yes. this would be setting up next to the vehicle. i guess another alternative is to get a cap for the pickup and put a mattress in the bed ;-). and then get a good sleeping bag. not sure i'm going to be making this trip but trying to think it through. i'm not a big fan of hotels. i would be travelling from va to ca with no timetable and probably taking a southern route to keep warm. i'm divorcing and if i can't keep the farm i want to leave this area. one of my sons lives in oakland. no family around here.
Getting a cap for the PU bed is a good idea. I car camped for a while back in the 90s and having to setup/take down the tent in the rain was a PITA. When I was a kid, my dad had a full size Cherokee's that we could setup to sleep in. He did a great job with the design and build. We could setup the Jeep for sleeping in 15-30 minutes and if we needed to, we could just hop in the Jeep and drive if the weather was bad. I really missed that setup in the 90's. I thought about getting a bed cap but I was not doing enough car camping to justify the money.
There are PU bed tents out there but I think the cap would be a better buy.
Today, I would go with foam mattresses of some kind but my dad and I used air mattresses and we were comfortable. OTH, we had some friends that slept on the floor of a station wagon once and they froze. The air mattresses might not have the best insulation but a strip of carpet on metal is worse. For a PU bed, I would look at some of the rigid foam to put down under the mattress if you were going to be out in the cold. I slept a few nights with the weather in the 20-30s on a self inflating air mattress. It was only an inch or so thick but it worked. Not real comfy for the back but I was warm. Another problem with air mattresses is you tend to roll of the danged things.
With a bed cap, rigid insulation, and a foam mattress, you can handle some cold temperatures. In the morning, you can unzip the bag to air it out, and just get in the truck and drive. One thing I wanted to do when I was in college was to head west for a summer. I wanted to trade in the car for a PU and just drive around out west seeing the sights. I got to busy with life and never made the trip. Now, I will have to be retired to do what I wanted to do when I was 20.
The setup my dad made was pretty slick. He had made three boxes that fit into the cargo area. One box went from one side of the Jeep to the other. The other two boxes were half the size of the big box. The two boxes sat between the tail gate and the big box. The big box was between the two little boxes and the second row seats. The lid on the big box opened UP and it contained things alike a heater, lantern, towing chain, axe, shovel, etc. The two little boxes had lids that opened down. The two little boxes had shelves for food, Coleman fuel, a Colman stove, pans, silverware, etc. We could just open the lids to the little boxes to access the contents. The lids acted like a little table. Worked great.
The second row seat we would fold down and put in a short saw horse. A fitted piece of plywood would sit over the three boxes and we would slide the plywood so that it would rest on the saw horse and the edge of the long box. My dad cut the threads and head off of four long bolts which fitted into holes in the plywood, saw horse and long box. The pins would keep the plywood from moving around and they were flush with the surface so they would not snag the mattresses. Really a great design we used for years.
If you are going to be camping out of the truck of a length of time a similar setup could be helpful.
Later,
Dan
