Hi, I'm Tristan.
I have a YouTube channel called
SUV RVing.
I publish weekly videos of my adventures.
I created Adventure Know-How as the place
where I can share beyond what is in the videos.
Here’s What You Get
For the price of $8 a month or $80 a year, you will have an Adventure Know-How membership and gain access to the following:
There are a few different maps on Adventure Know-How.
The first is the Location Map. This is an online map of just about everywhere I’ve camped in my car in the western United States. There are currently 400+ campsites, and all but a handful are free. The map also has a few of my backpacking and kayak camping campsites (i.e., campsites that you can’t drive to). When you click on a campsite’s point on the map, you will be able to click a link for more information about that site. That takes you to a page that contains information about the exact location (GPS coordinates) of the campsite, how I found it, when I camped there, my overall impressions on the quality of the campsite, what kind of vehicle can make it there, and more. Nearly every campsite page includes photos of the site and/or a link to the SUV RVing video that the campsite can be seen in. Here’s a screenshot of what the average campsite info page looks like.
My ultimate goal is to have the map contain not only campsites but also other points of interest that I come across on my trips—waterfalls, hot springs, historical sites, Native American ruins, hikes, etc. New locations are added to the map monthly, but it is still not complete in that it does not contain many of the non-campsite locations of my travels (though there are currently about 600 of these other locations). For now, the campsites should be considered the main attraction here. Here’s a larger screenshot of the map if you’d like to get a general idea of the places I’ve frequented.
The second map is the Video Map. I realized that because the Location Map is taking so long to complete, it would be helpful if there were at least a map with pins representing each SUV RVing video. For example, if one SUV RVing video shows four things I did in Salt Lake City, the Video Map would have a single pin over Salt Lake City. When you click on that pin, you’ll be able to click another link to view that video. (By contrast, the Location Map will ultimately be more detailed/granular and have each of those 4 locations marked.) And so let’s say you’re planning a trip to Arches National Park. You can zoom into that area on the Video Map and click on the several pins in that area to see the videos I’ve filmed there. Here’s a screenshot of the video map, and here’s a screenshot of what it looks like when you click on a pin.
The third map is brand new as of the end of December 2021. It’s the Submitted Campsites Map. Anyone (Adventure Know-How member or not) can submit a free campsite on this page. Once your campsite has been added to the map, you’ll be listed on the Wall of Thanks (both here and on SUVRVing.com). The map currently (as of late November 2023) has 150+ campsites on it, and the hope is that it will continue to grow.
The fourth map is new as of late November 2023. It’s the Mountains Climbed Map. It simply shows the roughly 300 mountains that I’ve climbed. It does not include any practically useful information such as hike/climb length or difficulty. Its primary use is a personal record for me to keep track of my climbs, but I figured it might just be interesting for other people to see and could serve secondarily to inform you guys of possible climbs or hikes you might want to look up in a particular area.
An Adventure Know-How membership also gives you access to all of the bonus videos I create. There will be at least two of these bonus videos per month (there are currently nearly 100 on the site), and they can be any combination of the following:
- Bonus scenes from SUV RVing videos
- Gear reviews
- Camping tips/tricks
- Day trips
- Vlogs
- Life updates
- And more!
There is also a separate map on the Bonus Videos page that shows the approximate locations of each bonus video, where applicable.
Click here to see what kinds of bonus videos are available so far.
This is a list of all of the trips I’ve gone in since starting the SUV RVing YouTube channel. Each trip is listed chronologically, and under each trip are the videos from that trip. The videos can also be viewed in order by state—if you’d like to see all the videos filmed in Wyoming or California, for example.
For each video, there is a short description saying where I went or what I did.
This is a quick way to find videos about places you are interested in visiting or learning more about.
Click here to see a screenshot of what part of the Trip Index is like.
I wrote a book called SUV RVing: How to Travel, Camp, Sleep, Explore, and Thrive in the Ultimate Tiny House (here it is on Amazon) back in 2016. I’m proud of the book, and it has a lot of good information in it, but I’ve learned a lot in the intervening several years. It’s time for a second edition of the book. I’m writing and re-writing the book chapter by chapter (under the working title of SUV RVing 2.0), and the chapters are getting uploaded here in digital form to Adventure Know-How as I complete them. Here are the chapters that are more or less complete and currently viewable on the site:
- An Introduction to SUV RVing
- Choosing an SUV
- What to Take With You
- Where to Camp
- What to See and Do
- Traveling With Pets

I have big plans for this site, but because the scope of this project is so large, I have necessarily needed to start small and slowly build it up over time. As an ongoing Adventure Know-How member, you will gain access to new materials and information as they are released.
Why Join?
1. You get access to the information here
This is the most immediately tangible benefit of an Adventure Know-How membership. Upon joining, you immediately gain access to the above-mentioned content.
2. You support the ongoing creation of more content here
The above-mentioned content is just the tip of the iceberg. I want Adventure Know-How to ultimately be the repository for everything I know about adventuring. Among other things, I’d like to do the following:
- I want to keep updating the map to include everywhere I’ve been and everything I’ve done and not just the campsites. (Filling in the map with these non-campsite locations is what I am currently working on.)
- I want to create a master list of public lands in the western United States and the camping rules and options (both in-campground and dispersed) for each.
- I ultimately want to create many more sections/modules on other topics that I think would be of interest to you guys.
Doing all of this takes a tremendous amount of time. This is time that I could spend doing other things that would make me more money in the short term. The problem is that the more time I spend on those, the less time I am able to spend working on creating content for you here at Adventure Know-How. I can’t afford to spend years working on this while not making money from it, so your continuing membership here ensures that all of that stuff eventually sees the light of day.
3. You enable bigger, better trips
Your support will open up new travel opportunities that I haven’t had up to this point. Because I have a relatively modest fixed travel budget, my trips are necessarily limited in size, length, and scope. Your Adventure Know-How membership will open up new possibilities for bigger trips and bigger adventures. Would you like to see me go to Alaska? Visit every state? Explore Canada? Travel the length of Mexico’s Baja Peninsula? Go to other countries and continents? Those things will hopefully eventually be possible with your support.
4. You ensure the ongoing creation of SUV RVing videos
I love making travel and adventure videos, and I consider myself extremely lucky that I’m able to do this full-time. Talk about a dream job, right? That said, it’s a bit of a rocky way to make a living. The amount I make from the ads on my YouTube videos can fluctuate wildly from month to month based on video views, what’s going on in the outside world, and even the time of year. These are largely beyond my control. Your continuing Adventure Know-How membership will help guarantee that I will continue to be able to not only feed my family but also create the videos I love making and you love watching.
Things like a broken camera, lost drone, or unaddressed vehicle problem can also keep me from getting out and making the videos. The extra money coming from Adventure Know-How memberships will help smooth out those unforeseen but inevitable speed bumps as quickly as possible.
I realize that $8 a month or $80 a year is not a trivial amount for a lot of us. That’s nearly the price of a Netflix membership, and Netflix is certainly churning out more content than I am. But to pull back the curtain a little bit… I am not a multi-billion-dollar corporation. I don’t have tens of millions of people paying me monthly. If I did, sure, I could charge 25 cents a month and be set for life. But my niche is a narrow one. I don’t make videos for the masses. I make the kind of content that Netflix never will. If you want to help make sure that this content sticks around for the long haul, an Adventure Know-How membership is the best way to do so.
Adventure Know-How is a recurring membership. If you choose the monthly plan, your credit/debit card will be charged $8 every month until you cancel your membership. If you choose the yearly plan, you will be charged $80 once a year until you cancel your membership. You can cancel anytime. Once you stop paying, you lose access to the Adventure Know-How content. Questions? Get in touch here. Otherwise, choose your plan below!