Our Family
We're the family that tests the trip before you take it.
Two parents, the kids, and three dogs, traveling the United States in a Class C motorhome with a two-door Bronco in tow, documenting every trip so your family can plan yours with confidence.
Meet the crew
The whole cast, in watercolor.
Painted from our own trip photos. The same crew in every episode.
Cole
Founder. Drives the rig, plans the routes, answers for the budget.
Ashlea
The co-pilot. Campground research, trip logistics, and the final word on what's actually doable with kids.
The review panel
The kids. If a “kid-friendly” stop bores them, you'll hear about it.
Stella, Nova & Otto
The pack. Two Portuguese water dogs, one mini schnauzer, twelve paws. Every stop gets the dog-friendliness test.
How this started
First, the job ended. Then, this began.
For eight years, Cole ran marketing for one of the largest automotive groups in the country. It was the kind of job that looks like the finish line: the title, the team, the results, including a small-town Texas dealership page built into the #1 in America. It was also the kind of job that eats bedtimes. School events watched through a phone screen from a parking lot. "Dad has a call."
Then, in the summer of 2025, the company was sold to private equity. After eight years, the role went with it. There's no playbook for the morning you wake up without the title you've been introducing yourself with for a decade. That's not a complaint; companies get sold. But it asks you a question you can't delegate: if you're not the job, who are you?
We could have sprinted straight into the next position. Instead, we looked at the calendar honestly, maybe for the first time. The kids were still young. The dogs were still up for anything. And we'd been postponing the one thing no promotion ever gave back: time. So we pointed the rig at the horizon.
What happened next is the reason this channel exists. The miles did something that no amount of scheduled "quality time" ever had. They made us a team. We're Canadians who chose Texas as home, and out on the road we fell for our new state, and for the American wilderness, the way you only can when you're seeing it with new eyes: none of it taken for granted, all of it chosen. The kids learned to build a fire, read a trail map, earn a Junior Ranger badge, and to be bored in the back seat long enough for boredom to turn into conversation. That's where values actually get passed down, it turns out. Not in lectures. In miles.
So no, we didn't start this because everything was going according to plan. We started it because the worst professional summer of our lives accidentally handed our family its best year. And because of the thing we can't stop thinking about:
You shouldn't have to lose a job to find this. You just need a plan.
That's what this whole channel is: the plan, written down, so your family can skip straight to the good part.
The rig
Basecamp: a Tiffin Wayfarer Class C.
Our home on the road is a Tiffin Wayfarer, a Class C motorhome that's big enough for a family and three dogs to live comfortably, and small enough to fit the campgrounds, fuel stops, and mountain roads that stop larger rigs.
It's the basecamp in every episode: where we cook, sleep, do homework at the dinette, and dry out wet dogs.
The motorhome
- Make & class
- Tiffin Wayfarer, Class C motorhome.
- Why a Class C
- Big enough for a family and three dogs to live comfortably; small enough for the campgrounds, fuel stops, and mountain roads that stop larger rigs.
- Its own series
- We test its limits on camera in “Can a Class C RV Handle This?” After all, “will our rig fit?” is the question behind every reservation.
The Bronco
The day-trip machine.
Behind the motorhome, we flat-tow a two-door Ford Bronco. When the RV is parked and leveled, the Bronco is how we actually explore.
The combination is the heart of our travel system: basecamp plus day trips. It's why our coverage goes further than campground reviews.
The 4x4
- The vehicle
- A two-door Ford Bronco, flat-towed behind the motorhome.
- The job
- National park roads, trailheads, tight small-town streets, and the occasional trail that earns its difficulty rating.
- Its own series
- Learning flat towing the hard way became “Tow With Confidence.” The exploring became “Bronco Day Trips.”
The kids
The toughest reviewers on the team.
Our kids come on every trip, and their honest reactions are some of the most useful footage we publish. Enthusiasm and boredom alike: if the kids rate it, you'll hear their actual verdicts.
The test panel
- Their role
- The kids aren't props in our videos. They're the review panel. If a “kid-friendly” activity bores them, you'll hear about it.
- Their series
- Honest reactions power “Kid-Tested Adventures,” and their badge collection drives the “National Park Junior Ranger Challenge.”
- A privacy note
- We keep the kids' names, ages, and school offline. You'll get their verdicts, not their details.
The dogs
Twelve paws, full participation.
Stella, Nova, and Otto come everywhere we go, which means every destination we review gets tested for real dog-friendliness. Pet policies, dog-friendly trails, campground dog runs, and what a long travel day with dogs aboard actually looks like.
The pack
- The roster
- Stella and Nova, our two Portuguese water dogs, and Otto the mini schnauzer. On every trip, no exceptions.
- What that means
- Every destination gets tested for real dog-friendliness, not just a “pets allowed” checkbox.
- Their series
- Pet policies, dog-friendly trails, hot-pavement realities, and long travel days: “Dog-Friendly Travel Reviews.”
The founder
Telling true stories on camera isn't new to us.
Cole Kutschinski spent his career on the brand side of marketing, the side that has to answer for results. As VP of Marketing for a 40-dealership automotive group, he owned customer acquisition, sales funnels, attribution, and campaign reporting at scale.
His proving ground was Madisonville, Texas (population roughly 2,000), where he built the Henson brand's social media presence into the #1 dealership page in the USA: 116K followers, tens of millions of organic views across the page's content (one video alone: 313K+), and customers who drove across the country to buy vehicles because of the content. The audience he built was real enough that the page was eventually sold.
That's the playbook behind Basecamp Bound: authentic content that earns an audience, and marketing discipline that turns the audience into measurable outcomes for partners. He's since founded and operated his own businesses, so he's been the buyer of marketing, not just the seller.
Cole travels with his wife Ashlea, the kids, and three dogs in a Tiffin Wayfarer Class C, flat-towing a two-door Bronco.
Why we share it
Honest, useful, and family-first. In that order.
We publish our real budgets. We show our mistakes and what they cost us. We disclose every sponsorship, and no partner gets to edit a scorecard. And through all of it, our first rule is that the trip belongs to the family before it belongs to the camera. If filming ever fights the moment, the moment wins.
If our videos help your family take the trip you've been talking about for years, that's the whole mission.
A note on privacy
We share our travels openly, but we keep some things offline: our kids' full names and schools, our home base, and our real-time location (trips are posted after we've moved on). Thanks for understanding, and for keeping the comments kind; the kids do read them (with us).
From the road so far
These trips already happened.
Everything above is a plan. This is the proof: a few snapshots from the miles we've already driven, before a single episode was filmed.
Locations shared after we've moved on, never in real time.
Follow along
Season 1 is on the way.
The first episodes, guides, and scorecards launch this season. Until then, explore the series lineup, or tell us which destination your family is weighing.
