Let me introduce you to Otis, our adventure van. Otis is a Winnebago Revel,

and it's a 4x4. We actually took it on our first trip; we did not get

stuck, thank goodness! And we've discovered what we really like and what we don't like so much. As someone

who really likes tea and has to pee a lot, it's super nice having a toilet in the van itself. And the cool thing about this

toilet is it swivels. If I didn't want to be shut in the door, I could actually just sit like

here and pee.  Not that I would, because, you know, Craig doesn't need to see that, but it is an option—and a bonus

feature! It does have a shower. One of the things that I like the best so far is the whole adventure in the adventure van,

and for me that's the four-wheel drive and suspension. We actually put it to the test this very first trip, on our way

back. We were checking out some extra campsites along the road, and I pulled off to the side of the road, just like

you normally would. Well, this is a 7-8,000 lb van, and as soon as I got off

the road, I could actually feel it slide just a little bit off to the side. I was 100% sure it was going to spin the tires

and we were going to be totally stuck and have to use the traction boards, but it pleasantly pulled right onto the road.

Having the four-wheel drive is really going to open up our—just the potential places we can go, and we've already

proven that on our first trip. This was a road that we never would have taken our previous rig down. One of the things I'm

actually really surprised about is how quiet it is inside the van. We're camping along the river, and if we were in our

Rooftop tent. We would definitely be hearing all of the noise outside, and in here it's fairly quiet, of course, if

you want to hear that noise, there's a window you can easily open; unlock it, push it out; you can let the sounds

come in, and you get a nice little breeze, too. I was super hot last night. Kelly, of course, was cold. I wasn't cold; I was

I mean, it was hot at first, and then once we opened the window, I got a little bit cooler. Yeah, it's nice having the window

right by your head, because then, like, we can hear the ocean. You always hear about camper mattresses, RV mattresses being

kind of sucky. Well, I was pleasantly surprised that this one is really comfortable. It's firmer, but it's

definitely has some, a little bit of give to it. So before you go and add a topper

to it, if you have a van, sleep on it for a few nights, see if it really works for

you or not. Another thing I really like is this is only 19 feet long, but it has everything we need. Well, when we have our

seating area up front, got our fridge, we've got our sink and a countertop. It's got some storage up here and over here; it's

got a bathroom. It's actually a full bathroom. It's got a bed, pretty nice bed, and it can totally fit end to end in

there. The bed actually raises up, which we'll show you here in a little bit. It goes all the way to the top, but then we have a

garage space down below. Let's not forget the air conditioner, the heater, and the giant battery that

supports everything. Another cool thing I really like are these chairs; they swivel around. So if I want, we're driving, I'm

just going to be flipped around in the front, but then now where it's parked, I can swivel around, enjoying the fun, eat

On this, sit back, relax, put my feet up if I wanted to. It's actually a really cool chair, and these armrests are nice and

I don't have to share with Greg. I have my own. The next thing I really like about this is this has a pretty big

battery. Let me show you. It has a 320 amp-hour lithium-ion battery, which is pretty huge, especially for this

application. And over here we've got a 2000-watt inverter. Now that's not the important part; the important part is the

giant alternator that they put under the hood. And what that does, as I'll show you here, you can see that this was after a

couple of days of camping. We were at 55%, and the alternator at idle was putting 118 amps back into the battery. And

what that tells us is it's only going to take an hour and 15 minutes for this thing to get back to full. That is huge.

So basically, as long as you're driving a little bit every once in a while, this battery is going to be totally topped

off. As Greg mentioned before, it is really nice that this is small. That's one of the things I like about this

because we can really fit into any camping spots. Except for, we do need to be a little bit more careful about

the height because it is tall. So we're going to have to definitely check out tree branches, make sure that we don't

hit anything that would be bad. And of course, it is a big van, so parking spots, like say at the grocery store, are going

to be kind of like being in a big pickup truck. You're going to have to watch your back end. With this being only 19 ft long,

and honestly, there's only such a small space in the front here, you're going to be doing a lot of living outside, but

it does come with this counter extension that slides in here. If you have to do some cooking inside, you at least have a bigger counter space.

to work with. It does come with an induction cooktop, but as you can see, this thing is pretty huge. Day two in the

van, bringing my cold coffee because we didn't want to get the induction stuff out, cuz it's so

gigantic. The cooktop... so what I really like to do is put this outside on the fold-down table. It's really easy to fold that

table out. There's an adjustment that you can do in case the van is on a slight angle. We're at the beach

tonight. We're firing up dinner; we've got tofu, a bunch of veggies in there, and it's especially nice if you're cooking

something greasy; you don't have to worry about splashing up here. Everything's just outside. I also really like the

layout of this van, which a lot of people probably don't like. This van has broken-up living areas. There's a living

area back here where somebody can be, and it's completely broken up by this bathroom, and then you have the front end.

I'm out here watching a movie, and Kelly can be back here sleeping or watching something or doing whatever, and

there's also the bottom area. When the bed is lifted up, people put a bench back there with a table, and that's yet

another living area. Nothing is ever perfect, and I have found that this fan is one of those things. Yes, it's lovely when it's open

and you get that breeze, but when you're driving down the road, it rattles like nobody's business. The first time we

drove down the road, we were like, 'I actually thought we left it open!' It was making so much noise. It was closed tight.

We actually pulled off to the side of the road to check, and it was closed. It was really loud. People online have some fixes; we

may just give them a try. This one baffles me a little bit: you have all this technology wrapped around the

Battery: You've got an app on your phone that displays the battery percentage, but if you look here, you've got this one

place, which is almost a worthless display because you click on battery and it gives you the voltage. Who the hell

knows what 13.1 volts is? I mean, maybe that one person does, but I don't know. I

don't. The app is fantastic, but I don't know why they don't have just a simple battery display. This was such a weird

thing for me. That we've already actually fixed them. The drawers only came up to this height; it was just this one single

piece here. We ended up adding a top layer so that the drawers were actually deeper. You look at this bottom one; this

was the most baffling of them all and had just this single little board here. You couldn't put anything in here

because you only had up to this height and it would just fall out. So we ended up adding these risers to them, and now

we can jam them full of stuff. This next one is definitely not part of the Winnebago side; it's more of the Sprinter side. This

thing is a pig when it comes to going off the line. If you're anything like me, when you pull up to a stoplight, it's a

race—it's an absolute race. Well, this thing is going to lose every single time because you step on the accelerator and

there's probably a 3- to 4-second turbo lag before it actually kicks on—almost a safety issue. You just have to

really know that that first time you hit the gas, it's not going to do anything. The other thing with the engine is the

miles per gallon. We've been averaging about 13; some people online say 16 or 17. We

haven't seen that yet. It's just something we're going to have to be mindful of, as diesel can be a tad bit

The most expensive, and biggest head-scratcher for me is the water fill location. I really do like this water

control system; it's really cool, it's got everything all built in. But this is the water fill, and if you know anything

about water fills, is that even if you do it perfectly, it's going to leak a little bit. And not only that, but when it leaks,

it's going to go right into here. To prove my point, on our first fill of the tank, it wasn't completely sealed

correctly, and when the water got turned on, it squirted all over the place. I was on a slight angle, so then everything

started running way down here. That's definitely something we're going to have to... We're really excited about the

van and being able to go off into those remote locations; that's going to be really awesome. Looking forward to

gearing this thing up! Go check out this video next. You can find us at Explore Tre Adventure.com, and we'll see you next

WINNEBAGO REVEL Adventure Van FIRST IMPRESSIONS - Pros & Cons - Van Life

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