Truck Camping Photo Thread

Oh man that's a perfect transition! Yeah, we are mostly in north Georgia, smokey mountain, blue ridge. Good bear seeing area, need to do more looking into bear boxes.

I need to hookup with someone that has more experience in this, and willing to help support and teach, and tag along with them. I'm good hiking/camping by myself, but it's different for me when I bring my wife. Want to make sure she's comfortable.

Wait, how did the catfair with the trip? Never heard of anyone taking their cat before, too cool! We have a yorkshire terrier. He could care less if we get in the woods. He'd rather be at the lake lol

 

The trip I mentioned out of the 4Runner, we did it with a Great Dane. It was the first real road trip we did and we had a week to get ready. Here’s a thread I started at the time. You can see a little of how we went about it.

Spoiler alert our dog was dying and we wanted to make some memories…now excuse me while I find a tissue.

https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/dying-dogs-last-wish-road-trip.599866/

 

I've been looking at upgrading our cooler. It's a simple igloo that I ratchet strap closed/down.

I always over think the food and don't think about "oh the grocery store is just out of town" and panic pack. I'd love to get out tomoab area one day. That'd be a big trip from Georgia for us.

 

Great pics. I see you responded with some tips. Really curious about your advice on other things that worked well, and what didn't work well being out there. One or two days camping for me is about as much as my family will tolerate. What couldn't you do without, and what could you have left home?

 

Most cats hate road trips but we lucked out and ours goes on one nearly every weekend and loves it. We took him all the way from SD to UT and back last summer over 15 days of driving camping hiking and he loved it!

He gets stoked every time we get out his carrier and runs into it because he knows it means we’re going for a drive


Utah:


Colorado:

 

Sorry to hear about your pup, man. Breaks my heart and I don’t even know you or her! My buddy’s Great Dane had so much heart and would just freak out and jump into his arms every time he came home! Have always wanted one. Sorry for your loss and thanks for being an awesome dog owner and taking her on an awesome trip! Respect to you!

 

Yep.. Now I need to order more tissues.. The dog prayer at the end of that didn't help either.. I hurt thinking about losing my buddy. He's our world.

Need to plan a beach trip for him this coming summer. I can work remote, so I need to setup our truck to support a wifi system/get a mobile hot-spot.

 

Do you do anything special to keep him clean? Or does he do that himself sort of? (FYI, I know very little about cats) we have some mild pet wipes we use for our dog

 

This is such an awesome photo!

 

I think what works the best is not overthinking it and just getting out there. We've added stuff we never thought we would need, and ditched stuff we thought couldn't be without.

Don't get hungup on the "overlanding" setups you find on youtube and instagram. The fancy shit is nice, but the stuff you find at the thrift store will get the same job done. People have been doing this kind of stuff since the 70's out of station wagons and 95% of the places you'll go can be reached in 2wd.

 

Not really, no. If he rolls in the dirt we wipe him off but he usually is pretty graceful and stays clean.

 

I ate some pretty good humble pie one night camping on some BLM land in Arizona. We got to the site marked on freecampsites.net and it was a pull off quite a ways off the road but essentially it was two primitive dirt parking lots and they were full of other vehicles. We like some space and private so I scouted around and ended up wheeling our 99 4Runner at the time up some (what I thought was) pretty gnarly, steep, rocky, jutted, off camber, uphill section and found a path to a spot way up the hill all alone.

I was pretty proud of myself for picking such a good line and getting us up there…


About 2-3 am, pitch black out, I hear nasty metal scraping and clanging outside. I look out to see what in the world is going on and a clapped out early 90s minivan is scraping its way up the same hill. No modifications (or repairs it seemed) whatever. Drive right past us and further on up tue way.

I went from thinking my modified off road rig was epic and necessary to realizing, comparatively, a Subaru would have been night and day more capable than that old minivan.

 

Haha been there too! It’s truly amazing the places people can get vehicles with a good set of tires and some determination.

We do like to push ours a bit, ran Fins and Things in Moab this time.

 

TJ,

Don't overthink it.

Start by going out for 1 night. Think about you might need to be comfortable, and toss it in the truck. When you are camping, take notes - what did you bring that you didn't need/use (most everything.) What would it have been nice to have that you didn't bring? (Not much) The idea here is to refine your gear list with short trips, so that when you go on a long trip, you have everything you need.

And, on any trip, if you forget or need something, a resupply point is not that far away. Stop, grab what you need, and continue on your trip.

On extended trips, I usually carry 10 gallons of water - that is enough for multiple days of drinking, cooking and showers for 2. OK, they're not 20 minute steaming hot showers, but we get clean.

I am in Georgia as well. I would like to run the Georgia Traverse in the not too distant future. You are welcome to join us, to work your setup. When you are with others, forgetting something really becomes a non-issue. Someone always has what you need.

Don't over think it, and don't worry too much about it. Bring water, food, appropriate clothing. Everything else - and I mean everything - is merely a luxury.

 

Shawn,

I agree with this, with one exception.

People have been doing this kind of stuff long before the '70s! As soon as cars were invented, people figured out how to camp in/with them. And before that, they camped on horseback. Of course, that far back, camping was the way of life...

 

TAKE NOTES. That is By far the best piece of advice. We print out our packing list and always cross off and add on every trip still to this day and we have been camping a lot and even multi week trips. It always evolves, one piece of gear can change two others on the list..

 

Solid advice!

Absolutely! It sucks to see people get caught up on the “overlanding” and think they need the RTT and pull out kitchen setups and full armour to get out there and enjoy it. I’ve found the more we go the more luxury’s we leave at home.

But everyone’s needs are different and the only way to figure out what works for you is to just jump in.

We’ve started carrying a Garmin In-Reach and it’s really provided that layer of stress management that’s allowed us to go further and push our trips longer.

 

Sierra’s

 

Hey Scott, thanks for this!

We did one trip up to Cohutta (spelling?) for a quick weekend trip, got up there at night, then drove around the mountain the rest of the day then back home. Was a lot of fun. Learned real quick that I need to insulate my tent, or get lights inside so we can see to cover all the places that aren't sealed so to speak. I've hiked the GA portion of the AT, and done several camping trips, but am struggling bringing that experience/knowledge to car camping for some reason. I think it's just me over thinking it. I definitely struggled with "how do I clean my eating/cooking utensils?"

Keep me in the loop about the Georgia Traverse trip. We'd love to join (Me, wife, 6lb yorkshire terrier). Don't have many folks in my circle that do that. Mainly they go to a camp sight and camp. That's fun, but I want to do more, and make a trip/experience out of it.

 

Gold Butte