 Welcome all back to the channel, y'all. We are just up for a monstrous adventure today. Me and OSG here in Big Bend, National Park located in South Texas and really close to the Rio Grande right now. We've started our journey out here. This was your idea? It was my idea. It is a baby moon. She wanted to come see the park and we are testing the limits of the OP and we are doing some off-grid overlanding camping, if you will, over here in, they call this back country camping. So we got a back country permit and we are off of Old Or Road is what it's called. It's a, they tell you you have to have an off-road vehicle to even come down here. It is just a rocky, nasty road and we are in the middle of nowhere. The next campsite from us I think is like two miles. We're just, we're at our own devices y'all. If something happens, we're kind of screwed but we're going to set up camp right here and there's not a drop of water to be found fishing freaks. So sorry to tell you, there ain't going to be no fishing in this video but we are going to do some adventure camping. I tried to take you as far away from the water as possible and I think I did. I think you did it. We're in the desert. Now where we started out this morning, it was really neat because we had the Cheezus Mountains all around us. We had quite a few trees and we went into these draws and there was a lot of shade and we saw lots of wildlife. It was a really cool experience and I was unable to find a camp spot for longer than one night. Like everything is booked. So I literally had to just pick four different spots, actually five different spots around this park. So we're getting to see a big chunk of Big Bend. I've never been down here. You guys are going to love the scenery down here. It's pretty incredible. It's one of our national treasures. But being a Texan, it's a bucket list thing to come down here. So how we got it set up here, guys. For survival, we have an extra five gallons of diesel. We've already had to utilize that. Some extra drinking water right here. That's another five gallons. We just filled up our tanks in the other park area. So we got potable water in these tanks. We got 60 gallons of that. And we're about to do the setup of the OP out here in the desert. Terrible gas mileage coming down here in the southern wind about 20 mile an hour in my face with all the extra weight, 12 and a half miles to the gallon. Not the best. There's lots of just spots of rocks like this. You know, I really should deflate my tires just driving over it. You know, you don't want to have a puncture out here because no one is coming to save your rear end. Like I said, bears are in the park. So we do have to lock up our food if we didn't have the OP. So they encourage everyone to do that in the camp. Literally had a mama bear and two cubs come into the main campground last night. They actually ended up, if you guys watched the Lakeland Family Channel, we caught them over at a trash can. We were just trying to wrap up the end of the day filming a vlog and they just showed up right there. And they were walking through the camp. Park Ranger was like, oh, not again. They're actually pretty cute and they're not any bigger than you would say you. They are a little bit bigger than you. By the day though, getting bigger. But they're only like 150 pound. They're Mexican black bears. So pretty cool. Saw a new animal. Saw a new animal. Captured it. They also have mountain lines out here, rattlesnakes, scorpions, tarantulas. Again, this was your idea. Centipedes. All of that fun stuff. Hopefully this isn't gonna roll off the mountain. That's out. You're gonna change your truck. So this swings right here and this swings. So it allows you to just go down some really nasty roads. Much more nasty than my truck could even handle. Honestly, this is nicer than what I was even expecting out here. It's rough, it's harsh conditions, but the camping spots, you have to find a designated spot. You can't just go full, you can't park in the cactuses. You gotta be in a designated area. Back country, but. Back country. But it's not like national forest where you have dispersed camping where you can just kind of pick anywhere. It's a little bit more organized than that. This actually came with it. This is a, this is 19 millimeter Australian. This little attachment for the drill comes with a hand crank, but this just makes things real easy. Woo, where's the pool? We should have brought in an inflatable pool and then used like one tank. Yeah, seriously. Oh, make your own shade. Look at it, beautiful. Oh man, baby, you do beautiful work. Beautiful. I think we chose the right angle here for the sun, for cooking this afternoon. Let's pop a top, edge your butt in here. This is the technique right here. You gotta arch it. You gotta watch out for that tummy. Watch the pregnant belly on the tire. Pop these latches. This is a big bug time. This is what all the bugs can get in. So if we're watching, this is heavy. This is heavy. So ease are on in that little space. I gotcha. You're ready for the great outdoors. Supposedly the park ranger, he told us that there is a super cool, it's his wife's favorite. They've been coming here for 20 years. It's his wife's favorite spot to go to and it's close to here. So we're actually gonna detach the truck and we're gonna head over to this place. It's called like Ernest. Ernest True. Tavilla or something like that. So, Ernest T. I don't know. Ernest T. We're gonna head over to Ernest T in Southern talk and supposedly there's a place to find some shade. It doesn't seem like there would be. It looks like we're just in the middle of Mexico right now. Yeah, right now I'm getting a little discouraged. Look around here. It's all around. Uh, yeah. Like no one is coming for you. Wow. You can strain it out here. I think that's why I'm like, I'm getting a little nervous because if something were to happen to us, nobody would know. No one would know. They would never know. This is an egg. So we went like four miles down old ore, pretty rough in the truck. You know, I was a little worried looking online to bring the opus down old ore like all the way into the heart of it. But now I kind of want to because it's just made for it. We found a little canyon and supposedly there's water down here. So where there's water in the desert, I think there's usually animals. You think we're gonna find any shade down here? Yeah. Should we go in the caves? Oh, I see the shimmer from the water. It's in that hole right there. And there she blows. Oh, this is torture for an animal because I can't get down to it. It did say if it got low, the animals would drown because they can't get in. Yeah. But they can't get out. Oh my gosh. I don't see any bass swimming around. So I'm gonna say it's a no go. Look, there's a frog. Is he a frog? One sign of life. Gosh, you do. There's a frog in the gosh darn desert. What in the hay? Look at these lines right here. Like, look at the pretty cool, not fishing, but pretty cool. It's too big. Wave up here and then what it looks like. It looks like it just be flat. But oh man, I'm losing my voice. There I go. Frogs have got a hole in my throat, by hand. I think it's that desert. The cactus pollini has gotten me. I don't know. I'm gonna need to soothe my throat with some cold buffalo trace. I may just have to shut up and just show you guys some beautiful stuff. Outdoor brethren and sisters out there. What a day it is to wake up in the middle of nowhere. And today we are heading to another camp on Old Or Road, which is this nasty, quite nasty road. So there's two things that we need to go see down on the southern side and then we're gonna go back up and then come down Old Or Road and go to this place called McKinney Springs. So if any of y'all are planning on doing this, you can take note of these sites. But there's definitely some cool ones just right in the middle of Old Or as well. So we're gonna make some breakfast here at the OP and then we're gonna get on the road. Have another adventure. There must be, there must be like a hole. A hole. Yeah, they're up under there. With the rod and reel or with their hand? No, with the hook. The line, hooks in the line, yeah. Wow. So, he's saying they catch like 20 to 60 pound yellow cats. Yeah, right here. Yellow catfish in this hole right here, but there's not really any bass. Look, I got a blue catfish, if I can. Yeah, blue catfish. Yellow catfish, much more than big catfish. But no bass, no labina. It's a carp. Okay. Oh, this is beautiful. It is beautiful. It's a beautiful place to sing and fish. Yeah. On the banks of the Rio Grande, gosh, I wish I would have known. There's huge catfish in here. This would be the time, this is normally when they spawn and the river's down. Like you could go noodle for them, I'm sure. Oh my God. Yeah, this is the time. But I'm not getting in there. There's probably some huge alligator gar. I brought one fishing pole, guys. One fishing pole. I don't have any catfish bait though. I only have bass lures. And he told me there's no bass. There's no bass in here. And you kept asking like four times. Like sure, bass, labinas? Mucho, no? Okay, dang. He said tortugas. He said catfish and he said carp. Mucho carp. So how cool would that be to come here and catch fish basically in the desert? I feel fulfilled that I at least got to see water. Like it just makes me happy. Like I have to be around it and then just talking about fishing with a fellow fisherman. All right, yes. They gave me some rejuvenation, y'all. It's rejuvenation, but what a hike. First when we came in here, I was like, ah, this. What? What's wrong? What? Did you see something? Oh yeah, it's probably a turtle sliding off in the water. Now I got my polarized lenses on them. I'm looking. Like, could there be, could I noodle a catfish if I saw one? Fishing for a good heart, even in the desert. Little time check, it is 11.35 and it is probably 92 degrees right now. So we are going to pack up and head on out. We're taking the opus to another camp and we're going up about 1,000 feet. Thank goodness. From what I've read, every 1,000 feet is about a five degree temperature difference. Five degrees being cooler the higher you go. So, man, looking forward to that. But we did have an awesome hike. Saw a really cool canyon, bunch of caverns in their caves. Got to meet Jesus, he sang us some songs. Talked about fishing. I got tempted to go fishing, which I did not expect to do. While I was down here, so was really neat. I've caught bass out of the Rio Grande out of Lake Amistad and Lake Falcon. I've actually fished the river on Falcon, the Rio Grande, and caught a lot of nice bass. But no bass down here. So the dangle will have to wait till I'll get back to some actual bass waters. But we're going to head on to a place called Bikini Springs now. And hopefully it is more beautiful than this because this is like straight up desert. It's a whole different climate than when we first got here and stayed at the base of the Chizos Mountains. I would say this is my least favorite camp spot so far. Stephanie would agree. She's ready to look at something more beautiful. So let's pack it up and let's get on the off road. I'm really traveling. I sound like a frog, I know. Apologize. We're currently traveling. Tra-tra-ving. Travin. Travin, that's a new word. On the north end of Old Orr Road, going about 10, 12 miles an hour in the truck. I did deflate my tires a little bit before I got on this road. You want to tell them something else because I just sound like a smoker. A smoker. Like straight up smoker. Is there anything else you can add to this segment? I feel like we've been traveling on these bumpy roads all day long. I'm just having a problem with them because I feel like Baby Ben's going bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum. And there's also these little wispy buggers right here. You can probably hear that wind. That thing literally looks like seaweed on the ocean floor. Tell them your theory. So I thought that like, pretty much everything, this was like the bottom of the ocean at one time and that that was seaweed. We just went to a dinosaur exhibit to kind of chill out for, you know, getting out of the sun. And it was saying that this was covered by ocean. I guess how many years ago? Millions, millions of years ago? Maybe a billion or something. My theory, the pipe cleaner theory. Seaweed that never left. I've never seen, I've never seen those kind of, I can't even call them cactus. They are. They're little whippies. I mean, if you were standing next to them and the wind got you, it would hurt like hell. You're gonna get us stuck in them. Make it, this is kind of a doozy. Gotta figure out the right path here. It'll be easy going down. It won't be easy getting by. There's nobody to book these spots. I want it, you got us here. I'm proud of you. Because if it was up to me, I would have turned around and come back in a way. Well, I don't think we're gonna cook yet. We're gonna chill out for a sec. Yeah. Chips and salsa. I would maybe wrestle a full grown bear for a cold cooers right now. Like maybe wrestle a full adult bear. Definitely one of these Mexican black bears. I would take them down for a cold cooers right now. Did you just hear my tummy growl? No, it's been hungry. Let's get a little bit fed. It's starving. So we are about to cook up some dinner out here at the McKinney Springs campsite. We're about seven miles in. I've seen one truck. I doubt we'll see another one. So there's only like six or seven campsites, maybe a few more along this 26 mile road. This is the most isolated, most off grid I've ever been in the state of Texas, especially truck camping. I've been in some crazy places, you know, hunting and stuff like that where it's remote, but this is like off the charts remote for just a park that you can go to. And here's just a couple more facts. You know, it says generators are not even allowed. You know, you got to be careful with your food. There's no campfires. This is like such a dry area. I mean, you do have to have a permit if you do come out here. Haven't even seen a road runner. So Steph is going to cook us up some stew tonight. It looks like we got some bacon going in. It's actually going to be cooler temp tonight because we came up a thousand feet in elevation. Thank you. Over here is the Chizos Mountains. So that is where we stayed on the first night. So we're quite a bit of ways. As you guys can see, we're traveling like hours every day just to camp in new spots. I want to make sure to get an amazing star time lapse tonight. And then tomorrow, hopefully, we can get back off this old old road. The one spot Steph was freaking out about has got me worried getting back up and coming down was easier. We're going to have to get creative to get out of here. But off to the next spot tomorrow. Let's enjoy the evening, some beautiful stars and isolation out here in the desert and the God blessed great outdoors lights out. We'll see you in the morning. Another beautiful morning out here in Big Ben and I've got a little bit of my voice back. So I'm excited. The stars last night were gorgeous. Finally got an amazing time lapse over the Chizos. Beautiful sunrise here and we're walking this little creek bed going to this oak tree. So we saw it from our camp. We figured there's some water and there's tadpoles living in this thing. There's literally frogs that live out here in this desert. The spring is popping up, making some fresh water here in this creek bed. And we're just looking for tracks and everything. I found some javelina tracks. Didn't get to see a javelina over the last night but they're clearly in here. If you look at this mud right here, it's been all torn up by the javelinas. And then I'm looking right in the middle of the creek bed and I see a big paw track. Very big. And I have to assume that that is a mountain lion. Which is quite scary. If I was a mountain lion, I would hang out here because javelinas are coming all through here. It's easy food. Two buzzards sitting up there on the rock. They're watching us and a little spooked. Yeah, I don't know about this because we're just getting like, it's funneling down and there's brush on both sides where we can't see. I've never seen a mountain lion track. It's my first time. And it's with you, a pregnant wife. So let's take a safer route. Almost, almost on the bus ride. I can almost hit the notes. This is gonna be a pretty trepid offer of road operation here. It's gonna take us probably about two and a half hours just to get off this about six or seven mile stretch of road. It is awesome though to see the landscapes change to literally this used to be the ocean floor. So there's like old pieces of coral. There's these seaweed looking cactus plants. And we had a pretty fun exploration this morning. We're going to another part of the state park now. Every place has been different and cool on its own aspects. You see different plants. You see different animal life. And we finally found some mule deer poop. That's good. It's like pre-scouting for my draw if I ever get drawn in years to come. Come down here and hunt. So we're going to continue the off-road overlanding journey with the truck and the opus and I get to our next spot. So enjoy the ride. That was perfect. I think deflating the tires really helped. It helps like grab over the tire and carry it forward. Because going down? I thought it was going to be more exciting than that. I apologize, y'all. Made it look easy. If I didn't have the trailer, it'd be no big deal. But I gotta say, four and low on this diesel is nasty. Shift it back in before I, when you take a number deuce and the OP camper and go off-roading, sloshing around in 96 degree weather. This is disgusting. I swear I could smell it in this car. I swear I could smell it in the car too. It's like drifted. It's not just me. So I'm going to call the toilet. The toilet is a. The latrine. The latrine is like an emergency situation. I'm thinking. If it was colder, it wouldn't be a big deal, I think. But it's just like stewing. That's enough of that. Anyways, we're going to get to our spot. The roads are still pretty bad, but they are not as bad. Not nearly as bad as older work, but you still got to have four wheel drive and get through a lot of these places. You are the shot, babe. I am the shot. You are the shot. It doesn't make me feel so good. So we officially have made it to Pine Canyon. I would say it's still pretty remote. It's not quite like old or, but it's still out here. Being in the RV park is cool, but just getting out on your own with the family and then not hearing a thing, not hearing another human, it's pretty awesome. And while we've been here, we haven't heard a single airplane. And while we've been on the off grid roads, we've only seen like five or six vehicles total. So we've had very, very little human interaction and mechanical interaction, plus our cell phone service has been basically nil. We're going to attempt to do a hike back in here. Steph just spotted the first mule deer of the trip. I was in the zone, I was striding. She was like, babe, babe. I'm like, what? Something bit you? I turned around this mule deer like 10 yards off the path. I finally saw one. So up in this little canyon where it's shaded, it's cooler, and there's some greenery. There's actually some stuff for me to eat. It looks like so. Hey, a little scouting for years in advance. Put a GPS waypoint on the spot, mule deer. We're looking for do-do. To get a damage report of today's off-roading adventure, actually the last few days, going down one of the roughest roads out here, old ore, and really happened to navigate some nasty stuff. Pretty easy fix here, but our hose, they got caught in the wheel back there. I stuffed this all the way back in this little cubby, but somehow it was able to catch, and then the roller got it. So it's all kinked up, but that's an easy fix. Another little thing that is a pet peeve for me is these little screws that lock this door in back behind here. They have stripped out. The threads have stripped out. I'm gonna have to put some JB weld on there. Another one did it on the inside, on the top latch as well. That's that little screw right there that is coming out of that side. So just needs to be JB welded in there and should be okay. The window that's inside of there, the screen, actually the mechanism broke. So the spring inside of here, after we went down old ore trail, it no longer stays. So this bug screen right here, it wants to suck up the other screen. That one broke on the back window. All the other ones are fine though. So a few things to note on the inside. In the bathroom, the water pulls up a bunch in here. This would be a big help if this was lower. If it was just like an inch lower, it had a small grade to it because the water's always pulling up and I'm having to soak up water and take my hands and feet like scoop it towards the drain. It's pretty annoying. And then when the water hits the door, it drains down to door. It goes out from underneath the door and then it gets all over the floor. And if you're not level, it'll drain around just depending on the gray that you're at. So I gotta get some like weather stripping or something. Figure that out to where it's gonna stay inside of the bathroom. One other thing that did happen, this is not an obvious problem. It was just an off-roading issue. We did take a chunk out of the tire right there and the rim. So we came across some rocks that just couldn't avoid that came in from the side and busted up that rim right there. Didn't lose any air pressure though. We got a little chunk out of the tire, but it's fine. Great thing about it is we got two more on the back. Old mud terrains, one more disappointing thing. I think this is maybe one of the most disappointing things for you. Is the outlets though, the 110 outlets. I guess you have to be hooked up to power, the shore power in order for them to work. So all of our outlets like this one, I think there are three on this thing, none of them work. They got USB chargers, USB connections. They also have just the regular 110 outlet and they don't work. The saving grace of that as I brought my jackery and I have two of these things. This one is the 1000. I've had this thing constantly charging my batteries for all of my recording equipment and then we've had fans running at night off of these using 110 and recharging the little rechargeable fans. And it's only down to 52%. I've had something charging on this constantly. So I'm glad I brought that and that's a nifty little off grid battery to keep you out there a long time. That thing has solar panels that hook up to it as well. And now it is time to cook up some steaks here on our final night and we're heading back to the treehouse tomorrow to get back to Emmy. And I also discovered on, it was yesterday, yesterday morning that we have hit one million subscribers on this channel. Hugh Mungus, thank you to you guys, especially the ones that have been around for a long time. I've run into some of you at Lakes and other areas that you've been there since like 10,000, 20,000 subs. So thank you so much. It's a big milestone. I've been doing this over 10 years. So special thank you and a couple of my buddies push me over, push me over the line. Guys like Lunkers, Flair, Hex, who I'm missing, John B even, so they bumped me over the edge and I love those guys too. So thank you. And if you wanna see more outdoor action y'all and me with a better voice, subscribe right now if you haven't already and smash that like button for surviving in the desert with, well, it's not really surviving when you got the OP. This trip was just an amazing adventure and it's probably the most off grid that I've ever been when I'm not hunting and I did it with Stephanie. So I can't believe she did all the things we did. We went on to stream as hikes every day. I mean, she kept up. So if you wanna see more action from this trip, more of the hikes and all that, subscribe to the Lake Life family channel. That's our family vlog channel. It's linked down below. Thanks again, guys. Love you and I'll see y'all in the next outdoor adventure.