Tosh Self Propelled drops by to tell us how he got into content creation & what his new adventure is all about!

In this engaging episode of the Super Good Camping Podcast, hosts Pamela and Tim chat with Richard Tosh, affectionately known as Tosh Self-Propelled. Richard shares his transformative journey from a military career to a life filled with outdoor adventures. He opens up about overcoming a back injury and depression, and how he found renewed purpose through canoeing, hiking, and embracing van life. Richard's story is one of resilience and passion, as he details his experiences with whitewater activities and the heartbreak of losing his dog, Cooper. The trio also discusses the practicalities of van life, including legalities of filming and traveling in the US as a Canadian, and the challenges of accessing natural parks. This episode is a deep dive into the joys and hurdles of pursuing a life connected with nature.

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=tosh+self+propelled

https://www.instagram.com/toshselfpropelled/

Transcript

00:00 - 00:03
Hello and good day, eh? Welcome to the Super Good Camping Podcast. My name is Pamela.

00:03 - 00:07
I'm Tim and we are from supergoodcamping.com we are here because we're on a mission to inspire

00:07 - 00:10
other families to enjoy camping adventures such as we have with our kids.

00:10 - 00:16
Today's guest canoes, hikes, camps, hunts, fishes and has recently embraced van life.

00:16 - 00:19
Sometimes he solo, sometimes with friends, but always on an adventure.

00:19 - 00:23
He publishes fantastic content on his YouTube channel and on Instagram.

00:23 - 00:27
He's also a member of a group of adventurers here in Ontario known as the Rat Pack.

00:27 - 00:33
Please welcome Richard Tosh, better known as Tosh, self propelled. Hey, welcome.

00:33 - 00:33
Thank you.

00:33 - 00:35
Thanks for dropping by for a chat, man.

00:35 - 00:38
Oh, happy to. Thanks for the invite anytime.

00:39 - 00:45
I as I've stated, oh I don't know 473 times, I will if it like minded people, I will chat with

00:45 - 00:50
them for hours and hours and hours at, at the drop of a hat. No problem.

00:50 - 00:52
Tim can talk your ear off with no trouble.

00:52 - 00:54
I got some issues.

00:54 - 00:55
Perfect.

00:55 - 01:03
So out of the gate, the first thing is I want to find out how you got into to doing the things that you do.

01:03 - 01:06
But I'm mostly I'm interested.

01:06 - 01:11
How did you get into doing like your channel, your YouTube channel and Instagram, stuff like that?

01:12 - 01:17
One day you were just touring along and you went, you know, maybe I should share this with people or what?

01:17 - 01:23
Well, the whole social media side of things was, is not me at all.

01:23 - 01:30
That was completely foreign to me until I left the military in 2018.

01:31 - 01:35
And up until that point I had zero social media.

01:35 - 01:42
I'd never been on Facebook, I had never used anything and oh, what's the best way to describe it?

01:42 - 01:48
I guess I didn't realize it was happening when I left the military, but I was in a very tight

01:48 - 01:56
knit community and I had a great support system around me and I didn't want to leave the military.

01:56 - 02:04
When I did, I was, I had, I have a back injury and so I just couldn't do my job anymore in the infantry.

02:06 - 02:15
So after I left I was just very aimless.

02:15 - 02:18
I guess I didn't know where I was going or what I wanted to do.

02:19 - 02:23
I couldn't go back into construction than I had done before the military due to the back injury.

02:23 - 02:33
And I didn't realize it at the time but like my life just really started to spiral downward very quickly.

02:33 - 02:39
I found myself not wanting to leave the house, not wanting to do any of the things I wanted to do.

02:39 - 02:49
Eventually that led to a through Veterans Affairs, I was sent to see psychiatrists and Psychologists

02:50 - 02:52
and I was eventually diagnosed with depression.

02:52 - 02:58
And due to a bunch of different factors, whether it's my professional life and my personal life

02:58 - 02:59
kind of came apart at the same time.

03:00 - 03:05
And I found myself just sitting for, sometimes for days.

03:05 - 03:09
I wouldn't leave the house, sometimes like a week, and I wouldn't even go outside.

03:11 - 03:17
And I had always been very involved in everything outdoors.

03:17 - 03:22
I grew up hunting and fishing and camping, my dad and all my uncles.

03:22 - 03:28
You know, I was very blessed as a child to have all these people in my life who love to do all this stuff outside.

03:28 - 03:31
And they always, you know, would let me tag along with them.

03:31 - 03:37
But at that time in 2019, I had no interest in any of that.

03:37 - 03:46
And I would sit for days and I just watch Netflix or YouTube and shut out the whole world. Like, close the blinds. I don't. Nothing else matters. I don't care.

03:46 - 03:55
And I started watching some people on YouTube, a bunch of different people across Ontario and.

03:55 - 04:03
And one guy in particular down in Utah, Steve from Firebox Stoves, started watching their channels.

04:03 - 04:04
These guys going out camping.

04:04 - 04:10
And I thought, you know, I used to like to do this stuff, and I'm being told by other people

04:10 - 04:15
that I should get off my ass and go outside and do something and, you know, how hard could it be?

04:15 - 04:17
I'm gonna go camping again.

04:17 - 04:23
And I went on a little canoe trip with a friend of mine, my oldest friend from high school.

04:23 - 04:30
We went to Algonquin for a few days and yeah, I really do remember I used to love to do this.

04:30 - 04:34
Like, I, I just been separated from everything for so long.

04:36 - 04:44
So that little canoe trip to Algonquin was, Was really just a spark that lit the whole fire.

04:44 - 04:49
And when I got back from that trip, okay, I need to get a lighter canoe.

04:49 - 04:55
I had this old 90 pound fiberglass tub that was, you know, just, I. I couldn't carry it.

04:55 - 05:03
And so went and found a Kevlar canoe on Kijiji and then thought, oh, get a camera.

05:03 - 05:05
And, you know, how hard can it be, really? Right?

05:05 - 05:08
Like, see all these people on YouTube making videos.

05:09 - 05:12
And I, I'll be the first to admit that I am.

05:12 - 05:19
I have no experience in anything related to computers or anything.

05:19 - 05:24
Like, video editing was so foreign to me.

05:25 - 05:27
I mean, I could barely turn it on and send an email.

05:28 - 05:35
And so I, I picked up a used camera again off Kijiji and went out on a little canoe trip and

05:35 - 05:41
came back and realized that everything I'd filmed was completely unwatchable and, you know,

05:41 - 05:44
just like shaky footage and terrible. Everything was awful.

05:45 - 05:46
You know, I couldn't stand that.

05:46 - 05:49
Like, my own voice sounded weird to me on camera.

05:49 - 05:53
So I thought, well, what the hell? I'll do it again. Let's try it again.

05:53 - 06:02
And it led to one trip after another after another, and I just kept taking the camera out. And oddly enough, the.

06:02 - 06:07
The thing that really started to hit me was once I started doing it, I started to connect with

06:07 - 06:12
other people, either through YouTube or through Instagram that were also doing the same thing.

06:12 - 06:18
And that's the part that was a total shock to me, because if you look at my channel, like, the

06:18 - 06:19
first bunch of videos were.

06:19 - 06:21
Were me and my dog, Cooper.

06:22 - 06:23
It's just the two of us most of the time.

06:23 - 06:28
And then all of a sudden, you know, a little while in, I start meeting all these people, and

06:28 - 06:33
it's one trip after another after another with just different dudes I met off of.

06:34 - 06:36
Off YouTube or off Instagram or whatever.

06:36 - 06:38
I'd get messages from people, hey, do you want to go canoeing?

06:38 - 06:43
And I go check out their channel or go look at their Instagram and think, yeah, maybe I'll try

06:43 - 06:45
going out with that guy and. Or this guy, or.

06:45 - 06:47
They're not a serial murderer.

06:47 - 06:53
And. Yeah, exactly. It's a little odd when you get a message from a complete stranger on the

06:53 - 06:57
Internet that, you know, do you want to go spend a few days in the woods together?

06:57 - 07:00
I get a lot of that every time I extend an invitation.

07:02 - 07:04
So so far, it's all worked out.

07:04 - 07:06
I mean, some of these guys, we.

07:06 - 07:08
I've had some amazing trips.

07:08 - 07:10
Jason Bayans and I, that was.

07:10 - 07:13
Again, he reached out to me on Instagram, sent me a message.

07:14 - 07:18
We sat down and had a drink together and looked at some maps, and then we went and spent 14

07:18 - 07:20
days paddling to James Bay.

07:21 - 07:24
And that's led to a bunch more trips we've done together. And.

07:24 - 07:26
But that was our first trip ever.

07:26 - 07:31
Paddling was this trip, you know, 350 kilometers to James Bay.

07:31 - 07:36
It's amazing to have that kind of faith in a stranger, basically, because, I mean, you've seen

07:36 - 07:39
each other's YouTube content, I'm sure. But still, you.

07:39 - 07:40
You don't know this person.

07:40 - 07:44
And, yeah, I think you can if you.

07:44 - 07:51
I find, anyway, you can get a pretty good judge of people just based on their YouTube content a little bit.

07:51 - 07:54
At least you get a feeling for what this person might be like.

07:54 - 07:57
And, yeah, it's a gamble.

07:57 - 07:59
It hasn't always worked out.

08:00 - 08:06
There's been times where I've gone out and then, you know, it was okay, but there was no Plan

08:06 - 08:07
after that for another trip.

08:08 - 08:15
But, yeah, some people just, you know, hit it off, things go great, and before that trip ends,

08:15 - 08:17
you're planning the next one. Sweet.

08:17 - 08:20
Well, I'm. I'm. I'm glad it worked out, despite. Despite the.

08:20 - 08:24
The shaky cam, out of focus pile of crap the first one was.

08:25 - 08:27
But you have to do that. I have plenty of.

08:28 - 08:33
I'm pointing out, I have a hard drive full of all of our trips. I just. I just.

08:33 - 08:38
I just never get around to. Never mind.

08:38 - 08:41
I remember a quote, actually, just reminds me of.

08:41 - 08:44
There's a quote called Embrace the suck. And it's when.

08:44 - 08:49
Whenever you're starting something that you need to embrace that sucky part where you're really

08:49 - 08:54
not good at it until you can plow your way through and get to the point where you are good at it.

08:54 - 08:56
Yeah, I can see how that plays.

08:56 - 08:58
Although, also for myself, I.

08:58 - 09:04
I tape, like, I shoot part of it that A trip and plan it out and do the things.

09:04 - 09:07
And then at some point I go, I just want to enjoy the day.

09:07 - 09:08
I don't want to shoot anything.

09:08 - 09:08
I don't.

09:08 - 09:15
I don't. You know, I'll take pictures because that's a quick, easy, whip it out, frame it, click, click, click. Bob's your uncle.

09:15 - 09:18
But to set up video and stuff like that, it's like, you know what?

09:19 - 09:26
For me, most of the time, my backcountry experiences involve our eldest son. And I.

09:26 - 09:29
You know what, the kid's 22, and he still wants to hang out with me.

09:30 - 09:32
I kind of want to spend that time together like I want to do.

09:33 - 09:39
I want to do those things for as long as he's interested in hanging out with the old guy. So there you go.

09:39 - 09:43
Yeah. That's the beautiful part about these trips, is you can. You.

09:43 - 09:46
You can set it up however you want. And if.

09:46 - 09:48
If it's a video you want to get out of it, you can do that.

09:48 - 09:50
If it's just the experience.

09:50 - 09:53
Put the camera away and nobody needs to know what you're doing.

09:53 - 09:58
Yeah, yeah. Potentially a sideways question, but the. With your.

09:58 - 10:01
With your crappy back, how does that.

10:01 - 10:03
Okay, so this is a guy.

10:03 - 10:05
Just so you know, this is a guy that has.

10:05 - 10:11
I have two discs from my shoulders down that aren't fused. Everything else is. Is solid. I have a.

10:11 - 10:19
I have a boatload of hardware, and there are, like, Advil is my other backcountry partner.

10:19 - 10:24
It's the only way I can get through a lot of things, especially with, you know, sitting and that sort of jazz. It just.

10:25 - 10:29
I Stuff swells up, makes it. Makes for an unhappy.

10:29 - 10:31
Makes for an unhappy situation.

10:31 - 10:33
How, how do you just, how do you plow through that?

10:33 - 10:37
Have you, are you fixed? Did you have surgery?

10:37 - 10:39
Do you just deal with it?

10:39 - 10:40
Did you work out new ways?

10:40 - 10:43
What, what, how do you, how do you do the stuff you do, man?

10:44 - 10:46
So I haven't had surgery.

10:46 - 10:51
I've been told that it will get to the point where it's probably going to be necessary to fuse.

10:51 - 11:01
So I have three compressed discs in my low back, and if I'm careful, most of the time, it's not too bad.

11:01 - 11:08
I would say, like I've said this to doctors before, the pain runs at about a 3 out of 10 and

11:08 - 11:10
it just, it stays there.

11:10 - 11:14
It's something I deal with daily and it just become the norm for me.

11:14 - 11:16
So if I, if you find like I'm.

11:16 - 11:21
I'm shifting around a lot in my seat and whatever, that's just to offset some pressure.

11:22 - 11:25
It just settles in if I'm stagnant for too long.

11:25 - 11:29
And that was actually, again, going back to not wanting to leave the house.

11:29 - 11:33
And that was probably the worst thing I could have done for my, my back was I was putting on

11:33 - 11:38
weight and just not doing any form of exercise.

11:38 - 11:44
When I was in the, in the military, I was a gym rat. I love the gym.

11:44 - 11:51
I would cycle to work to the gym every day, work out for a couple hours every morning, and often

11:51 - 11:55
get another workout in, in the afternoon or on the way home or something.

11:55 - 11:59
So I was spending, you know, a couple hours minimum every day exercising.

11:59 - 12:07
And then when, when I hurt myself, it tapered off because I couldn't do what I had been doing.

12:08 - 12:14
And I got into this point, you know, it's a really lousy place to be where you're.

12:14 - 12:17
You just think where I was thinking, like, what's the point?

12:18 - 12:21
You know, if I can't do it at that level, what's the point of doing it?

12:21 - 12:23
What's the point of doing just a little bit?

12:23 - 12:27
Who cares about, you know, oh, this will help me down the road.

12:27 - 12:33
Like, if I can't do, you know, pick up a couple hundred pounds and throw it around and whatever,

12:33 - 12:35
then, you know, who cares?

12:35 - 12:36
And what am I training for?

12:36 - 12:40
That was actually a big part of it, was my training always had a purpose.

12:40 - 12:47
I was working towards something to be more fit for my job or another course I wanted to take.

12:48 - 12:54
And so I was in the infantry and then got into reconnaissance and eventually became a sniper.

12:54 - 13:01
And so you're with highly motivated people in that section of the military, it's a very, like,

13:02 - 13:10
tight knit little community of guys that are very motivated, very driven, very goal oriented.

13:11 - 13:17
And after I was hurt, I couldn't, you know, find a goal that made sense to me.

13:17 - 13:23
And in fact, like a lot of people, when they see the name of my channel, they automatically

13:23 - 13:26
assume it's physically self propelled.

13:26 - 13:30
And there is an element of that in the naming of the channel.

13:30 - 13:37
But actually where the name initially came from was being just mentally self propelled, getting

13:37 - 13:43
like me getting my mind into a place where I was forcing myself off the couch, out of the house

13:43 - 13:44
and out to do something.

13:45 - 13:49
Because in the, in the army and in the infantry particularly, everything's laid out for you.

13:49 - 13:54
You're told what to wear, what time to be somewhere, what you're gonna do when you get there,

13:54 - 13:56
and what the outcome's gonna be when you finish.

13:56 - 13:59
And so it's, it's completely different.

13:59 - 14:04
When I, when I left, it's like, okay, now what? Like who's.

14:04 - 14:05
I'm my own boss again.

14:05 - 14:06
He's telling me what to do.

14:06 - 14:07
I have to motivate myself.

14:08 - 14:14
So that, that's where the name actually came from was just like, I need to be self propelled,

14:14 - 14:16
self motivated and get out and do something.

14:17 - 14:21
And I mean, what better place to do that I find anyway than in the background?

14:21 - 14:26
Yeah, well, I totally agree and thanks for saving me that question because there you go.

14:29 - 14:35
All right. So. So you're sort of your, you've already explained your origin story with, with

14:35 - 14:40
your dad and your uncles and all that sort of jazz. That's, which is excellent. That's.

14:40 - 14:43
I think that, I think a lot of us that, that play outdoors.

14:43 - 14:47
That, that's kind of our origin story, paddling and stuff.

14:47 - 14:55
So did it start, so, so by say 2018, you're out 2019, you're starting to get out there and,

14:55 - 14:59
and, and paddle with the stupidly heavy canoe, which, just so you know, you're not the only

14:59 - 15:01
one that had one of those 90 pounders.

15:02 - 15:07
I have, I have a nice light Kevlar one now too, because, because I'm old and I don't need to

15:07 - 15:09
do any more damage to my back.

15:09 - 15:14
You know what, Tell me how you went from. Because it's.

15:14 - 15:22
If it's a long time, it still takes a while to sort of get back into that, that groove of paddling in the backcountry.

15:23 - 15:27
Did you, did you do a couple like sort of gentle trips? Check it out. Go.

15:27 - 15:28
Yeah, I can do this.

15:28 - 15:33
And, and then bug out for whatever your trip to James Bay or you Know, you start.

15:33 - 15:34
Started doing that sort of jazz.

15:34 - 15:36
Like, do you just go, yeah, this is the thing.

15:37 - 15:45
I typically am a. I have, like, an all or nothing personality where either I dive in headfirst

15:45 - 15:48
and I don't bother to check the depth of the water. I'm going in.

15:48 - 15:51
This is what we're doing, and.

15:51 - 15:53
Or I'm not going to bother.

15:53 - 15:54
I don't want anything to do with it.

15:55 - 16:04
And so my first solo trip that I decided to do like I'd done, I think I did a couple little

16:04 - 16:10
overnighters just to go out and, you know, figure out, you know, if my tent was going to work and what I needed.

16:10 - 16:15
But the first time I decided, yep, I'm gonna go out and do a solo canoe trip.

16:15 - 16:24
Cooper was nine months old, and I had a friend drop me off on the west side of Algonquin on Magnetowan.

16:24 - 16:26
I think it is Magneto one lake.

16:26 - 16:38
And we crossed Algonquin park from west to east, following the Petawa river over seven days. And it was.

16:38 - 16:41
There was a lot of ups and downs. It was like I.

16:42 - 16:46
I was kind of just mentally trying to get my head around what I was doing.

16:47 - 16:52
And, I mean, Coop was a pup, so he was, you know, it was the first time he'd ever, like, carried his own little pack.

16:52 - 16:55
And, you know, we were just figuring things out together.

16:55 - 16:58
But I tried to film it.

16:58 - 17:00
Of course, that was completely useless.

17:01 - 17:05
The video has deleted everything when I got home and looked at it.

17:05 - 17:07
But it was a trip of.

17:07 - 17:11
Of just getting out there. There was lots of.

17:11 - 17:16
The water was very low on the Petawawa, so I took most of the paint off the bottom of this nice

17:16 - 17:19
Kevlar canoe that I had just purchased and repainted.

17:19 - 17:24
And that was kind of the tipping point of saying, like, okay, I.

17:24 - 17:26
I remember I can do this.

17:26 - 17:34
I'd done solo trips, you know, in my early 20s, and, yeah, there was a lot of long portages.

17:34 - 17:36
Some of the portages, I just laid the canoe down.

17:36 - 17:43
I was like, okay, I'm just gonna have to drag this for a little bit because I can't carry it anymore. And. But, yeah, it was.

17:43 - 17:46
Just dive in, and let's see what happens.

17:46 - 17:48
I mean, what's the worst that can happen, right?

17:48 - 17:50
I get stranded in the middle of a gunk.

17:50 - 17:56
Yeah, well, seven days to buy it from west to east. That's. That's hauling it, baby.

17:56 - 18:05
Yeah, we were. We put in some long days, and I took a lot of Tylenol Advil, a lot of Naproxen.

18:05 - 18:09
Pretty much just took a Handful of pills and knocked myself out every night.

18:09 - 18:14
And having Coop along was fantastic because he was a puppy.

18:14 - 18:15
He was full of energy.

18:15 - 18:16
He was always ready to go.

18:16 - 18:19
And then he just crashed beside me every night.

18:20 - 18:30
Yeah, that was a real experience for the two of us, you know, my first real canoe trip in many years. His first really ever. But we had a.

18:30 - 18:33
We had a great time. And then it just.

18:33 - 18:40
Each trip was whether it was not always more remote, but it was just each trip kind of was another

18:40 - 18:42
step in, you know, the evolution of.

18:42 - 18:51
Of getting back into it again, changing up some gear, going a bit lighter, figuring out what worked and what didn't. Yeah, always experimenting.

18:51 - 18:55
I don't really get tied into any particular one way of doing anything.

18:55 - 18:58
You know, if there's a better way to do it.

18:58 - 19:00
Sure, let's try that and see if I like that better.

19:00 - 19:06
And so I'm always, you know, know, try a new piece of kit or a new piece of gear and whatever.

19:07 - 19:10
But also getting onto the Petawa again, paddling some moving water.

19:11 - 19:17
I had paddled a few rivers, you know, many years ago, and it's like, yeah, I remember. I like white water.

19:17 - 19:22
Grew up watching Bill Mason, you know, Path of the Paddle, and all those videos.

19:22 - 19:31
So then not long after that, I found a used Royal X canoe on Kijiji, and it came outfitted with

19:31 - 19:37
thigh straps and airbags and got it for a really good price. It's pretty beat up.

19:37 - 19:43
It's got lots of dings and creases in it, but still floats and paddles pretty well.

19:43 - 19:47
And so then now I started looking for. For rivers to paddle.

19:47 - 19:53
And that's taken on a whole life, I've confessed. Whitewater addict.

19:53 - 19:56
Yeah, that seems to be a thing when people.

19:56 - 20:01
People start doing it a little trepidatious or whatever, and as soon as they start doing it

20:01 - 20:03
and they go, oh, I just did that. Oh, it's a challenge.

20:03 - 20:05
Okay, I can do that. Oh. Oh, yeah.

20:05 - 20:05
Oh.

20:05 - 20:08
And you just watch them go, doom, doom, doom, doom, doom. I'm doing. I'm doing class three.

20:08 - 20:09
I don't care.

20:09 - 20:10
Let's go, let's go, let's go.

20:11 - 20:11
Yep.

20:11 - 20:12
Yeah. Cool.

20:12 - 20:18
Yeah. It's always just little steps to keep building, keep building. And it's.

20:18 - 20:20
It is addictive once you get into it.

20:20 - 20:22
Yeah, I have a feeling that's going to be.

20:22 - 20:27
Maybe not this year, but I'm gonna start planning towards having that same addiction because

20:28 - 20:30
I'm watching too many people have way too much fun with it.

20:30 - 20:34
So I'm terrified, but kind of feel like I Need to do it.

20:34 - 20:44
Yeah. My whitewater experience, I started off probably the way that you shouldn't, and that was. I was.

20:45 - 20:51
I was a teenager, and my dad's older brother, David, he was a real mentor to me, but he's a.

20:51 - 20:52
He was a paddling addict.

20:52 - 20:55
He just loved to be on the water paddling his canoe anytime he could.

20:55 - 20:57
And he got me into whitewater.

20:57 - 21:04
The first time I ever ran rapids, we dumped, we pinned the boat, and I was 14, like, swimming

21:04 - 21:08
through, you know, rocky, shallow rapids, getting all banged up.

21:08 - 21:11
And we fixed the boat.

21:11 - 21:17
We had to paddle it out, you know, kind of broken, and the gunnels all snapped and we made it

21:17 - 21:21
home and we fixed it up and we took it out again next year and dumped in another rapid.

21:21 - 21:29
And, you know, last year, actually, I went to Riverfest, Palmer Fest.

21:29 - 21:32
I heard it called both names at.

21:32 - 21:35
At the paddle Co Op. And that's where.

21:35 - 21:40
The first time I ever saw, like, that kind of community of people that are all different levels with expert instruction.

21:41 - 21:45
And I chose to just play around in a little pack raft.

21:45 - 21:47
That's the word I'm looking for.

21:47 - 21:49
I went pack rafting for the day.

21:49 - 21:53
And that thing's like, it's impossible to paddle a pack raft without a smile on your face. You just. You can't do it.

21:53 - 21:55
It's so much fun to play in.

21:55 - 22:03
But then there was kayakers and canoeists, and it's this whole community, and then there's, you know, instructors there. Top notch.

22:03 - 22:06
Yeah, it was pretty neat to see. Like, I.

22:06 - 22:07
I would like to go back. I.

22:07 - 22:10
I wish I had have taken more instruction when I was younger.

22:10 - 22:15
Probably would have saved me a lot of headaches along the way, but I'm pretty confident now,

22:15 - 22:20
and my technique's probably not the best, but I'm. I'm fairly confident in.

22:20 - 22:22
In some reasonably sized whitewater.

22:22 - 22:29
Well, I remember reading that you learn more from making mistakes than you learn from doing things right. So that's.

22:29 - 22:31
That's why I learned.

22:31 - 22:35
If that was the case, I would think I'd be a lot smarter than I am, because I've made a lot

22:35 - 22:39
of mistakes along the way. But, yeah, it's.

22:39 - 22:43
Once you get into it, you wonder, like, why did I wait so long to try this?

22:43 - 22:48
Because it's like when you feel the water pick the canoe up, and then you start to.

22:48 - 22:52
Once you start to know where you want to go, you identify where the rocks are and where the

22:52 - 22:56
channel is you want to go, and then you figure out how to get the boat to go there, it's such a cool feeling.

22:56 - 23:01
All of a sudden you realize, like you're running stuff that you didn't think was a canoe could get through.

23:01 - 23:06
And yeah, when you, when you just make that perfect line down, you look at the rap, you're like,

23:06 - 23:08
hey, I got to go here to here to here.

23:08 - 23:10
And then you make the boat do all that.

23:10 - 23:11
It's the greatest feeling at the end.

23:12 - 23:13
Like, it's so exciting too.

23:13 - 23:20
Okay, I don't need more convincing. Just stop. All right, well, so.

23:20 - 23:23
And as life has progressed, you. You have a.

23:23 - 23:25
You have a new thing that you're doing.

23:25 - 23:27
What, what is the new thing that you're doing?

23:27 - 23:29
I'm sitting in it right now.

23:29 - 23:33
So I'm here in southeastern Nevada and.

23:33 - 23:39
And it's almost a year ago that I've been looking at vans for a while.

23:39 - 23:48
So this is a sprinter van built out as a camper with water, solar, everything you need in here, there's a fridge.

23:48 - 23:55
And I'd been looking at them for a while. And then Cooper got.

23:55 - 23:57
Cooper had, he was get.

23:57 - 24:00
He had this like weird thing where he would be passing blood.

24:00 - 24:05
Every once in a while I take him to the vet and they'd say, oh, he appears to be fine.

24:05 - 24:11
And then it got really bad mid March of last year and I took him in and they found that he had cancer.

24:11 - 24:16
And there were several tumors on his heart and his spleen and his liver.

24:16 - 24:19
And I think that probably had been the problem all along.

24:19 - 24:21
And they hadn't diagnosed it.

24:22 - 24:30
And by that point it was, you know, this is like, it's beyond anything they could do. Like. So I lost Coop. Yeah. About a year ago.

24:31 - 24:36
And that was like he had that dog, went everywhere with me, everywhere. He.

24:36 - 24:38
If I was driving somewhere, he was riding in the truck.

24:38 - 24:41
If anywhere I went any hiking, any.

24:41 - 24:43
Like, if you go look at my channel, you'll see them.

24:43 - 24:46
You know, he's running around in James Bay on the mud flats.

24:46 - 24:52
He's, you know, swimming in Lake Superior and all the rivers and lakes in between that we've been to.

24:52 - 24:58
He was always there and slept beside me every night for five years.

24:58 - 25:02
And after I lost Coop, I just thought, what am I waiting for?

25:02 - 25:05
I've wanted to try this van.

25:05 - 25:10
Living on the road, it's all like the idea of it always had really appealed to me.

25:10 - 25:14
And so I found this van. It was in Vancouver.

25:14 - 25:19
I bought a one way ticket to Vancouver and flew out, met the guys that built it.

25:20 - 25:27
And because I tossed around the idea of do I want to build one myself or do I want to buy one completed.

25:27 - 25:29
And I decided to buy it.

25:29 - 25:34
It was, it's about 95% the way, you know, complete when I bought it.

25:34 - 25:38
And I decided I'd save the time that I could get out in it and use it rather than spend, you

25:38 - 25:41
know, six months or something working on one.

25:41 - 25:47
But I went out and saw these guys in Vancouver, spent a day touring around and they showed me

25:47 - 25:51
how everything worked and I all right, here's a check. See you later.

25:51 - 25:58
And I turned around and drove it back to Ontario and got back and still had a place in Petawawa where I was living.

25:58 - 26:05
And so over the summer, you know, moved everything of mine into storage, got rid of the house

26:06 - 26:10
and moved into this full time. September of last year.

26:10 - 26:16
So, yeah, sold my truck and this is, this is everything I own except for a storage unit with

26:16 - 26:18
my boats and some extra camping gear in it.

26:18 - 26:20
All right, you just saved me another question then.

26:21 - 26:22
So where have you been? You've been.

26:22 - 26:26
You're in Nevada and you said now, so where. What have you been? What have your travels?

26:26 - 26:30
Yeah. So last summer I spent a lot of time just touring around Ontario.

26:30 - 26:34
I'd throw the canoe on top and getting used to just the van life.

26:34 - 26:36
But I still had a house to go back to.

26:37 - 26:40
And in the fall when I got out of the house, the.

26:40 - 26:46
Then I kind of bounced around Ontario a little bit until it started to get fairly cold.

26:46 - 26:49
And then it was like, I'm going south till I can put shorts on.

26:50 - 26:59
And so came down straight through the Midwest down to Texas and spent most of December down in Texas.

26:59 - 27:06
Spent about two weeks down around Big Bend and you know, swam in the Rio Grande and swam across

27:06 - 27:08
to Mexico and back a few times.

27:09 - 27:14
Yeah, spent some time down there just exploring and then up into New Mexico.

27:14 - 27:21
Spent most of January, I think in Arizona and then most of February and kind of like the, the

27:21 - 27:29
border area between Arizona and Nevada, Utah and yeah, I've completely fallen in love with it.

27:30 - 27:34
Even more than I knew I was going to like it, but it's even more than I ever thought I would.

27:34 - 27:41
Um, just the simplicity of this life and like the freedom and you know, you don't like the weather or the neighbors.

27:41 - 27:50
You just pick a spot on the map and going that way and yeah, it's been great just touring around, go see the sights.

27:50 - 27:54
I put the camera away for probably the first six weeks I was on the road.

27:54 - 28:00
I barely filmed anything and I'd get, you know, a few shots here and there, but it was mostly

28:00 - 28:03
just settling into like, this is the Normal routine of my life.

28:03 - 28:10
And I hadn't been to the gym since, not regularly, pretty much since I left the military.

28:10 - 28:13
And I'd put on, you know, a fair bit of weight.

28:13 - 28:17
But then I got in the van and like, I have a shower on the back door. It's outside.

28:17 - 28:24
You can't use that if you're around other people, obviously, so there might be jail time. Yeah.

28:24 - 28:30
So I picked up a Planet Fitness membership, and it's like 30 bucks a month cheap.

28:30 - 28:32
So I thought, okay, that's where I'll go to shower.

28:32 - 28:38
There's Planet Fitness Everywhere across the U.S. like, you can find one in just about any reasonably

28:38 - 28:42
sized town, or even small like cities have multiple gyms.

28:42 - 28:46
So while I was there, I thought, oh, maybe I'll.

28:46 - 28:47
I'll do a little bit of a workout.

28:47 - 28:48
I'll, you know, get on a bike.

28:48 - 28:51
I'll go on and just walk on the treadmill for a little bit.

28:51 - 28:53
I'll maybe try and push some weights around.

28:53 - 28:58
Started feeling okay, you know, testing the limits of what I can do with my back and, and what

28:58 - 29:03
is worth doing and what's going to make me be in more pain the next day.

29:03 - 29:04
Then I try to avoid that.

29:04 - 29:10
But, yeah, it's been great for me because now I'm back in the gym virtually every day.

29:10 - 29:15
Sometimes I plan my routes around where the Planet Fitnesses are in the area and things I want to see.

29:15 - 29:19
And, okay, I want to go to this site and check that out and I can bounce over to the gym and

29:19 - 29:21
shower after and do something there. But yeah, it's.

29:21 - 29:25
It's just such a simple life. Like, it's.

29:26 - 29:27
It's not that there's no drama.

29:27 - 29:32
I guess is what I'm trying to say is it's just, you know, get up leisurely, like, slide the

29:32 - 29:36
door open and, oh, and there's the desert.

29:36 - 29:42
You know, I can see for 30 miles out the door and the skyline out here, the mountains and everything.

29:42 - 29:44
And then every day pretty much is a different view.

29:44 - 29:49
You know, I might stay in the same area, but I rarely camp or park, you know, overnight in the

29:49 - 29:53
same place, you know, more than once if I can find somewhere else.

29:53 - 29:57
And yeah, just bounce around, whatever works.

29:57 - 30:02
If I have to stay in town, I usually try and find a nice brightly lit parking lot and stay there.

30:02 - 30:07
And then when I go out, out of town, I find a nice dark corner in the desert and go down some

30:07 - 30:12
rocky gravel road and end up in the middle of nowhere and just sit and watch the stars in the

30:12 - 30:17
evening or something and see Some of the most spectacular sunsets I've ever seen in my life.

30:17 - 30:19
In the last couple months, it's been pretty great. Cool.

30:19 - 30:22
Well, I'm glad, man. Sounds like, sounds like fun.

30:23 - 30:31
I'm curious, what's the, like the legal logistics of being a Canadian south of the border for

30:31 - 30:33
however long, like do you have to get.

30:34 - 30:36
Is there some kind of weird visa thing?

30:36 - 30:39
What you just go, I'm traveling. I'm what?

30:39 - 30:44
Yeah, as a tourist you're allowed to come down here as just to travel for up to six months of the year.

30:44 - 30:48
So they ask you at the border when I crossed, you know, where you're headed and what you're doing.

30:48 - 30:52
And I said, I'm, I'm going to Texas and how long are you going to be there?

30:52 - 30:57
So I gave my rough timeline and yeah, okay, enjoy your trip. And that was it.

30:57 - 31:02
And then so I've been using on my phone there's an app called I Overlander.

31:02 - 31:05
And it's just a crowdsource app.

31:05 - 31:08
People find places to camp and they just pin them on the app.

31:08 - 31:11
And so you get a little description and maybe a few pictures.

31:11 - 31:18
And you can search by established campgrounds, you know, wild camping you can look for.

31:18 - 31:22
There's like 30 different things you can select to search for.

31:22 - 31:28
And I just look at wild camping and you know, you see, oh, it's BLM land, Bureau of Land Management.

31:29 - 31:32
That's the US Equivalent kind of of cramp around land.

31:32 - 31:37
And depending where you are, you can stay for up to 14 or sometimes 30 days.

31:37 - 31:43
And you go to some spots and there's like RVs and campers as far as you can see.

31:43 - 31:45
And other times there's just.

31:45 - 31:48
You can you drive a little bit farther past the easy accessible points?

31:49 - 31:53
Just like if you go to, you know, a goncom park, you know, the first couple lakes are going

31:53 - 31:59
to be busy, but once you get in a little farther around, you can find some gorgeous spots to camp.

31:59 - 32:07
And I guess it's a little different in the US Than just trying to figure out state to state, different regulations.

32:07 - 32:11
For example, Arizona has Arizona Trust land.

32:11 - 32:18
They have BLM land, they have state parks, there's national parks, and all of them have different regulations.

32:18 - 32:26
So I was going to camp in one area in Arizona, but it's Arizona Trust Land, which is managed by the state. You need a permit.

32:26 - 32:27
The Permit is only $15.

32:28 - 32:33
You can get it online, but you have to print a copy of the permit and put it in the window of your vehicle.

32:34 - 32:36
Has to be displayed at all times.

32:36 - 32:39
And if you don't have it. It's a $500 fine.

32:39 - 32:44
So I'm like, okay, well I could camp here, but I don't have a printer, so how am I going to

32:44 - 32:45
put the permit in my window?

32:45 - 32:51
So I'd go find somewhere else and eventually I found an office where you go into the state trust

32:51 - 32:53
and they'll print the permit for you.

32:53 - 33:01
But little things like that, just trying to figure out, you know, I just trying to stay within the rules. Same thing with filming.

33:02 - 33:09
There's a lot, it's a lot different down here than we experience in, in Ontario or Canada, where

33:09 - 33:14
the national parks and the majority of the state parks now require you to fill out and apply

33:14 - 33:21
for a permit permit prior to filming there, which is anywhere I've seen from 100 to $250 to

33:21 - 33:24
apply, 14 days to get your permit.

33:24 - 33:28
Like 14 days for them to process your application before they give you the permit.

33:28 - 33:32
And your permit has to have you know, your dates of where you're going, who's going to be with

33:32 - 33:36
you, what your equipment is, what you're doing, what you're doing it for.

33:36 - 33:42
And so again, going back to Texas, I was down in Big Bend, had, was all set up.

33:42 - 33:47
I was going to rent a canoe and spend 10 days paddling on the Rio Grande down through the lower

33:47 - 33:51
canyons, which, if you've ever seen pictures of this, it is spectacular.

33:51 - 33:56
You're paddling through like four or five hundred foot canyon walls.

33:56 - 33:59
Just that red rock of the south desert.

33:59 - 34:02
And so I found an outfitter, found a rental canoe.

34:02 - 34:04
I was gonna, it was gonna be a solo trip.

34:05 - 34:10
I had all the gear, everything was lined up, and I went into the park office and told them what

34:10 - 34:13
I wanted to do and then I wanted to film it for my YouTube channel.

34:13 - 34:19
And they said, okay, the guy who you'd have to apply to or give your application to is away

34:19 - 34:22
right now and he won't be back till for seven more days.

34:23 - 34:25
And then he has 14 days to approve it.

34:25 - 34:28
So you'll get your permit in 21 days.

34:28 - 34:32
And I, well, I'm not waiting around here for three weeks, you know, for this.

34:32 - 34:38
I like, I'm already paying to stay in the national park and now I've got to add three weeks

34:38 - 34:41
to the stay and my permit may not be approved.

34:42 - 34:44
Like, all right, I'm, I'm on down the road.

34:44 - 34:45
I'll find somewhere else to go.

34:45 - 34:48
But yeah, it's just a different system.

34:48 - 34:53
And if you want to stay within the rules and not get, get in trouble for it, that's what you have to do.

34:53 - 34:55
Yeah. Another level of bureaucracy. I've heard.

34:55 - 35:01
I've heard from a lot of content creators that are south of the border from. From here that.

35:01 - 35:04
That they're all like, what? So it's like.

35:04 - 35:09
And it makes sense if you're a professional shoot. But most YouTubers aren't.

35:09 - 35:14
You know, they've got 207 followers, and that's just like a.

35:14 - 35:16
A hobby thing they do because it's. Because it's fun.

35:16 - 35:17
Keeps them out of trouble.

35:17 - 35:18
Yeah.

35:18 - 35:20
It gets them to. What is Dennis.

35:20 - 35:20
Yeah.

35:20 - 35:25
Always says he documents it because his grandkids can go, yeah, that's my papa. He did that.

35:25 - 35:27
He did the cool things. Right. So.

35:27 - 35:29
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, the.

35:29 - 35:33
The number of people that do it professionally that make a living on YouTube compared to the

35:33 - 35:35
number of people who just do it for fun.

35:35 - 35:39
Or maybe they're hoping someday that they'll be able to make money off it.

35:40 - 35:45
But even if your channel isn't even monetized, they still require the permit because YouTube

35:45 - 35:46
will put ads on here.

35:47 - 35:50
And so there's a monetary side to it. So it.

35:50 - 35:54
Yeah, like you said, it's just another level of bureaucracy. And I.

35:54 - 35:58
I guess they have enough visitors down here that they don't need anyone to promote their parks and.

35:59 - 36:05
And share some of these beautiful spaces, because there are. That.

36:05 - 36:12
That's something that is very different between Canada and the U.S. that I never really thought about coming down here.

36:12 - 36:18
But there are about 10 times more people in the U.S. than there are in Canada.

36:18 - 36:21
So, you know, 10 to one in terms of population.

36:22 - 36:26
And you see it when you go to some of these parks, like, there's.

36:26 - 36:28
If you want to go on a specific hike, say in.

36:28 - 36:36
In the Grand Canyon or Sedona or in a lot of the, like, the big parks in Utah, some of the more

36:36 - 36:42
popular, you know, spectacular places, you need a permit just for that hike, and you might have

36:43 - 36:48
to apply for it, like, sometimes, like six to 12 months in advance in order to get a reservation.

36:48 - 36:52
And, you know, you put yourself on a cancellation list, you might be able to get in a little sooner.

36:52 - 36:57
But, you know, you want to go to Angels Landing or something in Utah, good luck.

36:57 - 37:01
That's a trip you got to plan way in advance, and I'm terrible at that.

37:02 - 37:04
I fly by the seat of my pants all the time.

37:05 - 37:09
So, you know, when I get there and it's like, oh, this bureaucracy.

37:09 - 37:10
I'm going somewhere else now.

37:10 - 37:16
Yeah, I hear you. But that's a good thing in the sense that that means there's that many people

37:16 - 37:19
interested in being in all the nature places.

37:19 - 37:26
So, yeah, that's the trade off is, you know, if people love these places, then they're more inclined to protect them.

37:26 - 37:29
Yeah, I want to call it a win. I hate.

37:29 - 37:32
I mean, well, you know, the system up here.

37:32 - 37:37
Five months, five months to the day at 7am if you don't book it, that you're.

37:37 - 37:44
You, you're on a cancellation list and praying that somebody has overbooked or, or terribly

37:44 - 37:49
has a sickness in the family and they can't go or something like that, because, yeah, we're. We're screwed as well.

37:49 - 37:54
Yeah, I mean, we're. We're also very fortunate in Ontario that, yeah, we have some great parks

37:54 - 38:00
and some beautiful places, but we also have just an unbelievable amount of public land that

38:00 - 38:03
you can go to with no reservations, no permits required.

38:04 - 38:12
And also find, like, canoe routes, you know, like spectacular canoe routes where you can go

38:12 - 38:17
and you just show up and it's all. It's all free. Like, have at her.

38:17 - 38:19
Yep, that's it for us for today.

38:19 - 38:23
Thank you so much to our special guest, Richard Tosh, better known as Tosh Self Propelled.

38:24 - 38:29
Find him on Instagram as Tosh Self propelled or on YouTube also as tosh Self Propelled.

38:29 - 38:32
And we will talk to you again soon. I'm Pamela.

38:32 - 38:33
I'm still Tim.

38:33 - 38:37
And we are still from supergoodcamping.com. you can reach out to us at any point.

38:37 - 38:42
We would love to hear from you on all the social media or you can email us@hiupergoodcamping.com

38:42 - 38:47
that's hiupergoodcamping.com and we will talk to you again soon. Bye.