very happy with I'm going to leave the link in the description box in case you guys are interested the next step in the list is to make sure that you do have a headlamp with you now obviously most of these vehicles they do have some lamps inside that you can use if you are having dinner but let's say for example you have to use the bathroom in the middle of the night you want to make sure that you are seeing what's happening around you so what we would do we would have a headlamp just hang it somewhere where it's visible easily accessible and use it when it's necessary on top of having a headlamp we have been using a portable lamp this is our car camping lamp so we usually have it on the table when we are having dinner you can change how strong you want the light to be we've been really loving it and we find it to be very practical and these are the tips that I had in mind for you guys especially if you are experiencing van life for the first time I hope that you found them to be useful and if you do have any questions please do let me know in the comments I will be very happy to answer them if you did find this video to be useful please give it a thumbs up and consider subscribing to our channel you're tracking paths Habiba and Alex and we'll see you very soon on a new adventure