Surviving a Powerful Storm During a Truck Camping Trip in Heavy Rain

Heat. My friends, welcome to this episode of the Opter Gear Review. I hope you all are doing well. For this trip, I just hit gravel and I'm heading down this road to find a campsite for the night. It is Sunday. It's about 4:30 and currently the temp is 72° F with this adventure. We are having a good old-fashioned truck camp. And with the weather, who knows what is going to happen. Over the last week, we've had an atmospheric river

basically impacting this area. So, it has been non-stop rain. At the moment, the skies have cleared, the sun's come out, but rain is destined to return. With the weather today, rain and storms can pop up basically at any time. Later on tonight, there's an 80% chance of rain and thunderstorms with 3/4 of an inch of rain, if not more, being possible. For now, I'm going to navigate this big truck down this narrow road, and I will see you all at the campsite that I select. Hopefully, we don't have to drive too far before we come across one. This looks pretty good, everybody. All I need to do is turn around.

My friends, it's only about 70°, but the humid humidity is so high. I am sweating my brains out. It is unbelievably sticky right now. Now, already I've mentioned that we've been receiving a lot of rain and you can see that is true by the landscape here. If you look closely, you could see that a deluge of water has been coming down the hill here, spreading out mud, washing away grass. Without a doubt, it has been raining a lot. Luckily, we need it really, really badly. And we do have more on the way later on tonight, hopefully. Trust me, I want more rain. I want to cool this place down big time. I am shocked at how humid it is. To get to this location here, we had to drop down roughly 1500 ft in elevation, and I can

tell a huge difference in the conditions. It is wet and humid at home, but it's nothing like this. The lower you go, the more humidity there is. And I can feel it. Whoa, whoa. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. There are a ton of yellow jackets circling that fire pit for some reason. There's a problem. I am highly allergic to beastings, which means I need to stay far away from that. That right there could put me in the hospital, and that is not what I want on this trip. I do have an EpiPen with me, but one is not enough. That will buy me some time so I can get to the hospital, and that's about it.

I wonder why they're all over that fire pit. Somebody must have done something. Well, there may be a bees nest in the ground or they've dumped something on this fire that has attracted the bees. That seems more likely than having a bees nest in there. We better hang out over here, everyone. I will make sure to stay away from that. That's okay. Everything in this forest is too wet to burn anyways, but that doesn't mean that we're not going to have a fire. If everything works out, we certainly will. I have some compressed logs that we can burn. Hopefully, it's not raining all night long, so we can do that. If you're new here or if you haven't seen any adventures with the truck, the new truck. This is Mule, my 2026

Superduty work truck that I'm using not only for work, but also for camping. It is a barebones work truck with virtually no features at all. It does have a radio in it and it's not bad, but no satellite, no GPS stuff. There's no heated seats, no radar, this, no sensors that, none of that stuff. Anyways, when it comes to this truck, I've had a lot of questions about this yellow step here. This is something that I installed myself, and the reason is simple. It makes it easier to get into and out of this truck because this truck is gigantic. If you're familiar with the automotive world, this step may be familiar to you because these are attached at the factory and they are removed once the vehicle gets to the

dealership. They are installed so that workers can easily get into and out of the vehicle and also so they can do it safely because these F250s are very tall. These are known as transportation steps and they are meant to be again removed at the dealership and the dealership that I bought this from, they did in fact remove it. But I went online and spent 20 bucks, installed it myself, and now I have this very nice step. And I don't have to install running boards or anything like that. Speaking of running boards, I didn't want them on the truck anyways, but I do want the step here. Another nice feature about this is that it's high visibility. You can practically see this thing in the

dark, which makes getting into the truck at nighttime really easy. Without a doubt, that's the best 20 bucks I have ever spent. That step is perfect and it's all I need. Now everyone, we have some bug protection. It takes about 5 to 10 minutes for this to heat up here and then all of a sudden all of the bugs are gone. This works well in this area and we need this. As it stands right now, it's quite buggy. Lots of gnats, black flies, and even a few mosquitoes. Unfortunately, it's difficult to predict what's going to happen as far as the weather goes. I don't know if I want to set up a whole lot because it does look like rain is possible.

Unfortunately, I don't have service that's good enough to check the weather right now, check the radar. So, I don't know what's potentially coming our way. I think we need to be on the safe side here. So, I'm not going to set up a table or a chair or anything like that because the weather has been so rainy. We need to be prepared to shut up the back of the truck and basically get in there and stay in there just in case. Not in that order. We'll hop in. You never mind. You know what I'm talking about. Anyways, let's try that again. In

a moment's notice, I need to be able to hop in the back of the truck and seal this thing up to get out of the rain. I'll tell you what, I'll go ahead open up the side windows. That way, we can get some light inside of the truck for setting everything up. As I go about setting up the truck for the night, you're going to see that my system is very, very simple and also very minimal. I promise you, with elaborate setups, it's going to get on your nerves and it's not going to make for a better trip. Keep it simple. Keep it functional. Make it nice, easy, and quick. And you'll be thankful. It sure looks like rain is coming in, folks.

Looks can be deceiving, but that sky there is quite dark. Everyone, that feels so good. You know, it's not hot, but it's humid. The thing is this, the air is not moving at all. There's nothing to blow the heat that's radiating off your body away from you. So, you feel that, too. This here makes all the difference in the world. And this can run off of a regular battery bank. I brought this with me because I haven't ran this in a while and I need to.

Batteries don't like to sit dormant for a long period of time without use. The one thing that I really appreciate about my system here is something that I alluded to earlier. It's very, very simple. I can set the entire thing up in about 5 minutes. It's not a production, and I really, really like that. I use that word production because recently a viewer named Max, he wrote in and he stated that after watching me in my camp setups, he realized with his camp setups, he had a pull behind trailer or something like that, it was just way too complicated. It took way too much time to set everything up. It felt like a production to him. He ditched the trailer, put a cap on his F350, and made

his camp setup super simple. And now he's having a fantastic time. It's true, everyone. When you make things super, super complicated, you're turning your camping adventure into a production. A production that you simply don't need to do. All of those expensive camping gadgets and whatnot, they don't make your camping trip any better. I promise you. All you need, everyone, is something as simple as this. It could be completely different, but I promise you, if you keep it simple, you're going to have a much better time out on your adventures. On YouTube, you see a lot of people with all sorts of fancy gadgets, $100,000, $200,000 rigs. None of that stuff makes their adventures any better,

right? It looks good on YouTube, but when it comes time to go out on a camping trip, you're probably having more fun than they are. That is certainly something to consider. Max, my friend, I hope you're having a good time with your new setup. It is just about dinner time, everyone. The sun is working its way down. Let's see here. It's only about 7:15, so we still have over an hour of light left. I figured we should go ahead get dinner done, eat that, and then we'll get the fire going. I don't think it's going to rain anytime soon. I could be wrong, though. That's just my gut feeling based upon what I can see of the sky here.

There's nothing too intimidating at the moment. For dinner tonight, we're having pasta with meat sauce with broccoli and garlic sauce. And we also have some parmesan cheese. I was thinking I could just mix all of this together. Something about that sounds pretty good. And I think I'm going to do it. Wish me luck. Oh yeah, everyone. This smells incredible. Mindblowing good, too. Everyone, that is absolutely fantastic. But I tell you what, I'm going to take a break from eating that. Let's talk for just a second and let's talk about this truck. So, my plan with this vehicle really is to keep it stock, right? I

added the cap which could be taken off and it really in the end doesn't add a whole lot of value to this vehicle, but I am making maybe two changes. One for certain. The first change is that this truck is getting a new pair of shoes. In other words, new tires. To be more specific, KO3s. they should be put on this week. As for the second change, that is something that I'm still thinking about and I'm not sure which direction I'm going to go and maybe this is something that you all can help me with. I've been thinking about wrapping this truck. A friend of mine has a wrapping business so I can get a great deal on it. And I've been thinking about possibly changing the color of this vehicle. Initially, I was thinking about

how I can protect the paint because if you're familiar with the channel, I take my vehicles all over the place and they are notorious for getting pinstriped all to hell. You may remember the Toyota Tundra. The paint on that truck, by the time I sold it, it was pretty rough. Because this truck is bigger than the Tundra, I figured that protecting the paint is not a bad idea, especially when it comes time to sell this vehicle. Every couple of years I sell the vehicle and I get something new for the channel. Just recently I picked up this truck here and I want to make sure that it stays in as good a condition as possible. So wrapping it is certainly a

possibility. So the question becomes, what color should I wrap it? I have to be honest, I'm a big fan of white. White and black. We could call this the Stormtrooper if we wrap this white with the black accents. That is certainly an option, but I'm not sure if I'll go that way. So, let me ask you all this. What color should I wrap this truck? If I was to wrap it, of course. Concerning the tires, I don't plan to go up in size or anything like that. They are plenty big on this truck. In fact, this truck is running 34s. 34s are so close to 35s that there's no point to increase the size. This truck can't

support 37s with no modifications. But 37s are simply too big. If you've ever driven a truck with 37s, they don't drive very good. They don't handle very good. And that's because that is a big tire. It's great for off-road, not great for everyday driving. Plus, 37s are not good for resale value. Once you increase above the stock size of tire, the resale value of your vehicle goes down. Any sort of modification that you do to your vehicle, you do not get back in the end when it comes time to sell the vehicle. Plus, it also may hurt what you get for the vehicle because most people do not want to purchase something that's been modified. There are a ton of really crappy vehicle modifications that you

can do. So, when it comes to purchasing a modified vehicle, you never know exactly what you're getting. You never know like what shortcuts that people have done. That's why wrapping this truck is such an interesting idea. I can do that and then when it comes time to sell it, I can tear the wrap off. Everything that I've read says that it's completely safe as far as your paint job goes, the clear coat and so on. But if you think differently, comment down below and let me know. Everyone, this is so freaking good. Really, really good. And this ranch here, everyone is amazing. I will flash the name of this on the screen for you.

Also mixing in the broccoli. That was a good choice. It is beginning to rain, everyone. It is super light. In fact, I could just barely feel it underneath this tree canopy, but I can feel it. It's almost like a mist. I don't know if it's about to really start raining or not, but for now, I'm not going to put this up and hop inside the truck. I'll just wait and see what happens. The temp without a doubt has dropped and it actually feels pretty good. Warm here at the front, slightly cool at the back. And I do mean slightly cool. I would say right now it's around 63 62 degrees.

It's really not that bad. At first I was thinking it's going to be too hot for this fire, but now I'm actually glad I haven't. I'm sure you all noticed that I went ahead and I put some bug screen on the back of the truck there. My plan is to keep the back open all night long, and I could do so as long as it's not really, really storming. That's one of the nice things about that cap is that you can have the back up, the sides up, and it doesn't leak. that everyone is annoying as hell, but I think it's pretty cool. That was a father, a young son on the back of the uh four-wheeler and an older son riding

a motorcycle. It's one of the nice things about being out in a remote section of National Forest. You can basically do anything you want to, just like they're doing. You're not supposed to ride four-wheelers on these roads or uninsured bikes, but you definitely can. You can get away with it when you're out in remote areas. And what people get away with is unbelievable. You definitely cannot get away with that in all national forests, but in this section of western North Carolina, you definitely can. I've mentioned this before, but it doesn't matter which national forest I'm in. Not one time ever have I ever seen a ranger. Not once. No law enforcement ever. And I'm

talking throughout my entire life. With this national forest, it is simply too large to have law enforcement patrolling it and whatnot. And because of that, you really do have to consider your own protection. I've mentioned this in previous videos, and it should be mentioned again. When you're out in remote sections like this, and there's remote national forests and remote public lands all over the country, all over the world, it's up to you to handle your own security because if you have an issue, you're not calling 911, right? Even if you did, it would take so long for them to get to you. Whatever was going to happen would happen. When I'm out on a trip, I conceal carry. When I'm

going to town to the grocery store, I don't. Some people carry all the time. I just simply do not feel the need to do so. That's my decision. When I go out on trips, I do. Not one time have I ever had to pull my firearm. But I've been in situations in forests like this that were really, really strange where I had my handgun at the ready. In North Carolina, you do not have stand your ground laws. So basically, you have to wait until someone basically touches your vehicle if you're inside of your vehicle. If someone enters your house, you can fire, but if they turn around and try to run away, you can't. There's all sorts of rules, right? And it's up to you to deescalate when possible. Because of that, when I'm in a

situation, I don't go looking for trouble. I wait for that trouble to come to me. And when it does, if it does, I'll take care of it. Whatever that may end up looking like. Hopefully, I'll never have that situation come up. Hopefully, that will never take place because it's a lose-lose, right? Even if you end up not getting charged with anything, there's a good possibility that it's going to ruin your life. There's so many things that could take place that come from an instance like that. It's not something you want to be a part of. But this is the real world and sometimes trouble finds you. You have to be able to take care of yourself. This is true

for men and this is especially true for women. I love the fact that there's more women getting out, going solo or with their girlfriends now, more so than ever. That's fantastic. But I think it's really important for women especially not to let your guard down. There's a lot of good people in this world, right? But there's enough bad ones out there where again, women especially, they have to be careful. I say that not to scare anyone, but just to be straight up and honest, to be real. It's true here in Western North Carolina. It's true in the United States. And it's true worldwide. I've spoken previously about some of the serial killer activity that's taken place here in western North Carolina. And this sort of stuff, I mean, it

really does take place worldwide, and all of it is awful. Violence can happen towards a man, but there's things that take place, and you know exactly what I'm talking about, that tend to happen more so with women than men. And guys, you don't want anything to happen to you. You don't want anything to happen to your wives, to your daughters, ladies. You don't want anything to happen to you and your loved ones. So, be smart and be careful. I say that again just as a realistic warning because that element is out there, right? It's not all that big, but there's enough of them where you do have to be careful and you have to be prepared. I'm not going to tell you all how to prepare. I'm not

going to tell you to carry a firearm or anything like that. You have to make your own decisions on what your protection looks like. I carry a firearm. My wife carries a firearm. Her girlfriend carries a stun gun. It is still sprinkling almost like misting more than anything else. It's actually pretty nice. It's It's light enough where I can feel it and it's cooling me down, but it's not heavy enough to wet my clothes. It's really nice. The good thing is that I don't know 99% of the time everything's going to be okay. But there's that 1% chance, right? And that chance is real. And that's just

one reason why you have to be prepared to defend yourself. Think of that as a public service announcement for anyone who is thinking about getting out into the outdoors. Anyways, folks, I'm not sure why I went down that route, but I did. I think I'm going to shut off the camera, enjoy this fire for a bit, enjoy the mist that's going through the air here, and then I will turn in for the night. I will see you all in a bit. My friends, it is time for an update. It is currently 11 minutes after midnight. I was sleeping rather good until a clap of thunder woke me up. I've been able to get the radar to partially load and it

looks like we are surrounded by storms. It's going to take some time for these storms to get here, but once they do, it's going to be on with heavy, heavy rainfall. A flood watch was just issued for this area. It states that with these storms, we can see a rate of 4 inches of rain per hour. These storms are moving incredibly slow, and that's why they're able to dump so much rainfall. Here we go everyone. Heavy rain is upon us now. Heat up here. Good morning everybody. Good morning. By now it's after 6:00 a.m. The sun is coming up and it is a beautiful morning.

A beautiful morning here in the mountains, folks. That storm last night that was incredible. It raged for hours and hours last night. I'm not even sure exactly when it stopped. I mean, it was just thunderstorms and tons of rain for hours. Like, seriously, that storm lasted all night long. It was just non-stop thunder. Incredibly heavy rain. I could have swore last night after the heavy rain stopped that I heard something prowling around my vehicle. Possibly a black bear. Yesterday when I first pulled in, I thought I heard something going through the woods. There

might be a black bear that lives around here or that's been staying around here. Ultimately, we're in really good shape this morning. The coffee is hot. The conditions are perfect. It's humid, but it's not all that hot. Those storms last night sucked up all of that hot air. So, right now it actually feels pretty good. The odds are very, very good that more rain is on the way today. We are under a flood watch until late this evening. The chance of rain today is 100%. The precipitation amount is supposedly around 4 inches of rain on top of who knows how much we received last night. 2 in 3 in. You could see by the land here, the terrain that it washed heavily. That was some crazy rainfall last night.

Luckily, I stayed dry inside of the truck and we had no issues. I am having a problem with a certain type of bug. It's not mosquitoes. It's what you would call a noium. There's these tiny little bugs. I'm not even sure what they are. I'm not sure if they're related to flies or what, but they are biting the hell out of me. These super small tiny bugs that you could just barely see. Can you see that bug right there? That little speck. That's one. Got one over here, too. They are biting me up. These things are really, really annoying. And because of that, I think it's time to say goodbye, everyone. This has been a wild trip. I didn't plan to leave so early and so quickly, but these things

are terrorizing me. I guess I could get the bug repellent out, but it takes about 10 minutes for that really to activate. We might as well just hit the road. I'm ready to rock and roll. And everyone, we are out of here. I didn't plan to leave at 7:20 in the morning, but those noiums were tearing me up. I want to thank you all very much for joining me on this trip. I hope you all have had a great time. Last night was incredible. So much fun. What a good storm. If you will, please hit the thumbs up. That's a great way to support this channel. Also, if you want to join the Wolfpack, you can do so on Patreon and also here on YouTube. Oh yeah.

Also, make sure to check out my second YouTube channel, A Quiet Place Adventures. You will find a brand new adventure there every single Monday. Until next time, everyone. Take care. Strength and honor. Bye for now. Heat. Here

Heat.