GuitarStv's guide on how to tell if you're camping:
- Do you poop in a hole that you dug several seconds before?
- Is fabric the only material obstructing a bear from entering your sleeping area?
If the answer to any of the above is 'no' you're not camping.
Sooner or later, the day comes to all us when getting up is suddenly more difficult than getting down was. You also hear yourself making noises when straightening up. For these reasons my husband and I have decided that our love affair with sleeping on the ground is over, after many years of happily tent camping. So a trailer of some sort is in our not too distant future.
Still, hell would freeze solid before I spent 1k a day renting a truck/trailer combo.
I've had that day. :-) A camper shell on a pickup truck can work surprisingly well, especially if you build in a platform for an air bed and store your gear under the platform. Make it modular and you can take it out to use the truck normally when you're not camping.
That's our plan, at any rate. On our last trip we slept in some friends' truck while they slept in their teardrop trailer. In high summer I'll still tent it; the stiff old joints are not so stiff when it's nice and warm. Also, air beds are extending my ground sleeping lifetime a bit, but they get cold in fall. Sleeping bag pads are warmer, but that part of my life is over.