Roof top tents, why?

OTTT-Over The Top Tent

 

this is true.

I thought about getting a tent from a supplier like this before. But by the time you factor in shipping, it starts to add up. Then if you have an issue you might be shit out of luck. Sometimes paying for the warranty is worth it alone. My 2cents

 

It’s been interesting reading through these threads about RTT vs ground tent. In high school and college I camped in just a two person REI backpacking tent. Never any issues and usually was always blackout drunk sleeping in it anyways.

The last 5 or so years I’ve been in a RTT. First a cheaper soft shell tent that worked okay but was very noisy in the desert wind and you couldn’t keep large items in it like bulkier winter sleeping bags and pillows.

Moved to a hard shell Autohome Maggiolina which has been awesome. Super well made and I loved that it was almost silent in wind and that I could put my kayak and stuff on the top of it. Setup was super quick and I could keep a ton of bedding inside it. Downsides are that hard shells are smaller and even two adults are a tight fit.

Now that it’s me, the girlfriend and a kid the RTT doesn’t have enough room so I have an Oztent on order. I wanted something that was quick setup and well made like the RTT but more room. I’m excited to be able to stand up and change. Also it will be nice to be able to still drive the truck without breaking down camp.

 

Those Oztents look sharp, really like the built in awnings. Just got a Gazelle tent for when the kids come along. Kind of wish I had seen the Oztent first.....

 

I like you

 

$200. You can unclip it from the bed and set on the ground to go wheeling. Futon mattress and a few cushy bed comforters. Wife likes being off the ground.

 

Those are a better $4K investment than a damn tent. I know, 'cuz I have bought both and enjoyed all three...

I think she is developing a double chin too.

 

An instant-up tent has to be ALMOST as quick as one of those sky suites, and one tenth the cost. This one was something like $169-$189 a few years ago at Walmart. Seam seal it inside and out and call it a day. Three minutes to set-up, maybe 5-10 until you have it zipped back into its bag. Just one more of the many stops along the comfort in the outdoors Rites of Passage. If you seek quick, convenient camping comfort enlightenment long enough you find that less is more. Ultimately through your oneness with nature (and all that crap) you develop the ability to attain a state of levitation, warmly, just off the ground, without need for a tent or any other shelter. Nirvana comfort. Sadly, most of us don't ever attain that level of camping consciousness. We are only able to attain the level under that level, the one where you levitate in a camping hammock. I have. Still working on that last level though...aaaaahhhhhmmmmm...

Now listen...here is the good part: Break any part on the instant-up frame and Coleman sends you a new tent. They don't stock parts, so they just send you a replacement tent. You email them a picture of the broken part and you get a tent. FREE! That awning over the tent has a duct-taped x-bar in the back. You can see it. FREE AWNING the next week! Found a replacement part on EBay for $5. Now I have three 13'x13' awnings. Will your sky tent company send you a new one?

 

So I don't have to sleep in the cabin with 4 other drunk dudes who snore like a bunch of fucking donkeys with sleep apnea.... jezus... how the fuck do you not wake yourself up every fucking minute.

Worth the price right there. That's why.

 

Unlike a RTT the cabin is always level. In my 50+ years of sleeping in the great outdoors not being level has cost me much more sleep than snoring companions. I have spent some miserable nights in a vehicle, usually in the bed of a truck, miserable mostly because it was not absolutely level. ( I have had more comfortable nights in a shallow depression in the beach sand, me and my salt shaker.) Even a degree or two off and in the still of the night your inner ear will keep waking you up to remind you that we are not level. IF I would ever consider a RTT, I would need to figure out how to mount it with some adjustable mounts so that I could get the truck close to level, then adjust out the RTT mount's jacking screws until it is dead nuts level. Maybe one of you guys might consider coming up with such mounts. The RTT world might beat a path to your door.

Still, a RTT is a temporary thing anyway. You can hack being unlevel. For a while. Because you are not going to own it that long. Being slightly unlevel will contribute, along with many other small factors regarding its use, towards you moving on to other more comfortable sleeping options. Ask me how I know. It will go in the "NICHE camping equipment I JUST HAD TO HAVE" pile soon enough, like my TentCot. (I have had the restraint not to try a bivy sack and pride myself in saving money there, but I have spent a ton indulging my camping comfort efforts. There shall be no RTT though. I have identified the signs of this sickness's onset.)

RTT are a single step along the lifelong camping path. Ultimately your desire to afford yourself increasing levels of comfort in the outdoors will drive you to other options. Save yourself oceans of money along the way. As a good indicator of the lack of permanency of the RTT as a be-all end-all sleeping accommodations option, how many of you RTT owners reading this have slept in one for ten, twenty years and have NO aspirations to a successive, better-informed replacement option? I've been a member of this forum since 2015 and all the RTT thread discussions I see on here are all about the initial excitement of considering the purchase of one, having just bought one, anticipation of delivery, the unboxing and installation, the first couple of camping trips or so...then you fall off the face of the earth, never to be heard from again regarding the ideal nature of the RTT owner's experience. Be honest... your drive to buy a RTT is more of a symptom of the need to satiate a compulsion to acquire the accoutrements of the camping lifestyle, rather than actually enjoying the act of camping. So save your money. You're going to need it one day. Careers eventually end, but the bills don't.

If you reply to this post why don't you first state how long you have owned a RTT, and how long you have been camping in the outdoors? Listen: 50+ years of camping experience here. Own a 32-foot Class A Southwind motorhome with slide-out. Four tents. Two cots. Three air mattresses. Countless sleeping bags. Past owner of a cabover camper and Class C motorhome. FIFTY PLUS years. I KNOW about sleeping outdoors. Quickly. Simply. Economically. Conveniently. Comfortably. When I go to the woods now I sleep in a warm, comfortable, covered hammock. Flat. Not a banana. Sleep better than in that memory foam mattress at home. Less is more. Recent Projects - Dream Hammock

P.S. Know that the sickness never ends: Just bought a North Face 20-degree Cat's Meow for $9.99 at GoodWill. Too good of deal to pass up. Like I needed another sleeping bag...

 

It’s not that big a deal to use the traction boards and/or bag the suspension to get level. That goes for literally any in-vehicle sleeping whether it’s in the bed, up in an RTT, or a trailer. Congratulations on your successes. Your experience makes you an expert on ... your experience, nothing more. What you read about others and their experiences doesn’t qualify you as an expert on them. A hammock is my personal definition of a night in hell but I don’t presume to tell others it’s a stupid way to ruin a trip.

 

Actually, Scott, it is a big deal of significant effort to get a vehicle level enough so that your inner ear does not signal you all night. It is not a big deal to get your vehicle almost level. It is a big deal to get it completely level so that you rest well and the next day you don't feel like you've been eat by a wolf and shit off a cliff. Getting the vehicle level is a protracted act of finagling and frustrating readjusting wherein you finally just say fuck it, that's good enough. If you push yourself all day like we do you are beyond exhaustion and are toast by the time you get to the camp set-up and vehicle leveling fun. Perfect time and reason to allow in some diminished expectations of the finished job, only to regret it later that night when you get still and relaxed. Again, personal experience: I did it when I was young, in that cabover camper and the Class C motorhome. Used these:

That's minutes of my life I'll never get back each trip, hours in a lifetime of camping. Time consumed unnecessarily when I'd rather have been over there in that lawn chair drinking a beer. Camping is about relaxation, not finagling with your shit, or worse, sitting around a campfire drinking a beer, while being stalked by the reoccurring thought, "I need to be over there finagling with my shit 'cause it ain't right". It's your choice: your weekend can either be all about the camping equipment, or all about camping. I choose camping. Now, when I get in my five minute set-up hammock and it stops swinging...it is always perfectly level. Automatically! And I am LIGHTS OUT by that time.

But you are right Scott...sleeping in a hammock can be its own kind of hell if you don't use a hammock designed for overnight sleeping. Even then, there is an asymmetrical lay technique to sleeping flat in it. My base camp is up in five minutes, where ever I choose to stop my truck, not where the terrain allows me to set it up. And tomorrow morning base camp is deserted and I can be gone three minutes after I start taking down my hammock and throw it in the back, if I choose to be hurried about it.


Base camp can even be anywhere on the water that I want it to be:


Think about it: wouldn't it be nice, for just once, to not have to set up camp, to just be able to unfurl that velcro-bunched hammock and just fall into it? That's what I do Scott. I found a better way. This is it.






So as you can see a hammock has certain advantages to learning how to sleep in one. Besides it being the most comfortable sleep you will ever have. (25% of the people who live in the Southern Hemisphere sleep in a hammock every night.)

There, pursuant to the OP's original intent of a discussion of why a RTT versus a hammock, the prosecution rests.

 

That’s wonderful. But like it or not I can’t sleep in a hammock or any other saggy surface. My shoulders get folded and my back is kinked at the waist. I’m actually more comfortable on a hard spot with minimal padding. I’m well acquainted with the problem of sleeping on slopes from camping and extended backpacking trips, it is a real issue but it’s not until I start to slide down the slope that it keeps me awake. Maybe sleeping on cliff ledges tied to an anchor gives me a different perspective. Nice pics.

 

Yeah my wife is like that, such that we really need a sleep number bed at home. The harder the mattress the better for her. I like it hard too, but damn, that woman likes. it. firm. I am not spending the money for a sleep number bed. They are outrageous. When there is a slope I am forever waking to turn upslope, then "roll" downslope as I sleep. Then wake to turn upslope. I am miserable. And if the slope is at my feet I feel like I am sliding down. The hammock takes care of that for me, but the "shoulder pinch" that you refer to is a real thing in hammocking. There is a style of hammock that almost eliminates it, but to some small extent it is still there. That type of hammock is called a bridge hammock. Several manufacturers make them. They lay even flatter than my gathered-end hammock, and with less shoulder pinch. They have a spreader bar at each end to hold the hammock open and wide. I find the best way to not be bothered by pinch is to be beyond exhaustion when I lay back in it, so much so that I start giggling involuntarily at the comfort. THAT is the best way to end a day: Laughing your ass off, and not knowing why!

 

hmmm...this might be the idea that ticks all of my boxes...

I don't want the bulkiness and storage issue of an RTT, though the gear head in me thinks they are sort of cool
I don't want a hard top cap on the back of the truck b/c I don't like the looks of them...but I do like the security of not getting wet, and use for winter camping, which I do more of then summer
I was mostly thinking of a soft topper, until I heard and saw stories of them getting slashed
This would make my wife happy by keeping us off of the ground

does this keep water out well in heavier rain?

 

I’d want the rain fly pulled away from the inner canopy. Maybe snugged to the mirrors. Where it touches can wick through.

 

Yes.

 

Let's be honest we all buy them because we want to use #overland on Instagram

 

It's so sad and pathetic to me that so many people want to look like so many other people. Doing something to follow a trend is, again, pathetic. You do you, for you and yours. Having a RTT because it's trendy and expensive makes me want to puke in the face of everyone that bought one for those reasons. What happened to individuality? Humanity is doomed for so many reasons, and we deserve it.