Ever dreamed of trading your daily grind for a life on the road? Imagine swapping your morning commute for a breathtaking sunrise over the Grand Canyon, or your cubicle for a secluded beach. This week, we're joined by Kellie and Cody, a couple who've done just that. They've taken the leap into a nomadic lifestyle, transforming a truck camper into their cozy mobile home.
Kellie and Cody generously share the highs and lows of their journey with us, from the awe-inspiring wildlife encounters to the challenges of finding safe places to stay. We also dig into the profound shift in mindset required when transitioning to a minimalist, travel-focused lifestyle. We learn how they've distanced themselves from materialistic impulses and redefined their understanding of success. But it's not all about the philosophical — we also dive into the practicalities of staying fit on the road, the trials of having a dog along for the ride, and the financial realities of nomadic living.
In this episode, we also open up about our own plans to hit the road with our dog in our truck camper, and how these conversations have inspired us. There's plenty of light-hearted chat too, as we swap travel tales and plans with our guests. So, whether you're flirting with the idea of a nomadic lifestyle, curious about RV living, or just love a good travel yarn, this episode is a treasure trove of insights and stories. Come join us for an inspiring journey into the world of nomadic living!
YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/@CodyandKellie
Website: domelife.camp
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CodyandKellie/
Instagram: instagram.com/codyandkellie
My Self Reliance YouTube Channel-
https://youtube.com/@MySelfReliance?si=d4js0zGc5ogYvDtO
Shawn James Youtube Channel - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5L_M7BF5iait4FzEbwKCAg
Merchandise - https://teespring.com/stores/my-self-reliance
Ever dreamed of trading your daily grind for a life on the road? Imagine swapping your morning commute for a breathtaking sunrise over the Grand Canyon, or your cubicle for a secluded beach. This week, we're joined by Kellie and Cody, a couple who've done just that. They've taken the leap into a nomadic lifestyle, transforming a truck camper into their cozy mobile home.
Kellie and Cody generously share the highs and lows of their journey with us, from the awe-inspiring wildlife encounters to the challenges of finding safe places to stay. We also dig into the profound shift in mindset required when transitioning to a minimalist, travel-focused lifestyle. We learn how they've distanced themselves from materialistic impulses and redefined their understanding of success. But it's not all about the philosophical — we also dive into the practicalities of staying fit on the road, the trials of having a dog along for the ride, and the financial realities of nomadic living.
In this episode, we also open up about our own plans to hit the road with our dog in our truck camper, and how these conversations have inspired us. There's plenty of light-hearted chat too, as we swap travel tales and plans with our guests. So, whether you're flirting with the idea of a nomadic lifestyle, curious about RV living, or just love a good travel yarn, this episode is a treasure trove of insights and stories. Come join us for an inspiring journey into the world of nomadic living!
YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/@CodyandKellie
Website: domelife.camp
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CodyandKellie/
Instagram: instagram.com/codyandkellie
My Self Reliance YouTube Channel-
https://youtube.com/@MySelfReliance?si=d4js0zGc5ogYvDtO
Shawn James Youtube Channel - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5L_M7BF5iait4FzEbwKCAg
Merchandise - https://teespring.com/stores/my-self-reliance
Hey everybody, welcome back to the Cabin. I'm Sean James and I am the host of this my Self-Reliance podcast. You can also check me out on my Self-Reliance YouTube channel and the Sean James YouTube channel. Well, this is an interesting episode. It's probably not one that you would expect from my Self-Reliance.
Speaker 1:This channel is mostly about wilderness living and homesteading and living off grid, but in this case I'm talking to a couple that are living an automatic life. They're actually living out of a truck camper in the US. A nice couple from Arkansas, and they've spent the last I think they said four years traveling around the US, first of all, just living in a tent and then lately, over the last years, they've been living in a truck camper. It just made us realize that we shouldn't postpone any of our plans to explore the US and Canada. We really haven't seen that much of our own country and we haven't spent much time in the US other than the typical tourist destinations for Canadians, which is mostly Florida and then down into the Caribbean actually. So we're going to spend some time over the next couple of years doing as much exploring as we can. One of our restrictions, of course, is that we have a dog. We're not going to put her on a plane and we're also not going to leave her at a kennel while we go and explore. So we have purchased a truck camper so that we can explore the country, basically by camping everywhere we can. So a lot of remote areas. So one of the things that we were doing to prepare for this last summer 2022, 23, no, it was earlier this summer, it wasn't last year, it was earlier this summer and in order to prepare for and to make a decision on what type of vehicle we wanted, or a camping system we were watching videos from a wide variety of creators, but in different formats or different ways, that they were traveling, from van lifers to tenters, campers to tiny home people and also truck campers. So, after doing a lot of research, decided well, I need a truck, I always have a truck, I've got my tools and my materials and logs and wood and stuff that I need to transport around. So I always need to have a truck, and so a van doesn't make sense, because we don't want to have multiple vehicles either. But to get a truck camper means we can put a truck camper on the truck while we're actually camping and traveling and then take that off and continue to use my my vehicle as a just as a personal vehicle, a personal truck.
Speaker 1:So during that research we came across Kelly and Cody and their YouTube channel, dome Life, and what we liked about it is that, first of all, really nice couple. They get along really well. They're into healthy eating, they like to cook and show that on the channel, they like nature and they like to explore places that are a little bit more remote. They go to a lot of unestablished campsites, so just down dirt roads and find a spot to pull over and spend the night there. So found that very interesting and also we're looking for interesting places to go and see and by following people like Kelly and Cody, we get to see some of the nicer areas or nicer or natural places in each of the states in their case. So that's why we started watching and why we continue to watch.
Speaker 1:We like, like I said, we like them as a couple, we like them as people, we like what they're doing, they've got the adventurous spirit and they're a bit of an inspiration for us.
Speaker 1:So when I reached out to them, they said yes, of course, and we were able to have a conversation that lasted over an hour just talking about the nomadic life out of a truck camper, so I think it's worth listening to, despite the fact that it's not homesteading.
Speaker 1:I think just hearing their perspective on nomadic life and their success in their relationship, their success as a couple, I think is inspirational. So not only do I think this conversation is worth listening to, I really recommend that you go to their channel. They're in the process of transitioning from dome life, which dome was referring to the shape of a tent, but now that they're doing this at a truck camper and they have future plans to do more traveling with different methods than dome life didn't apply, so they're changing the name of the channel to Cody and Kelly, so you can find them on Instagram under that handle and on YouTube and Facebook. So we'll provide the links in the description below and in the show notes for the podcast. As always, not only is this episode on the podcast platforms, but you can go to my Sean James YouTube channel and you can watch the full episode there. So I hope you enjoy this and I look forward to seeing you back here at the cabin next time. Take care.
Speaker 3:Yeah, thanks for having us on.
Speaker 2:Sean, my name is Cody.
Speaker 3:And I'm Kelly.
Speaker 2:And we have the channel dome life. We started it in 2018 and we started out weekend camping in a tent and then, eventually, she's the one that had the idea to sell our house and go full time living in a tent, traveling the country, and that's where the name dome life was inspired. And then last October, we purchased a truck camper after going through a couple of hell storms and an ice storm, and a tent and realized it's real hard to live full time. Thank you, in a tent we really is traveling and living full-time.
Speaker 1:And you were from Arkansas here. Yes, I guess describe your life before this phase of it Like what was your, how normal was your life before you embarked on this journey?
Speaker 3:It was pretty normal. We both had jobs. He was an accountant, I was a dental assistant. I had been a dental assistant for 15 years by the time I quit, and then you did accounting for what Was it seven years before you quit? Yeah, so I mean, we just lived regular lives, working Monday through Friday. When we started camping, we would camp every weekend, literally every weekend, unless it was terrible weather like continuous rain or during the summer we get like two weeks where it's like extremely hot weather, and so we wouldn't camp on those weekends. The other than that, we camped every weekend.
Speaker 3:And then we started the YouTube channel and that just kind of you know, grew from there and we were making enough money from the YouTube channel that we were like you know what we're coming back from a trip from Tucson, arizona, and I was like I do not want to go back home, like I just want to keep, I want to go to a new destination and I want to do exactly what we've been doing and I just I don't want to go back home, I don't want to, you know, do that lifestyle anymore. And so we went back home and it all just kind of snowballed. We. I was like you know we're making enough money. We could just live off the YouTube income. We could sell our house that's money in the bank. We could sell my car that's money in the bank.
Speaker 2:And we had no debt, so our vehicles paid off, so that really helped out not having any debt. But the crazy thing is knowing who she was before we even started camping.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I was totally not. I didn't really care about that. Outdoors to me was going out to the pool in Lano.
Speaker 1:That was all my outdoor activities.
Speaker 3:But where we were from, we were from Texarkana, Arkansas, and he was from Texarkana, Texas. It's a border city. We didn't really have a lot of outdoor recreation, especially in that city. You could drive. The nearest place was like an hour and a half and I had never gone there before. He went several times.
Speaker 2:As a child, I was raised in the area that she's just she's describing, which is one of our favorite places in Arkansas. We've done tons of videos on their since and it's in the Wachita Mountains of Arkansas and the first 10 years we were together because we've been together for 17 years now in the very first 10 years we were together, I couldn't get her to drive down a dirt road.
Speaker 2:She did not like going down it. Now, what's so crazy is she's the one that wanted to go full time where she's not even want to do anything outdoors.
Speaker 3:I cared more about like dressing up, you know, wearing heels, shopping, that kind of thing. And once we started camping, I just completely changed. I just loved the outdoors so much that I wanted to immerse myself in it. 24 seven.
Speaker 1:Well, that's inspiring and it actually is part of my curiosity. It seems to be such a draw like this attraction to nature and, I guess, the simple living, this part of the haven't been able to really wrap my head around. It's like, why do we, why are we drawn to just living like, especially living in a truck camper, but attend even before that, like that's really simple, the things that you deal with from day to day. You get up in the morning and the most important thing, first of all, is keeping warm and then cooking a meal, and which takes forever, like when you're and you're such a great cook too that we first met either.
Speaker 3:But I did have a passion for cooking Once I learned, I just kind of self taught, you know, looking at recipes and add things, taking away things and kind of putting your own spin on it after cooking for however many years, because when I was not outdoor, when I was not outdoorsy, I'd love to cook. That was another thing I did.
Speaker 3:So I wanted to make sure that when we did live in the tent, we were still able to enjoy delicious meals, especially when we were tent camping on the weekend. You know, during the week it's hustle and bustle. I really didn't get to cook any really good meals, and on the weekend that was my time to sit down and plan something delicious that we could enjoy together and then cooking it outside. I wanted to be able to do that and not lose the passion of the cooking when it came to that.
Speaker 1:No notice that you eat mostly organic, pretty healthy food, healthy ingredients. So was that always the case before you met or before you started camping?
Speaker 2:No, no, in the town we're from, we didn't really have the opportunity to have good quality food.
Speaker 2:It was a hard to find. The grocery stores were your generic stores and we slowly started integrating that when we relocated to the state capital of Arkansas, little Rock, arkansas and that's where our love for the outdoors started was when we went there for a job that I had in accounting and the grocery store opportunity was available to us the new organic lifestyle, so to speak and we saw a change in our mental state, our overall quality of life, when we started changing just the types of foods we were eating and then we would switch back and visit family. After six years of constantly eating organic and healthier, that we'd go back and our families were still shopping the same grocery stores Still to this day they're exactly the same. When we go back and we can, we feel sluggish, we don't sleep. Sometimes we'll toss and turn after having a meal with them and not go to sleep at all, just because they're. I don't know what it is, it's just we can tell a difference in the quality of food on your overall life.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we didn't kill it before.
Speaker 1:Okay, so that's interesting too. How long do you say 10 years or so You've been eating this way?
Speaker 3:Oh gosh, yeah, probably 10 years.
Speaker 2:Since 2015, 16. So about that we were 10 years in texture cannon when we met and then we moved in 2014 to Little Rock and we started seeing our food change in 2015 to 16,. What we purchased.
Speaker 1:I bet you have a difficult time going to restaurants, and even when you're enjoying a good meal, because you guys eat a lot of food, oh yeah, and the restaurants are, of course you kind of throw the health aspect the window a little bit when you're going to the restaurants, but I'm sure you've whittled down the types of restaurants or the actual restaurants that you can go to, because if you're like us, when you're eating that healthy all the time and you, like you mentioned, you react to eating poorer quality food. Restaurants generally, in order to stay competitive, have poorer quality ingredients, and we've definitely, you know, we've whittled down just a few restaurants that we're able to go to, where they would having some kind of bad reaction that night afterwards.
Speaker 2:We were the same way, so we completely understand where you're coming from.
Speaker 1:On that, yeah, I mean that was a passion of ours too. Food was a priority in back when we lost our business and we were kind of starting over financially. That was the thing we focused on With we if anything, we became, I guess, as we got closer to the land, we actually eating despite the fact that we're financially in bad position, we're able to start eating better and it ended up being cheaper the way we were doing it. But it's not the case for most people and, like you said, the smaller the town, the typically the worst the quality of the food is, unfortunately. But that's, I guess, the opportunity to connect with farmers and connect with people so you can actually get your food directly, which we do a lot of as well. But with a nomadic lifestyle that's going to be obviously a lot more difficult.
Speaker 2:And then the constant research every time you go to a new area. For us, we've never been to Canada, haven't been there yet, but in the lower 48, we've hit everything but four states, and every single time we go to a new state it is relearning, and this is daily relearning, everything over down to your grocery stores, what restaurants, and that's on top of research in the areas and the things that you want to provide in your content. You also have to think about what am I going to do for my personal health as well. On top of that, including working out, we try to make sure we're physically active and not be stagnant, because sometimes we'll spend 14 hours driving straight across the country and we want to make sure that we're healthy externally and internally. And it's a lot of work to stay on top of that. When you don't have a routine of a house to just constantly have everything already planned out, it's a headache.
Speaker 3:So I'm trying to figure out where you're going to sleep that night.
Speaker 2:That's another hard one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's second. You've shown enough of it on your channel that I've got a sense for it because we've been doing what we've camped always. But we also now have a truck camper as well and we understand the distances that you travel and the difficulty in finding a spot. And I'm seeing the more we study your content and others in the US because we plan on going down there this winter. It seems to be that much more difficult to find places that you can say, especially cheaper places.
Speaker 2:It depends on what part of the country you go. If you go starting in Arkansas, actually we have one of the largest public land options in the south part of the Lower 48. But everything east of us and northeast of us is very limited on public lands which you all have the Crown Lands. Is that the Queens lands or the Crowns lands?
Speaker 1:Yeah, Crown land yeah.
Speaker 2:Crown lands that's equivalent to our national forest here and we have the largest mountain in Arkansas as a whole. But then once you pass the Great Plains, it's you've got Bureau of Land Management, you've got National Forest and it's so much easier to live the nomadic lifestyle if you're not looking for campgrounds when you go out west and if you're in a truck camper, you and your wife will have it so much easier out there than out east. Well, if you saw our older content, before we got the truck camper we pulled a trailer. I will never pull a trailer unless I'm moving something.
Speaker 2:But daily no, I did a year and a half of pulling a trailer and it wasn't even a big trailer. It was a small Nobo, 10.5. And that was a headache.
Speaker 3:Well, I had to guide you, backing down so many dirt roads at like 2 o'clock in the morning. So it was like, it was like never again.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. So, kelly, I just like. My wife is similar. She didn't come from an outdoor background until she met me, but I'd kind of like threw her right under the bus. Immediately when we first started dating. I took her up to the first log cabin that I built and we slept on the floor with mice and mouse traps going off all night around her head. So that was her first time camping.
Speaker 2:So it's, yeah.
Speaker 1:But it's been quite a journey since then.
Speaker 1:But again, once you start living this lifestyle now we're a little bit more grounded, obviously not living nomadically, but the appeal to me, I don't know.
Speaker 1:I think there's something in humans that were, I think, like we tend to romanticize the past, but like people watch my channel, for example, so they're romanticizing about sort of the homesteading, pioneer stage, I would say, but we, you know, humans, have been living nomadically for a lot longer than we've been living, you know, tied to agriculture, for example. So that I think that the drive to do that, to go and discover new places and I think in the past it would have been because we need, we've maybe degraded the land, that we've extracted all the resources where we are and now we need to go out and find that new place so it was the adventurer, the more risk taking individuals that probably eat in each tribe or family that would go off and take that risk of finding that next new place and that might not end well. So the challenges, like I guess part of what I'm wondering is what are the challenges of living this nomadic lifestyle and what are? Have you been in any situations that were, you know, very uncomfortable or unsafe?
Speaker 2:We've had. I'll tell you this, wildlife has never been a problem. That's always been a big question with people. Now, I know, with the explorers that went across the North America. They, they had the natives that they had, you know, culture about cultural issues or cultural in communication issues, and there was a lot of war and fighting, but then they also had bears and all the things that would attack them, and we know that in our current day and age, with our shelters, like the truck camper we're in right now, we're a little bit more protected from the wildlife. Still to this day, though, the biggest issue you might run into is people, and that's that's the honest to God truth We've had in the Pacific Northwest. We were visiting an area and we had some question people constantly driving up into our dispersed camping spot and at two, three o'clock in the morning, and made us very uncomfortable that we didn't feel safe staying in that area to do a hike. We didn't feel safe leaving our vehicle unattended.
Speaker 2:So we chose to instead just use common sense and not take a risk and be aware of our surroundings. Pack up and we left and went somewhere else, and but in all honesty, that has only happened maybe twice in the last how long we've been doing this now, Even if you add in the tent camping.
Speaker 3:it's only happened probably two times that we've had any kind of felt threatened, Because you can kind of tell the difference in people. I mean, we've had people. When you're back, when you're way back into like a primitive camping spot, you might have somebody drive down there. They just wanted to camp there too and you know they're harmless, they're just they're going to turn around. But the problem that we had in the Pacific Northwest was you could tell that they were kind of up to no good, I guess you would say, and you can just tell a difference in people. And so I would say we probably only had maybe two instances.
Speaker 2:Oh, and then once, a long time ago, in our own home state actually, and we had our home entire camper our trailer was stolen from us. So we we were had a dispersed camping spot and it was hunting season and all the hunters were taking all the spots and we didn't want to lose the spot that we were at because we were going to do a Thanksgiving vlog with her brother. So our camper trailer couldn't be charged enough with the solar panel because of all the trees. We said there's a state park down the road, let's just pay $20. We'll keep our tent and sleep at the camp spot that we have in the national forest, but we'll charge a trailer overnight so that none of our food will go bad. That was in our refrigerator. We come back the next morning and someone gone broke, cut the lock and just took it.
Speaker 3:So it looked like they had just backed in, like it was their own trailer and just ran off with it.
Speaker 2:They took everything except for our camera. Gear was in our truck.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we had in our truck.
Speaker 2:We had clothes, camera gear in our tent, our bedding, and then all of our dishes, cooking, everything else that we own was taken, everything was gone.
Speaker 1:Well, didn't you never got it back?
Speaker 3:Nope, they never found it.
Speaker 1:Well, wow, so that was the, that was the tent, the small camper. Wasn't your? Not something you were sleeping in? That was not a sleeping thing, Okay.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we kind of used it as a garage per se because we had so much gear. We had two tents and we had our Joka shower system.
Speaker 2:Mountain bikes, kayaks. Yeah, it was kind of a garage and the reason we chose that trailer to begin with is we had a 06 Hummer H3 that was paid for.
Speaker 2:It was small so we couldn't get anything big. We still wanted to be in the tent, so we wanted something that we didn't have to build out, that had high clearance, a water tank. This that thing had a 30 gallon water tank and it had a slide out for the refrigerator and everybody was like, why don't you sleep in it? It's like, well, we wanted it for all these other reasons because if we were to buy a U-Haul trailer, or a cargo convert it, we would scream oh yeah 15, 20,000 to fix it, and we paid, I think, 12,000 for that.
Speaker 2:We paid 12 for the first one, so then insurance covered it and we got the same trailer again after that.
Speaker 2:But yeah, so that was wild. However, one thing I do want to add about what is so nice is, if you about this lifestyle is when we first started our conversation, we talked about how Kelly was more into material things like dresses and going out, but at that moment when we lost all that, it didn't really bother us because it was just simple things and Well, we had already pretty much given up everything that we had had prior.
Speaker 3:You know when we had our house, and so we kind of had so little already that it was like, okay, well, where do we start now? Where it start over, like I don't know. So it just makes it it wasn't as bad. It was a shocking yeah. Yeah, because it was like, wow, this really happened.
Speaker 1:But yeah, it's an invasion. That's like, yeah, I've lost things like that before too and it's just, it's an insult and it's, I guess, puts you on edge a little bit, like you're not expecting anything like that to happen. So but the material things you're right, it's almost nice to be able to start over Now. I can buy that, this better thing of that, whatever it is that you need to replace.
Speaker 2:We've actually. Just it blows our mind how less materialistic we have become. Where we used to be, more we based our success off of what we had, how many things we don't, how many things the house we could get. And we, when we started doing this camping lifestyle and we were never at home, this was before we sold home. We just quit caring about all that stuff and it took time but we didn't realize we were changing until we fully changed.
Speaker 3:Until we were like you know what? I can get rid of all that, I don't need it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's yeah. Well, buddhists talk about the attachment. So if you can detach from material items, then you're not feeling a loss. And probably that was kind of the thinking behind when you had that theft is that you know you weren't all that attached to those things, but really they were just a vehicle to get you to live this adventurous life. They weren't the things themselves that you were attached to.
Speaker 2:Right. That's kind of like how we are right now with this whole rig that we have. It provides a shelter, and one thing we do like about the Trope Camp more in the tent is whenever we roll up to a place to sleep. We don't have to set stuff up, take 40 minutes, we just probably yeah, just parking it in. That's a really nice plus.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's awesome. So how long do you think you'll do this? Like is this? Has it really bitten you to the point where you're like not really talking about the end of the adventure, or is there any limitations that would like? Would you exhaust the number of places you'd want to see? Or would you be OK just to, even if you whittled it down to, say, your top 12, you just kept going to those places. Like, how long can you do this for?
Speaker 3:Well, I think our goal for this coming year is since we've pretty much seen all the lower 48, our goal for this next year is just to go revisit the places that we really loved and spending more time in those places. We kind of, as you would say, carpet bombed the whole area and now that we figured out where we want to be, we want to just go and just spend more time. So I don't see us settling down anywhere permanently in the near future, just because there are still places that we also want to see that are not in the lower 48.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we want to travel outside and do international travel, maybe not in this truck camper, but we definitely do still love our home of Arkansas. It's where we fell in love with the outdoors that when the time, if and when the time does come, this would be the state that we would settle back in, but even then it would be nice just to have a base camp, a with your roots somewhere.
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 2:And we're still addicted to traveling. We're still just want to go everywhere.
Speaker 1:So any plans for Canada?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I mean, of course you know everybody wants to go to BANF, definitely want to go visit BANF, but I know that we want to. We want to go up to Newfoundland area over on the East Coast, but we have a lot of plans of eventually going to Canada. We only reason we haven't is we didn't have a passport until a few months ago.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we just got our passport this month in the mail.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, well, this is so many I mean similar country, just a little bit colder. You talked about the weather earlier, so today we're not like. I'm not that far north into Canada, so the weather is not as bad as most Americans assume it is. Here it comes south of northern Minnesota, for example, and I probably I'm probably level with a lot of Maine actually. So the weather just turned today Like we're getting a snowstorm right now, but it's like 32 degrees Fahrenheit, so, yeah, not too cold, but I was what are we?
Speaker 2:I was about to look. We're today, I think, the high was 54 here and low.
Speaker 3:Tonight will be like 38. Yeah.
Speaker 1:No, it's cold Us. Yeah, but that's a beautiful state. I had no idea actually till we started watching your videos. Just didn't. I don't know, I just hasn't. It's never been on our radar, I guess not on our route. We've been to Florida several times and just have never gone through Arkansas and didn't really know much about it. But yeah, it's, it's looks like it's got a lot of natural beauty as well.
Speaker 2:It's a nickname, is the natural state.
Speaker 1:OK, yeah.
Speaker 2:So it's got a lot of natural beauty. It really does, and it was overlooked for a long time because in eastern Arkansas it's the Mississippi Delta and during the frontier days nobody can cross that part of Arkansas. So they go up to St Louis or down to New Orleans and go across and then from there they keep going west and everybody bypassed Arkansas. So it wasn't an even until the mid 40s that we actually got a decent highway that could get traffic going through eastern Arkansas from Tennessee. So the longest time it was really kind of protected for me.
Speaker 3:Anybody ever visiting hardly we're not cold natured people, I'm cold weather people and you know it's only like 30 square feet of space in here, so it's not ideal to spend a lot of time in here and we just we're active, so we like to be outside and we don't like to bundle up.
Speaker 2:It's kind of in our blood actually, because when you're from the south, you're you spent all your teens and twenties in the south, you know, because we never traveled outside of Arkansas really until I was 26 and you were 29. Yeah, so we're just used to that warmer north north.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we had been to like Florida and places like that, but that's still the same climate we have Pretty much, well, well.
Speaker 1:so your exercise, you guys exercise on camera quite a bit. Were you active that way before, before this lifestyle? Yeah, you always been active, yeah.
Speaker 2:I used to actually mountain bike race in Arkansas. There was a series and I would do that and that was actually my excuse to go travel whenever she didn't like camping or anything. So I thought, well, I got to go train so I can go mountain bike when really all I wanted to do was just go out in nature and go somewhere else in Arkansas and she didn't like camping or anything.
Speaker 3:So that was my excuse and I had always worked out we had any house or apartment we ever had. We had an extra bedroom that was a gym, and so that was just our. It was just daily routine.
Speaker 2:And that's something we also didn't want to give up when we went full time, and the main reason we showed on camera was because a lot of people don't know that you can continue being healthy. So, we just a little clip or something in there to let people really see our full life and they can hopefully be inspired that if they choose to do this lifestyle, they can still maintain a weight training regimen because I use weights or cardio or whatever you want and not sacrifice too much.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we were able to learn that from you as well, actually, because we were wondering how we're going to exercise, or like we didn't bring weights on our last trip. But I think we probably start, will start doing that, and we have the dog, so we end up with a little bit more bit of a challenge for space. Dog takes. Dog doesn't just take up room but she limits where we can go Because basically we can't be around people. So that's the other thing. I was looking at these RV parks and the. So it's like kids, basically a parking space beside somebody else and our dog is just not socialized. She just used to always being off leash and running and you know, chasing animals around just can't do that.
Speaker 1:In most places. You see us in a lot of cabins, you know, simple living in the woods, with home-steating, steadying, chores to do like firewood, but also tending a garden. So how can we live nomadically or more adventurous as well on top of that? So we're still trying to figure that out and it's why right now, for example, we don't have chickens, we don't have livestock that we have have to take care of, and you know it's not reasonable to ask people to come and take care of our chickens, so we can go run around the country for a month.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:But I, but that adventurous spirit. I think that you know, I think people are missing that. A lot of people are missing that in their lives and they might not even realize that's what they're missing. But I don't think it's in our nature just to sit in one place and be static. So I think that's why, you know the van life type channels on YouTube are popular.
Speaker 2:And with our channel you're talking about the nomadic lifestyle that was. The whole point of the very beginning of our channel was to inspire people through our channel, through our adventures, that they can find something in their area, maybe around their, their town, and they can start doing this. And then, whenever we start going full time and traveling across the country, we want to show people that the the different opportunities and how you could do it. But we also want to be transparent that it's not all. You know rainbows and sunshine. It's not a fun all the time, but it all. That being said, it outweighs any negative.
Speaker 2:And now that we have this truck camper, it has gotten to the point where it, when we were in the tent, we were really thinking are we going to get a house or are we getting really burned out of this? Because it was so. It's really hard, it's a lot of work. Now it's it's gone back to where I don't really know when we'll settle down because we, even though we love our home state, we're already ready to go again and we've only been here for a month and we were missing our home state. Now I'm like I'm itching to go somewhere else.
Speaker 1:Yeah, wow.
Speaker 2:So the adventure, it gets worse. The more you do it, the more you constantly want to go. We're spoiled.
Speaker 1:Yeah, where are you headed next? What? What are your plans this winter? Anything concrete or like how far in advance do you plan?
Speaker 3:We don't really plan anything. If we plan something, it never turns out the way that we planned it. But we've been asking each other the same question that you just asked us for about a month now.
Speaker 2:No, no idea what we want to do.
Speaker 3:Well, we have to watch the weather first of all. But, we don't know, we have no idea. It's supposed to be predicted colder in Florida, below average temperatures this winter. So and we wanted to do Florida. But now we're like, ok, we don't really know what to do. No, we just take it week by week. Pretty much, we just check the weather.
Speaker 3:Well, we might stay in Arkansas for the month of December. If not in Arkansas, maybe like Louisiana or somewhere just kind of a little south, because we'll be in the middle of the day. We'll be back here anyway for the holidays, so we don't want to venture too far and then have to turn right back around to come here.
Speaker 2:So we don't know, we might go back out to the desert after, back to Arizona, utah. We just it's hard to say, and then everybody keeps asking us too, like are you going to be here? And we're like we don't know, like Portside, arizona. Everybody keeps asking are you going to be there? You're going to be there, like we don't know, we went there last year.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and her mom said when we left, because my dad's birthday is tomorrow. He'll be 59, not 60, but his birthday is tomorrow and we came out here in East Texas to be with him and then his her mom. We left her mom she's like are you coming back to like next weekend?
Speaker 2:We don't know, we might be in the Orleans area because we really want to go see some swamps and do some kayak and through some swamp lands with the cypress trees and the Spanish moss. That's one of my favorite things to see and I don't know, we might, might not.
Speaker 1:Well that you said Arizona. Is it the areas that you go to there? They're warm enough at this time of year.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, yeah it's, it's warm here around.
Speaker 3:It's real, real real. Much perfect temperatures. Yeah, I would say like 70, 70, 60, low, 50, low 40.
Speaker 2:And that's in the winter. So there's a. There's probably as many people go into Southwest Arizona as there is going to Florida.
Speaker 1:Oh, you're kind of so, so it's busy too then.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that area does get real busy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but it's still probably not as probably easier to find places than Florida, I assume still.
Speaker 2:Because there's hardly any public land in Florida, right. And the public and there is like, for example, they have national forests there, but during hunting season we learned this last winter where the rest of the year you're able to disperse camp throughout the whole national forest, but during hunting season they ask everyone to be funneled into these little camping, camping districts, so to speak. So thousands of hunters will be in one spot and you're not allowed to camp anywhere else, because the national forests are so small that they don't want people to get shot.
Speaker 1:Right, ok.
Speaker 2:So it's it. There's not much public land.
Speaker 1:Yeah, ok, that's interesting, so what?
Speaker 2:are they running away? Go to Key West or something. We had a blast there last year.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know that, and we were in for boaters as well and kayakers. We have a canoe and we actually got two fold up kayaks this year, so we'd like us to spend a lot of time on the water. But notice the boat that you rented. I think that might be a good plan, even for the dog. Right, we can get her on the boat and get out to one of the keys or the island or something.
Speaker 2:That was one of the greatest days of my life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so much fun.
Speaker 2:Typical day of fishing for you too, if I catch a fish and then on the face of the planet.
Speaker 1:It's not as easy as some people think it is. If somebody is looking to get in this lifestyle, what would be the most challenging thing?
Speaker 3:Well, I think it just depends. So I guess we're a little different because a lot of people can work remotely from their jobs, and so I think it depends on what you're doing for a living. So we have to since we're YouTubers, we have to focus on where we go, what are we going to do to make content, and so that keeps us busy in that area. But if you're just going and you're working remotely from your other job, I think there's just two different lifestyles there.
Speaker 1:True.
Speaker 3:So when you're working remotely from your job, you just have to make sure you go somewhere where you have Wi-Fi 24-7 and you can pretty much go wherever you want to go and you can stay probably for a longer stay in an area for a longer time. For us, once we exhaust an area of what is there to do there, we kind of have to move on, even if we really like it. If we can't think of anything else to film in that area, we have to move on to another area.
Speaker 1:True.
Speaker 2:Sometimes we didn't want to leave and there was just nothing else to we couldn't continue filming the same stuff. Where our audience starts getting bored, they really tell us. They're like when are you all moving on? We're like okay, we're moving on now.
Speaker 1:Well, actually I assumed, when I heard that you were an accountant, that assumed that that was part of your income, so that you were able to work remotely doing that, which would be the case for some people, right? If you're looking at the types of jobs that you could do remotely, that would be one of them.
Speaker 2:For the reason that doesn't work for us is I was the one that did all the editing and I couldn't do the accounting work in the editing because during tax season, for instance, I was a tax accountant in the States. I would work 60, 70 hours a week during tax season and our channel, before we went full time, we didn't post anything. We couldn't because we couldn't go film, we couldn't edit and nothing. And she's tried editing, she just doesn't like it.
Speaker 3:That's not really my expertise.
Speaker 2:So we wouldn't have a channel if I was a tax accountant.
Speaker 3:basically Now, you did hold on to two clients.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I did for a little while.
Speaker 1:But then we just got so busy he wasn't even able to keep up with the two clients and edit and film, so I'm gonna drop that yeah pays to be nimble, though, at first, especially if somebody's making this transition, if they can work remotely, because it's not every channel, not everybody who puts their mind to social media is going to be able to make a living at it either. It's such a cool time that we live in. It's hard to believe that we're getting paid to do what we're doing.
Speaker 2:Yeah but I'm so fortunate to be able to do this. I really do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a lot of work too, though I don't know people really understand Like just the planning you're talking about and the logistics, and then the editing and the uploading, the management of the social media, about your Instagram up here and you have to stay active on all the platforms and basically your boss is the platforms. Then your customer is essentially the viewers and you have a lot of people to please and it could be stressful as well.
Speaker 2:And she's over all the social media and all the communication. She's over that. I do all the editing and driving because she doesn't like driving the Shrigg.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, after I ran it into a ditch.
Speaker 2:Yeah, she slept off into a ditch. She was like, okay, she doesn't like driving, she's starting.
Speaker 1:I will a little bit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, she'll do a little bit if I want to. I'm like, please, I want to get the drone up and follow the truck. And she's like, okay, okay, okay, as long as there's no traffic on this forest road. I'm like, okay, okay, let's do it. So she'll do it now.
Speaker 2:But the other hard thing I want people to know, if they were to get in this lifestyle, is finding the proper resources and planning. Whenever it comes to finding water, when it comes to finding places that dump your gray water if you have a rig like ours propane all these things you've got to plan in advance in. The only way to properly do that, we found, is with the app called iOverlander, and we choose not to use that for camping so much because everybody's using iOverlander, so those camping spots in the National Forest would usually always be taken by someone that also is using it. But it's so useful when it comes to trying to find a place that don't gray water or a place to, because there's gas stations out west in Arizona, for example, tucson, and almost every single gas station has a gray water dump and fresh water but then you go to Montana or Idaho and there's not that many, you might have to drive two, three hours.
Speaker 2:so you kind of plan your route to make sure you have a place to dump and fill up, so you've got to be prepared for that.
Speaker 1:Do you ever use water that you've got from a lake or river or anything into your tank? You have a filter to pump it in, or is it always from a tap?
Speaker 3:So we don't really have any way to pump it into the tank, but we still have our Jolka shower system, which is the hot water portable heater. When you have a hose, you can throw it into a river or a lake or a creek or something that pumps water through the heater, and then we have a pop-up shower tent that comes with it as well. So if we do want to stay in an area for a little bit longer with a fresh lake or river, we can utilize that water that way.
Speaker 3:It also has a big tub that it comes with, so you can wash dishes with it as well and that's what we use pretty much every day to shower with when we have the tent and the little trailer, because we could hook it up to the port on the side of the trailer to use the water in the tank to shower with and wash dishes.
Speaker 2:And we did that a lot when we were in the. You know, a lot of Bureau of Land Management is usually desert, so in those areas we would have to use that more.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we realized out west we weren't really around a lot of clean rivers or creeks, but more so in Arkansas. We utilize it anywhere in the east.
Speaker 1:Yeah, less silt and pollution in the water, but especially silt. We don't really realize that a lot of, even in the desert actually, some of the rivers are so silty you can't run that water directly through a water filter.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So you have to pre-filter it, so it's not like there's always water. Water is a challenge, and it is even for me at the cabin, and I was actually interested in that propane water heater that you're talking about. Yeah, because it has the pump for water pressure in it as well. You can't just get a on-demand water heater for me because I don't have water pressure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I will say we could use that to fill up the truck camera from a water source. We could but we don't have a way to filter it through that system and that's why we haven't. We don't have storage for the large filters. We've looked at people who have these massive.
Speaker 3:Oh, the ones that clean out. What is it? The salt?
Speaker 2:Yeah, they're massive.
Speaker 3:For hard water.
Speaker 2:For hard water. But that's usually what you run with out west is a bunch of hard water. Even when you're in the mountains, like the Rocky Mountains beautiful, clear waterways it's still hard water because the minerals come in through it and it's difficult to find something small enough that can take that hard water out. And with us having long hair I know it sounds weird, you can tell, you can tell Our hair gets real knotted and it's hard to put a comb through it or something. So we know when we have bad water it's our hair where we can't brush it.
Speaker 1:That's true. Now notice you've talked about gray water. Maybe explain to the audience what gray water is and how you deal with the. What other people are dealing with black water. You guys have done something a little bit different in your truck camper.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Our gray water. So in our truck camper we have a 45-gallon fresh water tank and then we had two other tanks, a gray and a black. It was a 25-gallon, two 25-gallons. We took out the toilet so that we could serve more water, because those toilets take up so much water, and we closed that off and got a traditional camping toilet that you put a bag in it that has the absorbent stuff in it. I don't even know what it's called.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's kind of like a.
Speaker 2:I don't know if I'm bowed and gradeable, but Something like that, but we use that instead for our traditional bathroom situations so that we can serve water Plus. We backflow into our black tank now, increasing our gray water. We can fill up 125-gallon gray water in one day, almost between.
Speaker 2:Both of us taking a shower, Washing dishes, Washing dishes twice and then all the other little things that we do. You can run through it quick, but with that we can be off-grid and be very we can be a little bit useful or overuse the water a little bit, not be so self-conscious about it and get a solid two days in one spot.
Speaker 3:I'd say washing dishes probably uses the most water, more so than showering yeah, we don't take long showers at all.
Speaker 2:We turn it off, slather up, rinse it all off. But when it comes to dishes, you've seen her mills and she- can make the dishes.
Speaker 3:If I make anything creamy, it's just like a main theme so.
Speaker 1:Water is a major issue with any pneumatic end of my lifestyle. It's like so many times I'll wash something in that Even that wash water go onto something else before I would dump that, Like just doing the dishes this morning, it's wash a cup. Pour that cup of water into the pot. Wash that pot, pour that into something else.
Speaker 2:We used to do that with our Jolka system. We actually still do that with the sink. If we have a bunch of dishes, we'll make a small stream. We don't even allow our tankless hot water heater to kick on. It kicks on with pressure. We'll use cold water to wash dishes and then it fills up other bowls and everything else and we're washing all that. So we still use a lot when she cooks. I'm sorry, honey, I'm calling you out on that, but you cook so good.
Speaker 3:I mean, yeah, if we just don't cook anything you know, we just eat sandwiches we can conserve water.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah.
Speaker 1:But it's so worth it. Well, you have a cookbook. I'll have to put the link in the description because your cooking is quite interesting. Now the economics of what you're doing. So you talked about a few things like the transportation obviously is a cost, but propane and it's not an awful lot of things, I guess, but the food and having to stock up on food more often, so maybe not being able to take advantage of bulk sales, for example. So have you calculated at all what your lifestyles cost to you?
Speaker 3:We don't really keep up with it. It really just depends. Since we've started, I mean, everybody knows that the price of everything has gone up, especially food.
Speaker 2:It depends on the location. That's the big thing. It costs so much more for us to be in the Pacific Northwest and on the West Coast and in the New England area. It was we were spending sometimes because we were traveling so much $350 a day in diesel for a little bit and it was hurting us bad and we really needed to slow down. Then you add on top of that paying for campgrounds when you're out East, because there's hardly any public land. So then the food we would go into a grocery store and we would spend almost $200 on just a few bags. Well, I'm about to prepare that to us. Coming back to the South, where we might spend $300 every week and a half on diesel and then on groceries, we could go and spend $150 and have a buggy full of groceries.
Speaker 3:We have a week's worth of mills.
Speaker 2:Yeah, a whole week's worth of mills and everything. We're not traveling as much because we have more public land. So where we're at really dictates how much we spend. And that's one of the reasons we also just returned home as well is just to help save some money because we were spending so much on just travel. And then that's another reason we like to spend more time out West because it's so much more affordable Before you get to the coastline, when you're in the Rockies of Utah, colorado, wyoming, all that, it's a lot more affordable to live, especially when you don't have to pay for a place to sleep. So you take that into consideration. We saved so much more money than it was when we were out East in this way to describe it. So it's hard to say how much we spend. It just depends on where we're at.
Speaker 3:It would be different every month, just depending.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean from an economic standpoint. I guess for people you're not obviously, don't have equity and you're in a depreciating asset. You're like your home is basically a depreciating asset. Yeah, I mean for people to wrap their heads around that, but real estate is so expensive Like my daughters are in their early 20s and they're starting out and looking at the price of real estate and even a tiny home which is finally starting to gain some traction but also be approved by municipalities around here to allow you to build and live in one, because most places you still can't even those are in the 150,000 for the tiny home and you're reliant on other people to provide the land, typically because the land values are so expensive.
Speaker 1:So the Domatic Lifestyles actually kind of an option for people especially I know you guys spent quite a bit on this truck is. That's the thing about a truck camper and I found out I had a half ton truck and let's start looking at truck campers and okay, now I have to upgrade the truck to a one ton. Now that starts adding up. So it's. But I mean you can do it on the cheap, you guys, especially in your, you know, when you're doing the tent life, I mean that's a good option to get started, but we wouldn't have done this in all transparency.
Speaker 2:We chose the tent as well, because we couldn't afford to get a van, we couldn't afford to get a truck camper. So we chose to go the tent route because everything was paid off, we had no bills as our channel continued to grow we finally after a year and a half that's when we finally decided we needed something else. Then we were looking at vans and our. We didn't want to build out a van. I know you can build out a van, you can make it cheap, but sometimes that can be five to six months of building out something, which means we would need a place to say.
Speaker 2:We didn't have a house, we didn't have tools, we would have to be at her parents and we don't like imposing on people, and also we wanted to hurry up and get back on the road, start doing adventures. So we started looking at our options of vans. So to buy a van that we would need because we need four wheel drive. I put this thing in four wheel drive daily just to go in some places we go. So we were looking at vans or four wheel drive that had plenty of room and you're looking at like 300,000 US dollars that I could not fathom. That was over 300,000. So she did research and she found she knows everything about the truck.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So first I was researching truck campers because I wanted to know weight and then what? Then you go to well, what truck do I need? If I want this specific truck camper, what truck am I going to need for it? So obviously we went with the Palomino because it is one of the cheaper versions that you can get with all the amenities we needed. We've got the storage, we've got the water tank, we can remove this table in here. We've got plenty of room just to hang out. So we went with the Palomino because it was cheaper. And then we went with. We're like okay, well, what kind of truck do we need? We knew we needed a one ton. A lot of people ask us do you regret not getting a slide out? Because you can get a lot more room with a slide out truck camper, but to have that, that's extra weight and you would need a Dooley to carry all that extra weight and we didn't want to get a Dooley.
Speaker 2:So we were happy with the size of the camper, because with Dooley's going down a lot of the forest roads that we take, it gets a little too wide on the surface and we couldn't turn around. We wouldn't go to maneuvers easily, so that's why we chose this. We also chose not to go with slide outs on a camper because that's more things that can go wrong. We want to reduce as much as we can have go wrong as possible.
Speaker 3:And then I recently thought the other day with the slide out. So we have two awnings on our truck camper and if we are low on power it takes so much power just to draw those awnings in. I couldn't imagine adding every day a slide out, pulling in and out, because then you also have the jacks that have to come down too. And that takes a lot of power, especially when we have all four of them going at the same time.
Speaker 2:So factoring in all that, and we do have lithium ion batteries to help us with that problem, because the acid just couldn't handle it, because we did get the first six months with acid batteries and we were running out of juice within two days. Now we can get a little over a week.
Speaker 3:I think we can get at least two weeks. At least two weeks we have a solar panel, so here it doesn't really help because the tree canopy, but out west the solar panel works a lot better.
Speaker 2:But then we chose to also go with a new camper that hadn't been used before, because if you get used you run into all these issues. Their mold is there because her dad owns a small RV company that's just him and his wife Small mom and pop place. They don't sell truck campers, matter of fact. I think they only have two trailers, so they're real small. But he works on everything and he told us all the horror stories of bond used.
Speaker 2:So, we didn't want to go through that. Then we looked at the trucks and trucks are so expensive, I know, so expensive and we lucked out to be able to get this 2017 Ford F350 for $55,000. One time it was $57,000. $57,000. So, after everything is said and done, with this truck camper in the truck, we were under $100,000. And that is so much cheaper than us buying a new van.
Speaker 2:So we're still making sure we were we had everything we needed and we didn't want us to have to spend extra money that we didn't have.
Speaker 1:And the van is single purpose. So when the van is getting old, like chassis and then engine and everything, that's the whole thing. Basically you're replacing. That's what we kind of thought. With the truck and the camper being separate, we outgrow one or the other, or it's one wears out, one doesn't. Then you can separate those and replace one of the things or not, or just change your lifestyles. But also, yeah, we looked at the older campers as well and mold and electrical issues. If there's an electrical problem with a vehicle or a camper, it's very hard to diagnose that and have it repaired. We just don't want those headaches, so we ended up going new for that reason as well.
Speaker 2:We also Something that we were aware of that a lot of people thought we were crazy for saying is that there's more room in this truck camper than a van. They're like we can store everything you can store in a van, but when you really look at the layout of a van, you can't store everything we have in this truck in a van.
Speaker 2:So, your bed is over the cab. Of course You've got all this room to walk around. So in the back seat we've got the four door Ford F350. The back seat we've removed, the back seat made a platform. We've got mountain bikes back there, weights, workout bitches, fishing gear, solar panels, tables, chairs, the Jolka shower system.
Speaker 3:The whole.
Speaker 1:Jolka shower system that we talked about.
Speaker 2:All of that is in there and nothing has besides paddle boards. You've got paddle boards and we had to put those in here that are deflatable, that put in backpacks. That's the only thing that goes in here, and then when we park we'll put it in the front seat. But everything else is fit in that truck. We're in a van. You've got to put it under the bed, is your only option. That's about it.
Speaker 3:And then you have to. The bed converts either into a couch or a dining area. So every day that's having to, you know, put the bed up, put it back.
Speaker 2:Well, that's, if you don't have anything under the bed. If you have, oh yeah, yeah, if you have anything under the bed, you can't convert it into a table, that's true.
Speaker 3:So we just have so much more room? I think it just depends on your lifestyle and your personality.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Like, if you don't do all the outdoor activities that we do, then you wouldn't need all of that extra storage, but we had to factor all of that stuff in Because I didn't want to go across the country and find an amazing mountain bike trail and not be able to Dang. I wish we had our mountain bikes.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But also being able to go down that dirt road with the four-wheel drive. Right, because the vans Like you can get a van for I don't know $150,000, which is still a lot two-wheel drive. But soon as you start looking into the bigger vans with the four-wheel drive, it's another market completely.
Speaker 2:I mean we've already gotten stuck in two-wheel drive with this thing, like when she slid the truck off into a ditch Sorry, I'm calling you on that again, but she was driving and it slid and then it went to a clay like a ditch.
Speaker 2:That was a clay top road and we had to put in four-wheel drive and that didn't work, so we had to put the lockers on and that's the only way we were able to get out. And guess what? We were able to get out. If I had a van this two-wheel I'd still be stuck there today. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, one thing I will. I do want to ask you. I tend to ask everybody and I'm kind of attracted to couples that seem to have a good relationship, because my wife and I do. But it's becoming increasingly rare to find that and the challenge is, of course, of living in that small space or navigation in general with the couples, like what are your secrets? Is your successful relationship? Communication, assuming you have one, I mean, oh yeah, you have to live.
Speaker 2:We spend every waking moment Like she gets upset if she's up in the bed watching TV and I want to brush my teeth first she says this is not the time to brush your teeth.
Speaker 3:I'm like wait for me, Okay.
Speaker 2:So, but all joking aside, we communication is the biggest thing and you got to be friends. That's got to be the number one thing. You got to love each other's company and I will say we have gotten closer and our communication has gotten even better. Not saying it's been perfect. There's been, there's been, moments where we've had yeah, we still get in tips.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we get in tips, but it's usually when you have a bunch of stress on you from traffic, like going through Houston Texas. If you ever driven through Houston Texas, you wow. But that's an example and you can get irritated with each other, but that's going to happen with every couple. We never go to bed mad and we immediately talk about something that's bothering us. We don't let it fester, we don't oh, everything's fine. If it's not fine, we're like well, I, you know I got a little bit of a problem with something that you said, or or I don't agree with something. We do that with each other all the time.
Speaker 3:Well, I will say, though, that, before we embarked on this journey, the whole reason that we want another reason we wanted to do this is because, you know him being an accountant, he worked all the time and we never really saw each other. You know, we had this house that we didn't spend any time in, and we never got to really see each other. So the the main purpose was that we wanted to do something where we could be together every single day, and this was an option, and it's.
Speaker 2:It's true, you've got to want to be with each other. My mother and her boyfriend, it said, I don't know how you're going to do this, because we would kill each other if, if we're in your situation.
Speaker 3:I give it six months. You don't know if that will.
Speaker 2:So it's been a two and a half years now, almost, of us and we're. I was thinking about how much we've grown together.
Speaker 3:It's so neat.
Speaker 2:So when we first started, she wasn't really all into the business side of our YouTube channel with with the content. She was still trying to wrap her head around. Because she's such a structured person. She was still trying to wrap her head around how am I going to exist? I know this was my idea, but now that we've done it I don't know how to live my daily life Right. So she was trying to get used to that and I'm over here like panicking. I've got to figure out how to continue doing this YouTube channel thing because I'm I'm driving, I'm doing a set and a 10th, we're trying to figure out where we're sleeping and she's just like I'm trying to figure out where I'm working out.
Speaker 3:That's all I care about. We're the most important thing. I'm still the most important thing to me.
Speaker 2:So we. But now, seeing how we've grown together, I used to take criticism on our channels from her, like she told me something didn't look good. I was like mm, it looks great. Now I've learned to be so much more patient. Take her criticism because she is the critic. When are we post before we post the vlog? And she's taken so much ownership of all the communication, of of anything email related and and ideas of titles and what we're going to do, like she. She plans out stuff for us now and I'm used to. She never did that and it's so neat to see how she's evolved and how I've evolved with her. We're not even the same people we were when we started the channel.
Speaker 2:We're not. I love it. Actually, I love you more. I'm pretty cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's nice, that's special, yeah, and you seem to have a lot of respect for each other and that you both contribute equally, which is important. I think it would be difficult if one person tends to be lazier, or that you're fighting over the, the gender roles, like you know, the cooking, the cleaning and things like that, and I don't do that type of thing like you would need to. You're pitching in to do whatever needs to be done together and you end up working out a kind of a structure where somebody does tend to do one thing and one and the other person does the other, but then you come together when it's necessary. But it's the respect I think that you have for each other as well, that that comes across in the channel that I think is missing in a lot of people's relationships.
Speaker 2:I really think in today's society, I think more people need to be forced into this life style or homesteading, where each partner has more that they need to do with each other, because most people now go to work and they come home, they sit down, watch TV. Most people don't even cook anymore.
Speaker 2:They just pick up dinner and then they go to bed with no, you say contribution. But even if it's a contribution, it also gives you a purpose in the relationship. So they have this empty, non-meaningful relationship. I've seen so much, a lot of our friends.
Speaker 3:It's just because they get caught up in the lifestyle of the hustle and bustle and there's not enough time to do anything, especially when you have chores that need to be done around the house but you only get like two days off the weekend. So I think that puts a lot of strain on couples as well.
Speaker 2:I just think more. I think the world needs to slow down. That's what I think. Slow down, take it easy.
Speaker 1:Yeah and yeah, be forced to work together, even with kids. I know the families that are doing this or families that are homesteading. It seems like they're too busy and that it's a difficult lifestyle. But spending that time together, I think, like my wife and I have been working together in either business or what we're doing now for 15 years more, Maybe 15 years full time.
Speaker 1:And everybody says the same thing you guys won't last or you can't do it together. And actually, when we went through our business failure in 2010, the lawyers said we don't know a couple that stayed together during this process, Like it just breaks people off the stress of it and not knowing, but just brought us, made us stronger, brought us together and we've been able to delve into this lifestyle. And again, the more of the outdoorsman and more of the hands-on building of the infrastructure, personnel, the wife's in the background doing everything that people don't see. And then, of course, it's like what's your wife do? Doesn't she do anything? She does just as much as me, Otherwise we wouldn't work Like. We respect each other so much and we are looking out for the other person and we don't want the other person to be burdened by something that I don't want her to feel the burden because I haven't done something. I haven't lifted my weights.
Speaker 2:I feel the same way sometimes. If she's doing dishes or something and I'm over here doing nothing, I have a media, I have to get up and start drawing dishes. I just want to help her out. Like I know where you're coming from.
Speaker 1:You don't want to make one person feel like they have too much burden on them, yeah, and even when I see you sneaking away fishing or she's doing something like that. But you can say, well, I'm getting content, so at least you're working, so right.
Speaker 2:It's true, it's true, but usually when I'm sneaking away fishing, she's taking it easy. She's got the lounger out. Don't let her fool you. She's over there just taking it in, taking in the suns, taking a nap. Yeah, could you need to relax a little bit every once in a while.
Speaker 1:That's the problem. Yeah, I get caught up in the YouTube thing as well at times, and I think it's just not. It wasn't the reason that we're living this lifestyle. It's not just to create content. That's the I mean. It allows us. You can't take it for granted either, because of course it allows us to, it allows us the financial freedom to do this, but again, those are the times we live in.
Speaker 1:There's lots of ways to make money and the fact that we're able to make it doing what we love to do is very special, but it means you have to work at it. It's a lot of work, but at times it's like, okay, I need to take a little bit of time off. And that's why we looked at the truck camper, because I look at what we've built, or homesteads that we've built as a great base camp, as you mentioned, maybe going back to Arkansas at some point, but still having. You know, I'm 53 and I don't. I can't see myself for 30 years just doing what I'm doing exactly today, right here, right now. I want this to always be a part of my life, but it doesn't mean I don't want to keep exploring and living in a life of adventure.
Speaker 2:Right, I feel pretty fortunate on my end because, first off, I have a wife that loves doing exactly what I love to do. That's the first crazy thing, like I don't know many couples that enjoy the same thing when it comes to camping and being outdoors. But what else is so amazing is I love making content. It's my life now. I look forward to it. I'm working on a vlog right now and I've been just geeking out nonstop like honey because we're trying to do some new things with our content, like look at this.
Speaker 2:Look at this and I'm getting so excited that I don't want to stop working and she's the one that says you need to put it down, I'll wake up, or she'll wake up and I'll be down here working at two o'clock in the morning and she's like you need to come to bed. I'm like I'm having too much fun, Like that's great. So I'm pretty fortunate that I get to do both things that I love, which is content creation in being outdoors.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it shows it's a little bit of a lifestyle changing a little bit recently too. It's a it's yeah, I've got my slow content that I like to make but the audience isn't quite as interested in. Like my nature, like I'll sometimes do a full nature video, drone and you know rivers and things like that but about a 30 the audience will watch two thirds tune out. But I just love making them so I continue to do that. I find it relaxing to make them. I love going out. We call it our b-roll days. My wife and I will go just film nature instead of me working all the time. So I'm kind of you're kind of forced then to enjoy it even more or to spend more time in nature and do more interesting things, because you have an audience that wants to to join you on those adventures. Is there anything else that you guys would like to add? Is there anything you wanted to ask me, or is there a place you want to send people to to see your content, or oh yeah, I guess.
Speaker 3:So we are in a transition phase where we will be changing our YouTube channel name Strictly just because we're not living in a tent anymore. We might camp in the future, but we'll never live in a tent anymore. So we're probably going to change the name of the channel to Cody and Kelly just to be more relatable to our audience, because you're just, you're following our lives and what we're doing. I mean, we might not even be traveling in a truck camper. Within a year, we might be doing something totally different.
Speaker 3:We don't even know what we're doing next week, like we said, earlier.
Speaker 2:We have a larger audience or a newer audience that's starting to become the bigger portion of our old audience who don't know what dome life means Right true. So we've even had people be like, are y'all flat earthers? And we're like, no, it was about a dome tent. So we decided that we would slowly start changing our name. So if you've seen that in the content, we started trying to transition. Let people see Cody and Kelly versus dome life more, and probably by the first of the year we'll change it to just Cody and Kelly.
Speaker 3:We still will have the business side. So there will still be a brand that is dome life, which is just going to be a camping lifestyle. So we'll still have the website with the brand.
Speaker 2:Because we still want to make a camping gear through camping shirts outfits, not outfits, camping shirts, basically and we want to promote some of the things that we used to do in the past, which was cleanups, and we used to do those cleanups in our home state of Arkansas where people picked up litter, and we will try to throw some more of that in in the future in our home state. So the dome life brand will never die, but we just want to disconnect us from a brand, so we're no longer dome life. Anybody can live the dome life. We're coding Kelly who own dome life. So that's, that's the slow transition in the future that we'll take.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a good idea.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I'm curious. I do want to ask you a question. So what kind of business did your wife in you own?
Speaker 1:What did we own before this?
Speaker 2:Yeah, but you said in 2010,. I was curious, what was it that you all did?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so back in 2005, I started a commercial roofing business. My background was sheet metal machine metal worker but installing metal on commercial flat roofs basically around the perimeter. So I had a company that I started doing commercial roofing and it was pretty big company. We had 90 something employees at one point. But then that 2008 financial crisis that hit really hit the construction industry hard and it took a while to put all my customers out of business in 2010. So we just, yeah, I ended up $750,000 in debt that I had guaranteed of the business. So we were like literally below below zero, starting over again. So myself, for life has been our climb out of that mess and reprioritizing Wow, wow 750,000.
Speaker 1:It seemed like it would be impossible. I was resigned to just never owning anything again and live working for somebody I didn't like and just doing the daily grind again and getting half my wages she literally for the rest of my life. We found a way to just build other businesses and like, claw our way out and, like I said, prioritize food and doing everything hands on and working hard together and we're able to recover and now kind of living my dream life.
Speaker 2:Wow, and so many people get into that rut and never they can't pull themselves out because they don't have the mental strength like you did in you and your wife together as a team. That's impressive, all right. Hats off to y'all.
Speaker 1:Oh, thank you. Yeah, it comes down to that materialistic thing. If you're so, you just can't identify too much with your things, but also your career, who you are, that you mentioned. You guys might be doing something completely different a year from now. That's just to stay nimble and not get so attached to something that you can't let go or, if you lose it, it destroys you. So I've always had that mindset I can go all the way to. I always thought I could go to zero, like I built my first cabin when I was in my teens, actually, and moved into one when I was 21 and lived so simply that I thought, okay, there's my baseline, I can take risks in life because I know I can go to zero and be happy. I never dreamed I'd be $750,000 below zero and have to climb out of that, but that's been a mindset that's allowed me to not stress over the major things that really destroy a lot of people.
Speaker 2:Man, I love your phrase of your base to zero. I look at whenever everything was stolen from us and we had nothing. We didn't have a house. We tell people we were homeless and they're like you're not homeless, but we don't have a home.
Speaker 3:We can just go stack up with our parents. We have nothing.
Speaker 2:That's our baseline. I never looked at it that way, but I'm grateful that that happened. Looking back, because it gave us a baseline, we had nothing but the shoes on our feet and the truck. Thank God we had a truck, actually, no, we didn't.
Speaker 3:Well, we didn't. We were driving a Dodge truck because the Hummer had gotten totaled. What two weeks?
Speaker 2:before that happened, so it was in the shop and we were driving his dad's pickup. It was a wild chain of events. The lady did a U-turn in front of me and totaled the truck. What's crazy is it started out as I had a mountain bike that I had for like eight years and I finally cracked the frame and I said, kelly, do we have enough money for me just to go finally get a new mountain bike? She's like, yeah, yeah, I check because she does our finances, because I'm the accountant.
Speaker 3:I'm not doing that.
Speaker 2:I'm doing all the finances. Do we have enough? Because I don't know what's in our account. I was like, do we have enough? Yeah, I think we got enough. I was like, okay, I'm going to go get a bike. She goes. Okay, so I'll go get the bike. I'll leave the bike shop. The lady does the U-turn in front of me as I'm leaving the bike shop. Totaled the truck. Then, thank God, I have my dad. He drove from East Texas to Central Arkansas. For him that was a five hour drive to bring me one of his two trucks. He does installation for Home Depot, does all their doors and windows, so he has a backup truck in case one breaks down. Women's wife drove all the way up, gave us that we're driving around, wait for the truck to get fixed. That's whenever we were trying to film the Thanksgiving vlog in our trailer gets stolen.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was kind of like I forgot since the truck incident had happened. It was kind of like what else? Why did I not even? Of course, this happened right now.
Speaker 2:I mean and the kicker for all of it is I had a trench like crawl up the pants leg, my inner pants leg, and I thought it was a massive leaves and I squeezed my pants and it bit through and bit my thumb.
Speaker 3:That was a crazy month, yeah. That all happened like two weeks. It was a whole month, yeah.
Speaker 2:I was like, wow, better not have any bad luck Not going.
Speaker 1:Well, that's where the strong relationship helps.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, so it was wild, it was a wild journey. Well, this is Thank you so much.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you. This is fun, just to be able to have conversations with people and just relax and enjoy it. You know we're kind of loners, so to get out there and speak to somebody in this format is just fun for me.
Speaker 2:Maybe we can meet up actually in person if we have time and if you have time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, either way, we'll reach out to you for some tips on where to go while we're down there. If you have any questions feel free to ask us Sure, okay, well, thank you. Thank you, we'll talk again soon All right bye. Bye.