 Oh my god, there it is. There's the famous Prius. There it is. And it's my new friend, Nikki. Sign my dog. Right, teacher, sign my dog. Okay, I'll just sign your doggy. Oh, cute. Hi. You're the most famous YouTuber I've ever met. You're the most famous YouTuber I've ever met. Oh my gosh, welcome to Boulder. Hi, thank you. We're so excited to be here. So this is the car, huh? This is my home. And since the winter of 2019, going into 2020, I've been living my unconventional dream of living out of my Prius full-time to explore the Americas and its natural beauty. So some people out there are really into the van life, you know? They've simplified life all the way down and they live in a van. Nikki here has simplified her life all the way down to a Prius. And you also have a cute doggy. This is Camper. Camper. Hi, Camper. Hi, Camper. Camper, let's be real. Camper is the star of the show. Yeah, you are. You're so sweet. You're so sweet. I found him in the desert. He was abandoned when I was hiking about six months ago and I just couldn't leave him and tried to find the owners and there were none. So I noticed in my rear view an animal running after my car. As it neared, I realized it was a dog. I opened up my car door and a puppy jumped into my lap. And now you have a beautiful dog. He's my best friend. Oh, hey, buddy. Let me go hiking every day. Well, speaking of hiking, let's do it. Yeah, let's do it. But first, let's look in the car. Now, mind it's a little messy right now. Hello. Hi. So you have a full-size bed in here. Yes. So it's a full-size mattress that I custom cut about two inches smaller. So this is just going to be things I wear every day, basically workout gear. And then all of my bedding, tons of bedding. Like, I have so much stuff under here. Wow. Yeah, so that's all my laundry stuff. And you have no seats in your car. Yeah. The create like I tricked the car into thinking that my front seat was still there. So all of like the sensors and the airbags are underneath this box. And this is my kitchen. This was what I did after one year living in the car. I created this. I took out the back seats. So it's like all storage. That's the sports box. So that has like my rollerblades, stand-up paddle board. I do have a tent in there in case I want to go backpacking. It's just the fun box. And then I just started YouTube six months ago, and I'm so fortunate. My channel is all about being happy and having fun and living out your dreams. Like my dream is living in a car and traveling and just meeting people and connecting and doing good. So really just like follow your dreams. It doesn't have to be living in a car. It could be living in a house with 500 cats. And she's being very humble. She started YouTube six months ago, and her channel has blown up. She's going to pass 100,000 subscribers this week. Make sure to subscribe to her videos. They're really fun and energetic and positive. And there's a cute dog in all the videos. He's the most adorable puppy in all of them. All right. Well, you're in Boulder. Let's get out of a parking lot because these are kind of boring. And let's go to the mountains. Yeah. You're so cute. All right. So welcome to my backyard. What do you think? That's amazing. You guys, if this was your backyard, you'd be happy every day. Yeah. Look at this. It's so beautiful. So I first found out about you a few months ago. Your videos have gone bonkers. And so whenever I was watching outdoor adventure videos, your videos were always suggested. And I was like, I'm going to check this out. Really? Yeah, of course. And I watched your videos. I'm like, this girl is just a force of positive energy. And we just hope we're inspiring you to get outdoors and follow your dreams. You haven't always been a Prius lifer. No. I've always been a... That's pretty new, right? Yeah. So I started living in my car in the winter of 2019 going into 2020. So it's been, gosh, I'm so bad with timing. What, like a year and a half? Maybe a little more? And it's really been the best thing that's ever happened to me. I've always made my life choices based on my very unconventional dreams and just doing exactly what I wanted. I've always wanted to live in a car to have the freedom to move around where I want. So I never really had the opportunity until about a year and a half ago. I was in Texas and I actually lost every job I had. I'm a freelance worker. And I kind of just sat there and decided being down on myself. I was like, oh my gosh, I can finally move into my car. Or I have to move into my car. We live in this 2006 Toyota Prius. And you really found camper in the deserts of New Mexico? Yeah. So I was actually living in the car with my mom for two months. I like come in. Oh, I know, I know. A dog, a dog, a dog. Hi, friend, hi, friend. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So this was like my favorite part of my car living journey. I was taking my mom on a two-month car living thing and she finally agreed to it. Get on your side. Get over there. There is. This is a tight fit. Are you swear you... This is a... We were on our way back. I took her from Connecticut to Oregon. And we kind of took a little backtrack detour real quick because we were going to go back to Connecticut. And we're going through New Mexico and I take her on this hike I've done before that I really loved. And camper literally was running after my car in the middle of nowhere, jumped in my lap when I opened the door and I just like couldn't believe what was happening. Then he literally followed me maybe four miles on the trail, just following us. At the end of the hike, I again, extremely emotional urged my mom, we can't leave him here. And then left him at the facilities over there for the holding time so the owners could find him. And it ends up, you know, he had a lot of health issues too, but now he's mine. Oh, stretch it out. Oh yeah. Good morning handsome. So I'm sure a lot of people are like, man, that sounds scary to live in a car. You know, maybe the driving part during the daylight hours sounds exciting, but at nighttime you're sleeping in parking lots and stuff. How does that go? Well, you know, it's like no scarier than being solo in New York City. Like seriously, like I obviously, safety is my number one concern. So I'll look up an area, check out the crime rate. I'm very rarely in cities or towns as it is. So I'll find a lot of forest land, things like that. I'll see if other van lifers are around. Like after you do this for a while, you kind of start to have this sixth sense of what's safe and what's not. Nikki keeps saying, oh, this is so incredible. You live in such an awesome town. And I feel so lucky. I'm very fortunate that I live in this awesome town. If you don't have a house, you don't have a typical bathroom. How do you shower and do all that kind of stuff? Oh yeah. Well, so I have a video on this on YouTube that's, I think it's hilarious. If you could smell me, I smell like roses and might have degradable soap. So my most frequent way of showering when I am in nature is, so I take this gallon jug, like a plastic jug. Oh, I know there's a dog. So I take this gallon plastic jug and I'll put it in the dash of my car. And in four hours, it will get steamy hot from the sun. Poke holes in the, in the cap. And I'll literally shower my body with a gallon jug of water. And it sounds ridiculous, but until you try it, like, don't rag on it. Just because I live in a car doesn't mean I'm not showering every day. And I'm not like doing all the things and I'm not brushing my teeth, you know? Like there's this crazy idea that if you live in a car, you're homeless. And like, I choose this. Homeless is not a choice. So like, I'm not trying to glorify something. What I'm doing is just saying like, you can do whatever you want, but like, do what makes you happy and like, I'm not homeless, I'm houseless. So like people feel bad for me all the time. And I'm like, don't feel bad for me. Like I'm the happiest I've ever been in my life. Part of what you do is charity work for animals and rescuing animals. Tell me about that. About a month after I started my YouTube channel, I quickly became monetized. And I've always been very frugal and simple. So I've never had high expenses. And so I decided with the extra money, I'm like a huge animal lover, but also something that I'm really passionate about is economic euthanasia. And I know a lot of people in my life who have had to put their dog down because they couldn't pay for the medical bills or you know, like rescue animals, right? Like it's such a big problem. Thousands and thousands and thousands of animals are dumped every day. And then they're killed because they can't get the proper care or they can't be re-homed. So I started this project called Camper Cares and it's fully funded by my YouTube. So all of my external ad revenue and some of the revenue go straight to animals in need. And I have a form where you can apply and I donate, like my first month, I donated $8,000 to rescues and it just keeps going up and up and up. Look, we have paragliders in my backyard. There is a dark side to put in your life on the internet. Yeah, you got to have thick skin. I've addressed this in other videos about there's a lot of mean people out there that just say hurtful things in the comment section and when you put your life out there, you're opening yourself up for any type of criticism. And as, you know, content creators, that's part of the game. Generally, I think when people are being mean and feel the need to take someone else down, I really do believe it's usually an internal struggle or maybe not understanding someone. So, you know, there's somewhere it's just like it's not even worth it. So normally I won't engage, but nine times out of 10 if I feel like it could be a learning experience or, you know, I truly believe that the person maybe just doesn't understand, I will come back with something really positive and no joke, nine times out of 10, I've gotten positive responses back where not only are they saying sorry, they're saying like, wow, thanks for like letting me know that I didn't realize. You know, this is probably the sexiest moment of the video, right? Yeah, clean up that poop. And so going back before YouTube, you were a cheerleader, you were a model, you've talked about openly about your eating disorder and how severe that got. Talk to us a little bit about that and how you got over it. Yeah, well, you know, it comes with the territory. When you're a professional cheerleader, when you're a model, like, your entire life is based on your image and that's something that you know and you understand. But you know, after a certain amount of time, I think anyone can relate, you know, how many times can you be told you're fat? And I was literally taught I was the fattest professional cheerleader in the United States, like word for word. And, you know, it's just like the comments, you know, you're getting broken down, but I was so young I didn't have the self-confidence to be like, no, it's okay. Like, this is my job, right? So I was, you know, not to get too into detail, like, like, exercise, believe me, I believe me, yeah. I was working out eight hours a day. I was eating a certain amount of food to make a certain weight because the food weight would actually put me over on the scale and I'd be benched. Or, you know, I had a yoga client and then I had a CrossFit client so I had to alter my body and I was on diuretics. And I got to this point where I was hopeless. Like, I literally thought I was gonna be like that forever. I was so scary and I was doing everything I could to get over it from inpatient, outpatient. I had therapists tell me that I was never gonna get better. Like, it was a really scary place. And, to be honest, I think that experience and, you know, I can say, like, this is why I'm so open about it. Like, I'm 100% recovered. And when people tell you, like, you live with it your whole life and you're never gonna be recovered. Like, I'm like, I'm telling you. It's like, it's such a blessing. And I think that's also why I am the way I am with comments and with the way I live. It's like, you know, I was hopeless. And here I am. Like, I'm just living my best life. And I really think that, you know, an eating disorder is the same as an addiction or a struggle. Like, everyone out there is going through something and, you know, there's light at the end of the tunnel and that really brought me where I am today. And I'm like so thankful as much as it was like probably the worst thing I've ever, like I would never wish that on anyone, you know? Well, now with your audience, you probably have a lot of young women watching you and you can share your knowledge and hopefully help them on their own journeys and struggles. And it's amazing what you're doing. I really try to push that. And, you know, that's why I work with teenagers too. You know, I'm a tour guide for teenagers and I just hope that maybe I can give them a little light. There's a little bit more outside of high school in those bullies, you know? Nikki, I'm so glad you came through town. It's been really fun to meet you. And I wish you all the best on your voyages and journeys. And if you ever come back through Boulder, we got to go on a little bikepacking trip and bring camper. I think camper would be a great bikepacking dog. Yes, I'm so down. Let's do it. Let's do it. Thanks for having me. Yeah, absolutely. It's always fun to meet inspirational people and people who are following their hearts and doing what they want and doing good for the world. And happy campers. And happy campers. And once again, I will link below. You should go subscribe to her channel. It's really fun and engaging as she puts out tons of videos and camper. As you can see, there's a bundle of joy.