Outland Adventures

  ❄️ Cold-Weather Camping: Cozy Tips & Gear We Love There’s something magical about cold-weather camping — the crunch of frost under your boots, the smell of woodsmoke drifting through crisp air, and the way coffee somehow tastes better when you can see your breath. We’ve camped through snow flurries, icy rain, and those sneaky “it’s 60° at noon but 25° by sundown” kind of nights. So trust us when we say: being cozy is an art form. Here’s how we stay toasty, cheerful, and (mostly) frostbite-free when temps drop: 1. Layer Like a Pro Forget fashion — think survival-chic. Merino wool base layers , flannel shirts , and a puffy jacket are our holy trinity. Amanda swears by fleece-lined leggings , while Chris has an ongoing love affair with thermal shirts that make him look like a mountain hermit. 2. Hot Drinks, Always Cocoa, coffee, cider — if it’s warm and steamy, we’re drinking it. Our secret weapon? A heavy-duty thermos that keeps drinks hot long enough to survive an...

 🎄 Full-Time RV Life & The Holidays: Staying Festive on the Road When you live full-time on the road, the holidays look a little different. No big house to decorate. No attic full of ornaments. No seven-foot tree (unless you count that one inflatable we thought would fit in the RV ... it didn’t). But different doesn’t mean less magical. Out here, holiday cheer comes in smaller packages—twinkling lights strung under the awning, cinnamon candles flickering on the counter, and maybe a wreath made from pinecones we found on a hike. Every mile brings a new kind of celebration, and that’s part of the charm. 🎁 Cozy Spaces, Big Spirit We’ve learned that it doesn’t take much to feel festive in a tiny space. A strand of fairy lights instantly turns the RV into a cozy winter nook. We hang stockings on the cabinet handles, play our favorite holiday playlist , and let the smell of hot cocoa fill the air. Amanda’s crafting magic usually comes into play here— mini wreaths , hand...

  🚐 Top 10 Myths About Full-Time RV Life (and the Truth) We’re Amanda & Chris, traveling full-time in Wildebeest , our 1990 Ford E350 shuttle bus conversion . After a couple of years on the road, we’ve heard (and lived through) just about every assumption people make about full-time RV life. Some are hilarious, some are frustrating, and some have a little truth to them — but most are myths. Here are the top 10 misconceptions we hear the most (and the reality behind them): 1. Myth: RV Life is Just One Big Vacation Truth: It’s still life. We work, we clean, we budget, we stress. Yes, the scenery is better — but laundry still piles up. 2. Myth: You Need a Huge, Fancy RV to Go Full-Time Truth: Nope! Wildebeest is a 1990 shuttle bus conversion with quirks galore. It works for us because we made it ours — not because it’s shiny or new. Our previous rig? A 1991 Chevy G20... If it works for you it's the right RV. 3. Myth: Full-Time RVers Are Always on the Move Truth: We s...

  🚐 Full-Time RV Life: The Pros & Cons We’re Outland Adventures, aka Amanda & Chris, traveling full-time in Wildebeest, our 1990 Ford E350 shuttle bus conversion. What started as a leap into the unknown has turned into a lifestyle that’s equal parts adventure and challenge. Living in an RV full-time often sounds like a dream — and in many ways, it is. But like anything worth doing, it comes with its highs and lows. Here are some of the things we’ve learned along the way: 🌟 The Pros Freedom to Roam We’re not tied to one place. Mountains this month, lakes the next — we just point Wildebeest in the right direction and go. Changing Scenery Our backyard changes constantly. Cornfield sunsets, lakeside mornings, small-town main streets — no two weeks ever look the same. Simplicity Living small means less clutter and fewer distractions. Everything we own has a place and a purpose. Meeting Incredible People From campground neighbors to fellow workampers, we’ve met amaz...

📞 Staying Close When You’re Miles Away: Connecting with Family on the Road Hey everyone! It’s Amanda & Chris from Outland Adventures , here to share a part of life on the road that can be both tricky and rewarding: keeping close with family — even when we’re far, far away . Being full-time travelers means we’re often hundreds (or thousands) of miles from home, holidays, birthdays, and just the everyday moments we used to take for granted. But family? They matter. A lot. Here’s how we keep those ties strong — and why it’s worth the effort. 📱 Technology Is Our Lifeline Thanks to the magic of smartphones, video calls, and social media, we’re never really far away. Weekly video chats with siblings and loved ones keep us in the loop on birthdays, big news, and sometimes just to see familiar faces. We share real-time updates — photos from our latest hike, clips of campfire stories, and silly moments from inside Wildebeest. Group chats keep the day-to-day jokes, memes, and ra...

  🛞 RV Life Isn’t Always Glamorous: The Hard Truth from the Road Hey y’all — it’s Amanda & Chris from Outland Adventures . We love the RV lifestyle. We really do. The freedom. The weird towns. The starry skies. The cornbread from strangers. But here’s the truth no Instagram filter can fix: RV life is also hard. And weird. And sometimes really gross. So today, instead of showing you another peaceful campsite or slow morning coffee, we’re talking about the parts of full-time travel that don’t make the highlight reel — because being real is part of the adventure too. 😩 1. Things Break. Constantly. Wildebeest is a tough old gal — a 1990 E350 shuttle bus that’s seen a lot of action. But still, something’s always rattling, cracking, leaking, or randomly falling off the wall. Just in the past few months: We've had noises for no reason. Our door was flapping in the wind at 50MPH. A propane regulator hissed at us like an angry raccoon. Our “new” fan quit mid-hea...

  🌤️ Lazy Days at Camp: Why Doing Nothing is Sometimes Everything Hey friends — it’s Amanda & Chris from Outland Adventures , coming to you live from the most important part of the full-time RV lifestyle: the lazy day . You know the one. The sun’s warm but not too hot. The birds are doing their thing. Your to-do list is “maybe later.” Your biggest decision is whether to make coffee now or wait 15 more minutes just because you can. Yep — we’re talking about the gloriously slow , refreshingly quiet , do-nothing-all-day-and-feel-good-about-it kind of campground day. 🪑 What a Lazy Day Looks Like for Us We’re not sightseeing. We’re not working. We’re not filming, cleaning, organizing, fixing, uploading, dumping, driving, planning, or packing. We’re just… being . Here’s how a lazy day at camp usually unfolds in the Wildebeest: ☕ Coffee outside , in chairs that squeak slightly, facing whatever view we’ve got — trees, fields, fellow campers walking their chonky golden re...

  🧭 Where to Next? We Don’t Know (and That’s the Best Part) Hey again, from somewhere slightly east of the middle of nowhere. It’s Chris & Amanda from Outland Adventures , and if you ask us where we’re headed next, we’ll smile and shrug and say: “Not sure yet.” And here’s the thing — we mean that in the best possible way. When we first hit the road in Brunilda, our previous van, we thought we’d have a color-coded map and a six-month plan. Instead, we’ve learned that the best parts of this lifestyle come when you leave space for the unknown. 📅 Plans? We Have Loose Ideas. Right now, we’ve wrapped up a workamping gig in Northwest Indiana. The campground’s been good to us — solid people, weird weather, and more than a few stories. But as it all winds down, the inevitable question pops up: “So… where are you headed next?” Honestly? We don’t know. We’ve got a short list of maybes. A few friends in a couple states. A festival we might hit if we feel like it. But no reser...

  🚐 Tiny Space, Big Life: Tips for Thriving in a Small Home on Wheels Hey again, friends of the road (and tiny house dreamers)! It’s Amanda & Chris here from Outland Adventures , and today we’re talking about something we get asked a lot : “How do you two live in such a small space and not drive each other crazy?” Short answer? We do drive each other a little crazy — but we’ve learned how to do it with love, coffee, and very clear drawer boundaries. 💀 Living full-time in Wildebeest , our converted 1990 E350 shuttle bus, means cozy quarters, creative storage, and figuring out how to make a home out of less than 100 square feet. It’s not always easy, but it is worth it. So here it is — our best, road-tested advice for living in a small space and actually thriving . 🧺 1. Everything Needs a Home (and a Backup Plan) In a tiny space, clutter multiplies fast. Every item should have a designated spot — not a vague “somewhere in that bin.” When something new comes in, somet...

🌄 Welcome to Outland Adventures: Life on the Road with Chris, Amanda, and Wildebeest Hey there, fellow travelers, dreamers, and DIY lovers!  We’re Chris and Amanda, the duo behind Outland Adventures — a rolling lifestyle of creativity, curiosity, and a whole lot of campfire coffee. We’ve traded traditional living for the open road, traveling full-time in our one-of-a-kind rig: Wildebeest , a 1990 Ford E350 Shuttle Bus conversion. Once a mobile command unit for county EMS, she’s now a quirky, dependable home packed with personality (and a couple of propane stoves that keep us well-fed and caffeinated). 🚐 Meet Wildebeest Before joining our crew, Wildebeest helped save lives — serving as a county EMS mobile command unit. Today, she’s on a new mission: helping us explore backroads, small towns, and the weirdest roadside attractions we can find. We converted her into a fully functional tiny home with everything we need (and nothing we don’t). No black tanks to worry about, just smart...

 Hey Y'all! When we started out this year we had a few social media goals, which I'll share below. First though it's amazing to us how the growth happened on each platform. The blogs maintain the same, nothing huge but they do okay. Facebook was a slow steady climb each week, and we now sit at just under 1100! We've met a lot of really cool people on FB. TikTok hovered at about 40 followers for months! Then all of a sudden we got up to 100, then 500, and now it's at about the same level as our Facebook! All that growth happened in about a month or so! There are so many amazing travel/RV creators out there. Twitter or X, we don't really mess with other than to post that the blog is up. We don't really follow anyone there, and no one really follows us. I did take a break from posting the blog links and views went down, even though no one interacts on twitter. So, I returned to posting.  Instagram, I feel like we gave it a good shot, but we didn't grow at a...

 Hey Y'all, This blog, and corresponding video, have been quite the work in progress. As I've mentioned before the internet here is very very slow most of the time, so uploading takes a full day. We've also been a bit more busy this past week, the campground owners took a short vacation, so we had more responsibilities and less down time. Then it's been 4th of July prep.  Everything is going extremely well. We've finally finished the video: Uploading is taking forever! I will add the link once it's done, but didn't want to delay the blog any further. In the process of getting things ready to go we: Removed the rear table (reused most of the wood for stability) Relocated and repurposed the center table, creating a kitchen space, TV (laptop) stand, and a desk area Cleaned the walls and floors (a few times) Took down, cleaned, and put back the curtains Added curtains to the main door Reused 99% of the things we already had, and moved them from the old van, Brun...

 Hey Y'all, We've only been living in Wildebeest, our bus, for about a week plus a few days & 600mi. That's long enough to choose some things we are LOVING about the bus and our temporary layout. Here's our list: 1) So Much more room! No more crouching, no more shuffling things, no more squishy. (I feel like that's already more than one, but we'll count it all together.) 2) She's much bigger, but still easily fits most places... everywhere we've been so far. She also feels SOLID, Brunilda did not. 3) Handles wind & weather like a champ! We had to go through a thunderstorm crossing Clinch Mtn and it was easy peasy.  4) This desk area Chris built, that we decided on very last minute. It's great for working on our laptops, folding clothes, etc. 5) So many storage opportunities, which will grow and change as we can afford more, and needs arise. The cluttered-ness is bother me, but we had to get here, and we've been busy working this past week...

 Hey Y'all, If you follow us on social media, you've seen Wildebeest (or Wilda for short). Our 1990 Ford E350 Shuttle Bus, whom we're converting into our new home on wheels. In her previous life she was a Mobile Emergency Unit Command Center, lots of words to say she was a Parking Lot Princess most of her life. We picked her up in Tennessee, did a bunch of mechanical work, and started on our clean up & temporary build. We've already discovered things we're liking and things we aren't (and plan to change in the future). The accompanying video isn't ready yet, unfortunately. We've been busy traveling and getting back to work. While she was in the shop we didn't have access to the footage to begin editing. We hope to have that posted by Saturday the 14th, and I'll add in the video HERE. Some work in progress pictures: Clean up, and planning. The middle table doesn't work for us. Passenger seat installed! (And seat belts.) A warm day! Moving ...

 Hey Y'all, So, what have we been doing? Some of it we've shared here in the blog (Like our first Loves RV stay) some we've shared on our social media accounts: linktr.ee/outlandadventures We started out March in NE Ohio, Chris' best friend (more like family really, and that's how we generally refer to them) had just had surgery on his ankle. We visited with them, attended a basketball game, a dance competition, several parks, played bingo, went to Quality Inn with an entire indoor play area with pools, hot tub, mini golf, arcade, and various play areas. I'm sure there was more, but those were the highlights! After we left them we spent a few days in Findley State Park, before heading further west, we spent a night in Delphos, OH... Pretty area, but the weather didn't really cooperate enough to enjoy outdoor recreation. That brings us to April... From there we traveled onward, crossed the state line, and spent a week in Decatur, Indiana.  While there we enjo...