OK, so that title was a hook. J and I don’t actually reach Vienna in this post (unless we unknowingly went through a Vienna on the way back to Florida, always a possibility), but this episode does finally return us to Florida after five weeks on the road. But we will make it to Vienna, Austria in the next post, I promise!
The final stage of our road trip meant we had to cross that vast expanse of the United States that lies between South Dakota and North Carolina, where we planned to spend time with friends and family. All I can say is that there’s a lot of United States.
To sum up:
— The Corn Palace in Mitchell, South Dakota. The largest high school basketball arena in South Dakota, completely decorated with dried corn. Apparently George McGovern played there. Who knew? J insisted having his photo taken in the center of the court.
— High prairies in South Dakota turned into rolling hills and a lot more trees during a brief foray into Iowa.
— Omaha, Nebraska has a lot more hills than I expected and it was not at all easy to find (or enter) our AirBnb. Maybe we should have spent another night in the rooftop tent. On the other hand, J loved his 14 ounce ribeye. It turns out I didn’t take a single photo in Omaha.
— Left quad still showing the wear from the Badlands ladder incident and stairs are not going so well…found a large ace bandage that might help…
— From Nebraska into Missouri. Lots of trees and lakes and very beautiful, especially once we got into the Ozark area. Detoured into Kansas City for the precise purpose of going to the Jack Stack steak restaurant.
— Missouri doesn’t believe in leveling roads. The two lane “highways” we were on simply followed the steep rolling hills regardless of pitch up or down. I’ve never been over as many “blind hills.” And there are some great town names – “Tightwad” being one of my favorites. With a street called “Stingy.”
— At the Doolittle campground, outside of Rolla, Missouri, we saw a red fox scamper across the golden, illuminated field behind our campsite.
— Further along in Missouri (it’s a big state), and outside the “Boomland” fireworks center (a truly scary place), we visited a somewhat desolate park that holds itself out as the location of the first steps of the Lewis and Clark expedition.
— There are a lot of terrifying bridges in the U.S., especially between Missouri and Kentucky. No shoulders, rusting, and they look like they could collapse at any minute.
— Nashville is a very large city. The “hockeytonks,” as they are called, are crowded day in and day out. After enjoying a lot of music simply from the street side we found a relatively tame venue where we could listen to a very good singer playing acoustic guitar. No luck in finding an unannounced Lucinda Williams or Steve Earle or Jack White show. Oh well.
It was a relief to get to the home of our friends K and B in Banner Elk, N.C. The next week and a half was taken up with family and friends (and the recovery of my leg). Unfortunately the leg issue meant that discretion was the better part of valor, and we didn’t attempt the Grandfather Mountain climb that we’d planned.
On the way back from N.C to Florida we had one last rooftop tent night at Skidaway Island State Park, Georgia, outside of Savannah. It was hot and humid and rained a lot.
But beautiful. Just like our 6,500 miles driving through 16 states and four national parks of the United States.
The approach to Badlands took us along State Road 44, a two lane road that eventually cuts across the park. There’s very little traffic. But that apparently didn’t deter the same road construction that we saw across the entire country. We experienced a 15 plus minute delay when one lane closed down, and a lead vehicle ceremoniously ushered us along about a three mile strip of highway – where we met the sole car that was waiting to go the other direction.
We finally reached the Interior Motel and Campsite in Interior, South Dakota, just outside of the park, about 6:30. It was nice. Several other rooftop tents, toilets and showers, an above ground pool, and a view of the Badlands. There were a few cars speeding along the adjacent highway, but somehow that was comforting in this otherwise extremely desolate place. Plus, the road was a elevated above the campground, giving it sort of a Jetson like feel. A full moon tonight and plans to focus on hiking, not driving, the next day.
I woke up about 5:30 a.m., probably due to the sunrise. great swathes of apricot overlying the wine dark purple of night, and the morning star piercing through all of it.
Apparently they don’t worry too much about park admissions on Tuesdays, and we didn’t even have to show our park passes. We stopped first at the visitors’ center and got some advice about trails, and also looked at the extremely interesting working fossil laboratory and heard a lot about a recently discovered Saber tooth tiger.
From there, we started the first of our hikes. The Window – a very easy boardwalk – and the Door, a bit more of a hike, culminating in a natural door that frames a view of the wall of jagged white peaks of stone. Traversing through it was almost like walking through a hard iced cake.
The Notch hike was next. The beginning has one steep section with a ladder going up. We rejected the ladder and instead scrambled up along side it. Fairly wide ledges led out to a spectacular overlook of the valley. It was very not, near noon and 90 degrees in the shade. On the return, we chose the ladder route. Mistake. Looking through the ladder with nothing below triggered all my fear responses – I was so tense I basically slid down without ever letting go and messed up my left quad – which plagued me for the rest of the trip. My legs were shaking when we got to the bottom.
After a quick lunch in the air conditioned Explorer, we journeyed on to the Saddle Pass. It was a true scramble – steep and slippery up the rock formations themselves, culminating on the flat upper green prairie and a number of trailheads. At the ranger’s suggestion, we then went off track and climbed the highest peak to a little throne at the very top. Amazing how touching the rock – as opposed to being on a ladder = makes it so much easier!
By then we were more than hot and sweaty. Did I mention temps were well over 90 degrees? We drove a little more of the Loop Road to the Fossil Exhibit boardwalk, an area of mammals fossilized more than 30 plus million years ago.
We finally hightailed it out of the park to see the small hamlet of Interior, South Dakota. There are two churches and a bar. We stopped at the bar. At the Wagon Wheel the bartender explained to us the story behind the poster of the naked woman riding a Radar the Bull (with a ring in its nose). She looked like a bovine Lady Godiva. Apparently Radar was a frequent visitor to the bar at one point. Between fossils (Lyme Regis) and the bull (my encounter with one in the Yorkshire Dales) I had flashbacks to our UK trip.
Spent the rest of the day at the campsite, plotting our next moves while being entertained by the couple in a nearby campsite who appear to be living out of their van while practicing for the their next singing gig.
We awakened on day two of our Yellowstone adventure to a view of two elks grazing and head butting only ten yards from our rooftop tent. You could actually hear their antlers clacking against each other. It didn’t look like serious business – they’d go at it, like very large puppies, for a bit, and then tire of that game and eat some more grass. Eventually they meandered out of the campground, as comfortable as you please.
This was our day for the “must see” Old Faithful, which required a trip to the western side of the park. There’s a great visitors’ center, with good explanations of volcanoes – especially how we were sitting right on top of one. We then took a decent hike up to an observation spot to see Old Faithful itself. Fortunately, we saw a pretty good eruption. We saw it erupt a second time later in the day, and it simply sputtered.
Next stop was the “prismatic falls.” A navigational error ensued, and we turned off the road too early, which took us along a rather odd hike on the perimeter of the area toward the Fairy Falls. We could see people in the distance on boardwalks, but had no way to get there. Nonetheless, we could still see the billowing multi-colored smoke – pink and turquoise. We were going to try to get to the actual location, but the traffic was simply too much. A lot of Yellowstone is still digging out from the floods of last year, and although the crowds weren’t bad, a weekend day was all that was needed for the traffic snarls to start.
A big rain storm had started so we headed to the Lake Village lodge again to wait it out. There, sitting on the porch, we met someone who was born in Derbyshire, of all places, then moved to the U.S. with his family, and now was a film editor on one of my favorite TV shows, Naked and Afraid! It was he who told us about Deadwood….
After a “grocery store” trip (to the extent a national park general store can be described as a grocery store) we had our last camping night in Yellowstone, and celebrated with an odd concoction of mac’n cheese, precooked bacon, and green beans. As I was cooking I noticed a fellow camper who’d left his chair too close to his campfire on that very windy evening – fortunately I was able to call out to him before it got incinerated. I felt like a veritable Smoky Bear!
The next morning we managed to pack up all the debris we’d been accumulating. Those bear box pantries are a real luxury. We left camp by 10 a.m. and drove to Fishing Bridge, just north of Lake Village and out of Yellowstone via the East Entrance. There was a lot of elevation gain, and evidence of many forest fires, lots of downed, white trees.
There was a full day of driving ahead of us. Our route was going to take us through Cody, into the Big Horn National Forest area, and finally into Deadwood which was as peculiar a place as its name implies.
Once we left Golden, CO the temperature had crept far enough below three digits that we had no excuses left. Rooftop tent camping had to begin. After all, we had already lumbered a couple of thousand miles from Florida with the thing stuck on top of our car roof. It was time to do something with it.
Another set point on our road trip was the start date of an AirBnb in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where we were meeting up with family members. Hence, day 1 of camping had to be somewhere between Golden and there.
We managed to reserve a Hipcamp in Buford Canyon, Wyoming, just west of Cheyenne. After a quick stop at a Colorado grocery store (with the unlikely name of “King Soopers” – but that was actually a Kroger’s), we had miles of driving north through Colorado. The burgeoning development outside of Denver reminds me in an unfortunate way of Florida, but then we shifted into high prairie and desert, multiple shades of yellow. Plus the wind picked up…no wonder Kansas had a song called Dust in the Wind. (Incidentally, the Spotify playlist for Kansas contains only two tolerable songs. It was J’s bright idea that’s what we should listen to while driving across the prairies.)
We stopped at the very modern Wyoming State Welcome Center. It’s more like a museum than a welcome center, with lots of interesting displays. The wind blew everything off our picnic table…
We decided to drive through Cheyenne, but there wasn’t much to see other than the capitol building and a very inactive downtown. Even though it was Sunday, I don’t think that was the problem.
Our campsite was about a mile off of the very heavily trafficked I-80. This part of the country is apparently home to the freight train industry with one plus mile long trains. I didn’t even know such things existed.
The campsite was absolutely stunning. A beautiful shelter for a picnic table, with a “designed by” plaque commemorating the architect. A spotless composting toilet and two sites with tiny houses. We set up camp, and walked around the interesting rock formations on the property, and over the ladder the owner had placed to allow entry into state land and the canyon itself.
After a brief scare when we couldn’t get the lighter to work we managed a pretty good first night camping dinner of steak and asparagus. The night sky was a spectacular tapestry of silver and black. The only downside was the I-80 traffic and train noise, which was constant. But it was more than made up for by the convenient and beautiful location. Elevation was about 7600-7800, and we could feel it.
The next day was a long day of driving the length of Wyoming. After we broke down camp, we drove through high desert with the Wind River mountain range on one side. Unfortunately much of the drive was on I-80, with 18 wheelers careening in the wind, and my fingers were sore afterwards from my white knuckled driving.
Some of the area looked like what I would call salt flats. Very desolate, with tiny hamlets of only 100-200 people. I especially liked the truck stop called “Stinker.” We even went through a small town called Eden, which had a few green fields.
Eventually we climbed higher and higher, suddenly saw evergreens, and the next thing we knew we were approaching the Tetons and Jackson.
We located our AirBnb in Teton Village, a major ski resort with lots of condos. What a change from what we had been driving through. J and I managed to get cleaned up – after a night of camping and days of driving we were pretty grimy – and rendezvoused with family. Time for a few days of real R&R – hiking and the like, and a nice break from the road.
Clarksdale, Mississippi. I was watching the sun set over flat delta cotton fields. Pink blossomed into deep peach while rich grape paintbrushed the sky.
After two weeks at home in Orlando after our England and Spain adventure, we took off again on Sunday, August 13, this time by way of our 2016 Ford Explorer with a rooftop tent, as opposed to the airline that shall not be named. Both J and I lay awake the night before thinking about what we’d forgotten to pack for a four week road trip, what we should be taking instead, etc etc.
We finally got off about 9:15, driving along the turnpike to I-75 into Georgia. The turnpike was as excruciatingly boring as always. Ultimately, we exited I-75 and made our way to US 82, which goes all the way to Tuscaloosa.
After the monotony of the interstate, 82 took us through many small Georgia towns, which made the drive much more interesting. Lots of peanut (I think) fields, a large and elaborately patterned black and gold snake that we narrowly avoided running over, the red brick Andrew Junior College in Cuthbert, Georgia, pecan tree groves, so uniform and graceful.
At some point we realized one of the eight bolts attaching the rooftop tent crossbars to the roof of the Explorer was missing. We stopped at the parking lot of – I kid you not – a BBQ place called “Hog ‘n Bonz” (apparently meant to reference Haagen Dazs?) to replace it. My three pound weight that I’d thrown in at the last minute, with some vague idea I could sit in the passenger seat and do arm exercises (not) served as a surprisingly good mallet to push everything back into place. Regular bolt checking quickly became part of our daily protocol.
We crossed the state line into Eufaula, Alabama – beautiful antebellum homes with a dying downtown. Eventually reached the outskirts of Montgomery – many boarded up and overgrown motels, clearly victims of Covid.
Around Montgomery we encountered a drenching Florida style rainstorm. Surmounting other problems – such as the demise of the weatherstripping around the Explorer’s front windshield (purely cosmetic, or so they say), we finally pulled into the driveway of my uncle R’s house, which, by the way, was designed by a student of Frank Lloyd Wright. That explains all the wood, curved walls, and long lines.
The next day R gave us a detailed walking tour of the huge U of A campus, including the stadium with statues of the winningest coaches, fraternity houses with more columns than you could count, the president’s mansion, and the new school of engineering which is as big as many a college campus.
Most interesting – Bryce Hospital – which was originally a hospital dedicated to the moral treatment of the insane, a revolutionary theory for the mid 19th century. My uncle, an art historian, has done much of the work of mapping the hospital and its environs. Straitjackets and similar restraints were banned, each patient had their own room, and there were beautiful park grounds – the theory being that if you treated patients with dignity and respect in a calming environment they could recover. As they improved, they were moved into increasingly social environments. A surprisingly enlightened approach in days long before drug treatments and the like. The building is now being transformed into a museum and performing arts center.
We also enjoyed a visit to the natural history museum which houses the Hodges meteorite that landed on Elizabeth Fowler Hodges in Oak Grove, Alabama in 1954. She’s the only human known to have survived such an onslaught.
A surprise was the tour of the Gorgas House, lived in by the descendants of the 8th president of the university, until the 1970s or so. It was originally the dining hall for the university and is one of the few buildings to have survived the civil war. Accordingly to the posted chronicles, college students in the antebellum south were hardly paragons of good behavior, especially in the dining hall.
Next stop was Moundville – the site of a large city settled by indigenous people coming up from Central America hundreds of years ago. It ultimately became a political and burial site, and consists of large dirt mounds on which wooden structures rested. It was brutally hot, but we nonetheless climbed one of the mounds to see the view of what must have been a sprawling development. Their ceramics were masterful. Many depict a flying snake that my uncle thought might have reflected imagery of tornadoes common in the area.
As we drove back to Tuscaloosa, I was overwhelmed by the miles and miles of undeveloped, presumably privately owned land. That simply doesn’t exist in Florida.
The next day we headed for the Mississippi Delta, driving through thick Alabama forest, crisscrossing the Tombigbee River to Columbus, Mississippi. It’s chockfull of antebellum homes dating from the 1830s on, and is also the birthplace of Tennessee Williams.
The Southern Writers theme continued with a journey through the hill country to Oxford, Mississippi, where we stopped at William Faulkner’s home, Rowan Oaks. Although the town was crowded with newly arriving freshmen about to embark on their college careers at Ole Miss, we were the only visitors to Mr. Faulkner’s abode. The house was built in the 1830s and he bought it about a 100 years later. It’s very small, although Faulkner added a number of rooms, and has opulent grounds, including a riding stable. Apparently Faulkner’s wife commented on the nature of the light on the porch in August – the genesis of the title of the novel, Light in August. I think I’ll have to go back and re-read his tales of Yoknapatawpha County.
We finally reached the flat, soil rich delta and the Shackup Inn – our home for the night and a location that I discovered on the internet. It’s just outside of Clarksdale, and is a collection of old sharecroppers’ cabins that have been gentrified with electricity and bathrooms, but are totally quirky. Rusting farm equipment, old signs, and a large area for music festivals. We could have stayed in a cotton gin silo, but instead picked a cabin called “Shorty’s.” It’s one of the strangest places I’ve stayed since the barrels on Mt. Elbrus in 2014. ( https://fromswamptosummit.com/2014/07/02/looking-down-the-barrel/ )
We checked in and then drove down a pothole ridden road to Clarksdale itself. Clarksdale prides itself as the home of the blues, and hosts many festivals, but it was a little dead on a Tuesday night. The Delta Blues Museum is magnificent and moving. The entire place was a huge contrast to Columbus – here’s the home of the people on whose backs all that wealth was created. It was a left alone little town, enabling the blues to develop and flourish on their own terms. Photos weren’t allowed in the museum, otherwise I’d have posted a lot!
The temperature finally dropped about ten degrees. After a beautiful sunset, we were looking forward to a spectacular night sky.
They don’t say a little black dress can be worn anywhere for nothing. A case in point.
The other week I was invited to speak to the Florida Young Lawyers division about mental toughness (which I call resilience) and my mountain climbing adventures. Having rejected the urge to show up in full battle gear – crampons, helmet, boots and the like – I decided my REI black travel dress would convey the necessary formality (these young lawyers were much more dressed up than we older lawyers tend to be) while still demonstrating that mountain “savoir faire.”
The event was in Tampa, and our plan for afterwards was to drive southeast toward the heart of Florida to a Hipcamp named Camp Catfish. It advertises itself as one of the top Hipcamps in Florida for 2021. It was a primitive site – no water, portapotties or any amenities (if you consider a port a potty an amenity). Just four leveled off pull in sites on a piece of property bordering the Peace River.
The drive to Camp Catfish took us along two lane county roads wending their way through fields of crops and citrus groves. I know Florida’s citrus industry is on the wane, but you wouldn’t know it when you’re in the midst of acres of orange trees.
Finally our GPS – yes, we had no address, only GPS coordinates- took us to a dirt road. Nestled along side were a few small farms and dwelling places – one was a “peace bus”. Truly looked like a spot for those living off the so-called grid.
We reached the end of the road and pulled into the campsite, marked by a Camp Catfish sign. Each site was large, with plenty of privacy. J and I immediately set to work – even though we’ve gotten a lot faster there’s still a lot of set up to do, and J insists on setting up an awning even for a one night stay. Hopefully some time we can go for two nights and enjoy the fruit of our labors.
Now what I haven’t mentioned is that I saw absolutely no point in changing clothes – hence I found my self erecting a privacy tent and making up the roofnest in a black dress! Well, I did change into tennis shoes. Like I said, those little black dresses go anywhere.
I did find something else to wear for a lovely short hike to the Peace River on the Hipcamp property the next morning. The river is home to many fossils – sharks teeth, armadillo plates, and the like – and the other campers were taking full advantage. They floated sieves in the river, dug up portions of the muddy riverbed and strained it through. They also had the biggest tent I’ve ever seen and I wondered if they were actually professional fossil hunters. After all, it was only $10 per night!
The hike itself took us through hobbit land. Covered in emerald green ferns, gentle rises and falls, and a canopy of old oaks.
I left the best for last. The night was moonless. There were no clouds or light pollution of any sort and the sky was embroidered with a thick weave of brilliant stars. Peace River. A wishful hope in these times.
I’m at my first in-person partners meeting in two years, staying at what I’m sure is a five star hotel. Who knows how far into the three digits it’s charging.
But this is life after the pandemic – or at least after we’ve gotten used to the pandemic – and much has changed in the hospitality industry. Or perhaps what I’m really demonstrating is that I’ve simply lost touch with the modern world of hotels over the last two years.
It started when I left my law firm’s dinner at a reasonable hour, returning to a really lovely room in a hotel that shall not be named. I was looking forward to enjoying a super expensive package of nuts from the minibar – which in my naïveté I just assumed was still a “thing.” But when I realized my keycard wouldn’t unlock said minibar I dialed 0 – at least that usually still works – to inquire about the issue. I was informed that Covid somehow had required the emptying of all minibars (despite the fact that minibars, whose ingredients are individually packaged and as pristine as a first snowfall, would hardly appear to be spreaders of Covid).
So giving up on that, I thought I could at least make a cup of decaf coffee in the fancy Illy coffee maker that was on top of the empty locked minibar. But Illy coffee machines should be banned as apparently no one, hotel staff included, knows how to use them.
With all the high falutin’ technology in this room – there was an imbedded TV screen in the bathroom mirror (what??) you would think you could at least turn the lights off with the help of one switch. But no, the switches were multiple and varied and at the end of the evening I found myself looking for manual off and on switches on each light fixture as the only way to power down. At least they still have switches. By the way, that omits the earlier hunt for the bathroom light switch, which turned out not to be close to the door but required a venture into a dark bathroom to find it somewhere in the center of the room over the middle of the vanity.
As I re-read this it certainly sounds like a rant of first world problems. But I’d never have thought that climbing up a ladder to my comfortable queen size mattress in my rooftop tent, illuminated by a little string of built in, battery pack operated LED lights, would be easier than staying in a swank hotel!
This blog post was supposed to be about our first actual out of the driveway camping experience in our rooftop tent (called a RTT by those in the know). But with 2021 rolling out in as haphazard a manner as it rolled in, this post is similarly going to have to careen across many topics. Think of the ball in a pinball machine going this way and that – perhaps a good analogy for the year.
To go back a few weeks – we did indeed get to adventure for one night at a Hipcamp site on the north shore of Lake Apopka. It was a fairly short drive from Orlando – light industrial areas morphed into light agricultural areas, anchored by what I learned is one of the largest blueberry processing facilities in the country. Who knew.
This particular campsite is notable for its whimsical decorations – LED dinosaur lights adorned our spot, and odd remnants of old vehicles and other objects (like a swan boat!) dotted the landscape.
The RTT experience itself was great. There’s a sense of security in sleeping ten feet above the ground, and the views are magnificent. The campfire was great and dinner would have been also had we remembered any utensils. I found myself googling “how to eat baked beans without silverware.” After rejecting the idea of whittling a fork (we didn’t have a knife either!) we resorted to using the tops of our water bottles as scoops.
The next morning was misty and grey. There was a hiking trail just across the street. Huge elephant ear plants around our tent and gone to the wild citrus made us feel we’d entered a world far from 21st century Florida.
But despite our plans for further adventure in 2021, the world of work kicked in and the next RTT inhabitants were Daughter A and fiancé N – in the driveway! Their sojourn – one night only – was occasioned by a Covid/omicrom outbreak among yours truly, J and daughter S (who we suspect imported this strain from a brief trip to San Francisco). And yes, all of us are fully vaccinated and boosted. We did, however, ultimately manage to cordon off the house so A and N were able to sleep indoors.
Fortunately we have a large porch and the contaminated ones were able to sit at the bottom part while still socializing with the others who held court on the top part. Our kn95 masks were de rigeur. Thank God the weather in Florida was compatible with outdoor living, and thus far we’ve limited the outbreak to the original three. But I must say I have rarely spent this much time outside – even on a camping trip. We spent a lot of time watching TikTok videos of other families in similar straits.
Note the “uppers” and the “downers”
So, J and I will shortly see off the last of our holiday houseguests and plan to spend NYE in our covid imposed bubble instead of at the fancy dinner we’d planned at a local restaurant with M and S.
2021 had its moments – A and N’s engagement, Long’s Peak and Colorado, a family Thanksgiving extravaganza, and some great visits with my parents, among them. And let’s not forget the vaccines! I have a very definite feeling that without them I would be facing something very different than a head cold and fatigue.
Here’s to 2022! And to adventure, whether in a rooftop tent in the driveway or beyond.
I haven’t mentioned it before on this blog but as of a couple of months ago J and I became the proud parents of a RTT – also known as a rooftop tent. This little dwelling place sits snugly atop our Ford Explorer and provides a safe and comfortable place to sleep with views to boot.
Installation is a bear. Step one involved procuring the proper crossbars – an item I’d never even been aware existed before. But J persevered and after only four trips to Ace Hardware he had the necessary tools to attach said crossbars to the top of the vehicle.
Step two involved the tent itself. Day one of step 2 involved unpacking and ground assembling. The thing arrived in a gigantic box on a solidly constructed pallet (that has turned into an excellent platform for my orchids). With the help of friend S we unpacked it and attached various bits and bobs such that we could get it to pop up on the garage floor. Whew – quite a stench. The smell of new fabric.
Day two of Step 2 involved assembling a crew of four strong friends in addition to assembling the tent. J and I had tried to lift the thing and dead lifting from the ground to above a Ford Explorer was not in the cards. Turned out with the assistance of some of our stronger friends – all fueled by coffee with chicory I bribed them with – the “lift” was quite doable. It was up!!
A little detail. The tent has a hard top and folds down to a thin 4 or so inches. The car still fits in all parking garages even with the tent riding on top. It has screened entrances/windows on each side and on the front. You access whichever entrance you’ve chosen via a telescoping ladder that hooks onto the side. There are various bags you can hang on the outside for storing shoes so you don’t track anything in.
Inside it’s tall enough for me to stand up at the highest point. There’s a four plus inch built in memory foam queen size mattress, with lots of pockets on the sides and ceiling for storage. And, most cool, you can plug a battery pack in and a string of LED lights illuminates the interior.
When you want to put it up, you simply undo the latches and push. Beyond that it’s just a matter of pushing out the awning that shades the entrance on the front. Storing it is a little trickier – one person pulls down, you have to make sure all the fabric is folded in all around, and then you secure the latches. Compared to putting up a ground tent, it’s instantaneous.
Camping trip number one was in the relative safety of our driveway – to the great interest of our neighbors. Based on accounts in all the rooftop tent camping groups I immediately joined on Facebook, apparently that is a time honored tradition.
Camping in the front yard is one thing but camping in the woods another. We just finished our first one, so there’s another story on the horizon. This Thanksgiving giving thanks for the many adventures with friends and family that are yet to come.
FromSwamptoSummit 