DIY Mini Truck Camper | Road Trip up the California Coast

[Music] [Music] a little bit loud of a campsite last night because although it is uh pretty beautiful out this side at the ocean on this side we've got the Pacific Coast Highway so there's cars constantly driving by hope over night but honestly it wasn't too bad until the motorcycle drove by it was like a jump scare would wake me up out of my sleep so since my last video we have kind of made our way up the Pacific Coast Highway just passed La so we you can kind of see La in the distance back there but we passed La drove up here and then just camped on this spot on the side of the road I also just so happened to run into my friend last night Allan who I know from Instagram who was camped up behind me but he went out early this morning to go for a run and to go surfing but I think he's going to meet us back here before we uh get out of here for the day also new information I figured out that my stove does not take those little green Coleman propane tanks it takes the butane blend mixture so I went to the store yesterday got some gas cans and hopefully this time we should be able to cook some breakfast nice finally I have a working snow over in the van so I can cook myself some breakfast see what are we going to have just do a simple breakfast sandwich I heard the gas coming out but the igniter was not going in okay I guess the igniter doesn't work but the grill [Music] does I will say this is really slippery I don't know if I really trust that here we go [Music] [Music] [Music] I think the plan for today is I don't have a plan but I know which direction I'm heading and I know what road I'm staying on Route One yeah yeah appreciate it have a good one yeah so once we finish up breakfast here my friend Allan gets back from his uh run probably going to head out of here go wherever we're going today steam run like this and the guy down here he's got a box truck so he cut the side out of it's also something new if how do you used to in this thing every time I'm driv on the road at least five or six people pull up next to me and ask me about what this is how I got it where it's from if it's a camper I love it I love talking to people about it it was also crazy last night these waves got so big that it felt like it shook the entire uh truck it might have just been cars driving by but when they when they curl up like that and they slam into the Rocks sometimes they they crash perfectly on the edge of the rocks and splash up it sounds like a grenade going off but anyways just sitting around till my friend gets back I'll check in when he gets here I do miss having an automatic water pump from my other Vin though using this foot pump is kind of a pain especially when I'm Barefoot it kind of hurts but I will say I have been pleasantly surprised with how comfortable it is to camp in this thing being able to stand up lay down I think when I first did this build I thought it was going to be super impractical and I kind of second can guess myself a lot and thought I kind of should have done something more like a like a popup something more lightweight something that's a little bit more practical for a vehicle of this size but at the end of the day that's been done before something this big on the back of a mini truck has never been done before and I would have never known if it would have worked if I hadn't just done it so I'm glad that I built it this way and I'm not going to lie I did get in my head a little bit reading the comments when I was building it with people saying this is never going to work that's way too much weight on the back of that truck and for a while I really did think that those comments were right but after being in here for the past 3 days I don't know it's pretty comfortable yo yo what's up what's up dude what's up PO what's up PO how you doing how you doing how's the breakfast dude it was good hell yeah this is my buddy Allan what's up met him from uh Instagram literally yesterday hell yeah but he left this morning to go uh surfing you went for a did you go surfing or no no iend never going for a run oh okay did the pup go with you nah she stood in the car it was a little bit flat when I got in the morning so I decided to go for a run but it was looking nice now when I got back but yeah this is Allen's van he lives in here he's been doing it for how long 2 years 2 years 2 years yes sir so this is his van it's a sprinter van a little bit nicer than the uh proas is it four-wheel drive I wish is yours four-wheel drive no I wish I mean this thing is the mini truck is fourwh Drive yeah but I haven't tested it out yet such a good dog such a good do sit Fu that's a good girl other part that's a very good girl up stay a sick girl good girl yeah go into the City and then get some stuff all right I'll see you there so I think before we head to our uh Camp spot tonight we're going to go check out malibo so let's get on the road [Music] all right so the Pier parking lot was uh was full and Allan said he knows a spot where we can park in town so we're just going to park in town and maybe walk around there's a uh farmers market going on so there's actually not a lot of parking we got lucky and someone was pulling out and this thing is so easy to park I don't even have to back into parallel park I can just pull straight in it's so tiny like look how tiny it is you can fit two of them in this parking spot so many of these small beach towns in California are so beautiful I've never been to Hawaii but like when I come here this is what I imagine Hawaii would be like yeah I figured when we pulled up here you didn't expect there to be a farmers Mark I'm like wait that's actually kind of sick maybe I'll find some new uh decorations for the mini truck or something find some new decorations for the mini truck selling knives or you just sharpen you both it's pretty sick it's like a mobile knife sharpening van got myself a new sh awesome thank you very much Pro look at that now I can cook with something it's crazy a little Bronco little Bronco golf cart I wonder if I can turn that thing into a camper [Music] oh godrap got myself some new clothes walked by the uh kid store figured I uh use a little wardrobe update from the typical t-shirts and shorts I wear so I got some shirts and I love wearing hats got myself a new hat too but we are getting out of here we're going to make one more pit stop before we get to our uh Camp spot for the night I'm hoping to get out into nature at least a little bit go to this spot up in the canyons to camp tonight but before we head there we're going to head to the spot that supposedly has this cool sea cave that we're going to check out so many nice cars out here too two McLarens one after the other and then right after that a Porsche and then there's me and my $5,000 Japanese mini truck I also don't have a radio in here so I got my speaker breathing in dve this is a cool little beef though water is so blue I don't know if we're going to be able to access the um C cave though it is low tide right now but it's not a very low low tide and you can only access it during low tide I actually think that might be it right there but there's also an arch there that looks pretty sick well yeah more light oh yeah it does connect yeah it goes all the way through oh that's so sick Bro wow beautiful this is so sick there's a little spot over here too how incredible this is pretty cool Dam that's a sick like Photo spell with the cave in the top all right we're going to go check out the uh Camp spot now see what it's looking like and he really wants to come back down here and go surf and I don't have a board so he might come back down and surf but we're going to go get set up at camp this is going to be the mini truck's first real test on a big hill I think I think this is a Steep Canyon Hill see how she does driving up it jeez my pedal is on the floor we are going 43 km/ hour low and slow baby low and slow look at that view though beautiful oh we're cooking now we're going 60 km an hour I think this is it right here this is what we're going to call home look at this look at that definitely not the flattest but I know it's not too bad do you see that there was a bunch of surfers up at that one yeah there was only like a mile down the road might go back there okay I'll be up here here yeah see you later see you all right this looks like it probably be the flattest spot down here I might use some of these rocks to level her out look at these views look at that I mean if my mini truck can handle this hill I feel like she can handle anything honestly this thing is performed in every way I could possibly imagine better than I expected her to driving handling sleeping comfortability everything so far exceeds what I expected look where she's taking me I wonder if I can get her leveled out though just lift up this side a little bit I think these pieces of asphalt might be perfect actually [Music] beautiful but I think before I do anything else or cook any dinner I'm going to take a quick shower I think I have one portable shower left I one shower left but I should be making it into a uh Beach town tomorrow and I'll just take a beach shower there because every time you get to a small Beach town they have showers out on the beach that you can take advantage of which is the nice part about traveling down Route One is there's a plethora of showers because there is not a plethora of planet fitnesses where I can shower at but these dude wipes are kind of a good in between just to get that base level of grime off make me feel a little bit cleaner that feels better I also do need to get a welcome M for in here because I am tracking an aggressive amount of dirt in I've tried to keep my shoes and all the dirt to this little corner of the van and I put some socks on to keep most of the grime off my feet so I don't to wipe them off before I go to bed tonight since I do wear birken socks everywhere all right so I was just about to get started cooking dinner and then I noticed this low fog rolling in just over the ocean it's so low to the ground very eerie I don't know how well the camera's picking it up but you can see it's like clear over there and then there's [Applause] just there's a layer of clouds covering the ground is this yours yeah dud it's so tight appreciate it is it for sale no I just built it this is my first trip in it actually really I swear You' think I'm driving a superar with how many people come up to me or honk when I'm driving or pull up next to me and have try to have a conversation with me this thing get so many looks that it's getting a bit ridiculous driving down the road but I'm not going to lie I kind of love it I'm proud of this thing but I'm also hungry and now that I have a working stove I can finally make my bourbon chicken and thankfully this recipe is super simple so it shouldn't take too long to cook so I did season some chicken yesterday in preparation for this recipe but I accidentally put the seasoned chicken in the freezer and the unseasoned chicken not in the freezer so I to season up some more chicken just with some pretty standard allpurpose seasoning and I'm hopefully going to be able to get a good Char on these uh chicken thighs with this uh grill that I have has this little propane uh cooked up and I'm using cooked dinner with this little little attachment who and one thing I've kind of noticed with using this grill for the last two days is that there's one fatal flaw you can't see the flame when the Grill's on there and it kind of sounds the same when it's just gas coming out versus when it actually has a flame so it's kind of a little bit sketchy honestly using this I don't know if I fully like it I might try to get a different one for future trips water down on there and get our Chicken Grill it we'll cook that for right around 4 to 5 minutes on each side I don't know why it's smoking so much never had my chicken smoke like that oh well that is cooking I'm going to get started on some rice over on this side and yes we're going to be using inst some rice [Music] put some water in the pot and then bring that to a boil beautiful that chicken looks so good water's boiling for the rice and the final thing I'm going to have to do once this chicken is done is get the uh bourbon sauce going but I'm going wait till we get this chicken cooked and start that all right so I think it was user eror maybe on my end because uh I put the grill up I think the grill was just too close to the flame so it was getting too hot that's why it was smoking so much but I've moved the grill up it's not smoking as much anymore the water is almost boiling and it's working a little better all right I think this chicken is done R is over there finishing off now we can get started on the final step making this bourbon sauce for our bourbon chicken so for our sauce we're going to add some butter into the pan let that get all nice and melted up and throw in some garlic some hoison some soy sauce and a little bit of brown sugar and you can kind of add just as much as you want of the brown sugar just depends on how sweet you want your chicken to be and if you wanted to add a little spice you can add a little spice it's really up to you I just don't have anything that I could add to make it spicy right now actually I do have some chili powder throw that in there take that mix all that together a nice sauce and'll let that cook down and thicken up for like maybe 3 to 4 minutes and actually while I wait for that to thicken up I'm going to get this chicken all cut up using my new uh Japanese chef knife I bought today it's not the nicest but it'll cut beautiful and now that our sauce has thickened up a little bit we can go ahead and throw our chicken back in there get it nice and covered look at that looks so good now all this St to do get PL it up and now we can eat and look who got back just in time what's up pup what's up pup how you doing and forone asking I did offer to cook for Allan but he's a vegetarian so didn't have any options that kind of appealed to him oh man I'm starving cheers look at that beautiful oh this is so good actually and such a simple recipe did you see these clouds roll in while you were down there not at all dude it was so crazy when it when these when they first rolled in yeah they rolled in from right to left and just covered the entire Beach SS sick dude but yeah make sure you guys follow Allan on Instagram as well he's a nature photographer he takes some sick photos I'll put his stuff in the description below there goes the Drone oh wow it's like perfect Sunset yeah yeah looks insane this bourbon chicken topped TI up there with one of my favorite dinners I think I've made in the van so far only because of how simple it was and how flavorful it is the sun set on the Drone shots he's taken looks so epic you can't see it from this side but it's just cresting over the next Mountain over looks so cool with these clouds and this road isn't very heavily traffic so it will be a much better sleep than last night on Route One Look at that sheesh there clouds the sun doesn't get much better than that for a sunset too beautiful dude he's moving his van to uh hopefully find a More Level spot but we were talking and we were saying sometimes you just can't get a level spot no matter what you do even if you have leveling blocks or or whatnot and we were saying we prefer to sleep with our feet down as opposed to any other way cuz if you sleep your head down your feet are above your head you won't get a good night's sleep and if you sleep roll to either side it just kind of feels like you're being pulled all night but if you sleep feet down it it's really not that bad such a long day dude then I'm going to sleep even even if it was like completely sideways you know what I mean that's fair yeah I feel like I'm going to sleep really well tonight finally no noise in the van yeah you got a chair I'm done to sit outside for a little bit yeah I miss having all my supplies in the van table and all the unnecessary stuff beautiful let's see your uh all right your your snack creation that's your favorite snack I got you dude so it's cheese Jam top andad mhm right that was thank you look at that yes sir like such a nice combination of flavers between the crunch and the sweetness you know what I mean oh it's like so much going on wow that is really good it's like takes you takes you places sweet salty that's good exactly dude it's like that scene from Ratatouille 's the cheese and the fruit and there's all those like sparkles going off in his M what a great movie dude second video I ever did on YouTube was cooking Ratatouille oh for real mhm nice how' it come out I've actually never never yeah was it was it difficult to cook no it was just a horrible video don't watch that video [Music] morning it's a little bit uh little bit of a foggy morning out today but it was pretty nice and quiet last night for a change I really do need a shower today a proper shower I think uh probably get out of here pretty soon and um head down to a beach town maybe we can find a beach shower but I think for breakfast today just keep pretty simple I don't really feel like cooking anything so we're just going have some strawberries from the Farmers Market strawberries strawberries for breakfast yeah anyways ready to get out of here find the next spot let's do it but anyways I think that is it for this video get out of here and find myself a shower somewhere to get myself clean as always truly appreciate appreciate you guys watching the channel if you haven't already think about clicking the Subscribe button it really does help out and I will catch you guys next time [Music]