I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I intended to be.

~Douglas Adams

Melissa and Mike’s top ten tips (plus) for camping in your truck…

1. Don’t run your truck through a mud hole that tops the hood on the first day. And if you do, hope for really good luck and that there are no adverse effects on your truck. Go ahead and camp at the end of a paved road, rather than the end of a mudhole-ridden gravel road.
2. Download and study the Motor Vehicle Use Maps (MVUMs) available from pretty much all National Forests (find the website for the forest you’re looking at, then click the Maps and Publications link in the left bar and look for the MVUMs there; most can be downloaded as a PDF). For the most part (and especially in western states), they show where you’re allowed to dispersed camp on National Forest lands. Then, use Google or another satellite view option to look for likely spots to camp. If there’s too many RVs where you are, just drive further over the bumpy, rocky, muddy stretches (contradicting rule 1), and you’ll probably find a spot you can camp without a next-door RV!
3. Find a water container that doesn’t leak. Good luck with that. If you find it, let us know.
4. Jury-rig any and everything. This may include:
   • creating a gasket for your above-mentioned leaking Igloo water cooler made from window gasket material
   • using some tubing to direct the water from your leaky water cooler out the truck door so even though the area around your water cooler is already pretty wet, you don’t make it any wetter while actually using the water as intended (rather than as an unintentional interior car wash)
   • adding a shelf for under your tailgate (for wet shoes and extra gear) made from a $6 piece of closet shelving and a few bungees
   • installing a cargo net between the roof handles in the back seat/storage area of your truck cab to shove your jackets, hats, bug shirts, rain gear, paper towels, etc. Use zip ties if necessary.
   • bringing along leftover bits of decking boards to use for leveling your truck on uneven campsites. Also use said boards for holding your extra water jerrycan up so it doesn’t tip over when you move the leaky Igloo water cooler (we could carry about 12 gallons of water at a time between the two water containers and water bottles).
   • covering most of the bed liner of your truck with super sticky gorilla duct tape so that the rough surface doesn’t catch on your mattress, sheets, clothes. etc. Then, use Velcro on top of said duct tape to attach all sorts of things – mosquito netting, battery powered fans, storage containers for your glasses and phones, curtains, etc.
   • sealing your truck bed camper with any and every material including silicone caulk, RV waterproofing tape, and yes, duct tape. If you use black tape it blends in better…
5. Get over your aversion to dirt and dust before you leave. You’re just going to have to live with it!
6. Prepare for all sorts of weather. This includes ice and snow. In August. And if you didn’t, just wear all of your clothes at once, get your sleeping bag out of the car top carrier, and hunker down to keep warm. Warm beverages and whiskey are both effective for internal warming in cold and snow!
7. Go to the west. There’s amazing mountains, and it’s dry (just avoid the parts that are on fire, please)! If your water cooler leaks all over your truck, it’ll dry. If you wash your really dirty jeans in a bucket with some Dr. Bronner’s, they’ll dry. If you take a bucket shower with frigid water, you’ll dry. When you breathe at night (which I hope you do, no vampires allowed please), it’ll dry… or turn to frost (see rule 6 for pointers on this problem).
8. Get a bucket, a pool noodle, and some wag bags. Use some of that jury-rigging expertise already mentioned and make yourself a toilet. As Mike said, “The bucket changed my opinion about pooping in the woods.” You’re welcome.
9. Make sure you don’t try to use your newly constructed toilet in a really flat area of Wyoming. You’ll have to get down in the dry stream bed to get out of sight of the road, and those really huge mud cracks created as the water evaporated from the clay soils that you thought looked really cool until you stepped into them and sank more than 6 inches into some of the stickiest mud you’ve ever experienced in your entire life — yeah, you should avoid them. Should you not heed this warning, note that it’ll take a lot of washing, including using sand and pebbles as an abrasive, to remove the mud from your shoes, socks, and pants. Even then, you may never remove all of the mud. You think I’m kidding. I’m not.
10. Every single day you’re out there, thank the native peoples that lived on these lands and stewarded them for centuries. Recognize that most of the places you’re reveling in belonged to someone else and were stolen. At the same time, thank the people who fought to protect these lands from development — native peoples, local and non-local advocates, earlier (and perhaps more statesmanlike) politicians, and many others. And revel in the natural beauty and vastness that comprises the United States of America.

But seriously, if you think you might want to start camping in a truck, here’s a few of our best hacks and favorite pieces of gear that made our truck camping experience more fun and comfortable (note that we are not sponsored by or getting anything from any of these links below – we just liked the gear!):

• Take a test run. My sister and I spent one night in a torrential rainstorm in the truck a few weeks before the big trip. This helped us realize a few things that really helped us out on the long trip, including the need for the jury-rigged under-tailgate shelf and having a small collapsible table that we could cook on under the tarp.
• Speaking of tarps, our Slumberjack tarp provided a place to get out of the sun or rain (and to keep the rain from coming in the back window while sleeping with the tailgate open).
• Though we didn’t use it until our return to the east, something like the Dac Inc. Truck Tent can help keep mosquitoes out (unless you’re camping in the western US, which you should be, in which case you won’t need this because you can sleep with the back completely open and not worry a bit about insects! This is what we did for most of the trip.)
• If your truck has an extended cab, remove the backseat to provide you with more storage area. We added some plywood platforms to level things out and give us space to shove stuff like shoes and tools underneath.
• Organize your stuff in tubs so you don’t have to dig too far to find what you need. We had a big food tub sorted into brown bags for breakfasts, lunches, and dinners; but then had our daily food tub on top for easy access to the things we planned to eat over the next couple days inside. (Jerry, you would approve of this system! We didn’t quite reach your standard of organization, but it was MUCH better than our normal approach of throwing everything into a huge pile!)
• Along the lines of the previous tip — don’t let you stuff pile up! Put it back where it belongs or you’ll make yourself miserable!
• Limit the items that need to stay cool. That way, if you forget to get ice one day and then can’t for a couple days, nothing will spoil because, really, things like cheese, jelly, and pre-cooked bacon are pretty much shelf-stable. I also dehydrated lots of things before departing, and packaged meals (especially dinner) for easy preparation. A little experimenting with quantities of water and cooking times led to some pretty decent homemade dehydrated meals!
• Think about how you want to try to stay clean. We swam a few times in the southeast, but we also enjoyed using a portable shower with a 5 gallon bucket and some biodegradable soap. We didn’t heat the water (honestly, we just couldn’t heat enough to make a difference), so showering was definitely a warm-day only phenomenon (though we did shower near the Tetons with snow on the ground – but back to that thing about weather in the west: if the sun is out, it can be REALLY warm in the sun even when the air temp is in the 50s!).
• Research how you can power the gadgets you need. We purchased a sine wave inverter that had enough power to charge my laptop so I could reference the aforementioned Motor Vehicle Use Maps as well as search for places to camp and hikes to take on the internet (using my cell phone as a mobile hot spot). It was also perfect for charging our phones, the small rechargeable fan, and the portable shower.
• Be prepared for trouble. We had a full size spare tire with us (though we realized we hadn’t checked it in a while, so thankfully we didn’t need to use it) and a portable jump starter in case we accidentally killed the truck battery with all of our recharging (which we fortunately also didn’t need).
• Even if it’s cold, keep the windows and tailgate open, if at all possible (I refer you back to rule 6…). Condensation is a real thing while camping in a truck.
• Get off the interstate when you can! Some of our favorite spots were along back roads across the plains and into the Rockies.

If you want to try something like this, Mike and I would be happy to share more ideas, lessons learned, favorite places, and other tips. Just send us a note!