I don’t get the truck bed tents, personally. I guess they might have their use cases for hunters or something who are taking their truck out to the woods anyway, crashing overnight, and getting up at the crack of dawn to shoot Bambi and go home. Or something. But otherwise I don’t see the appeal over just using a regular old tent, which will be both cheaper and considerably more versatile or doing as we used to do and just put a cap on your truck, and throw an air mattress in the back. The cap-and-mattress plan also has the advantage of not needing an actual camp site or anywhere to even put down stakes for a fly; you can just stop in any damn fool sandy/muddy/rocky/wet/paved location you like and there you go.

I almost bought a rooftop tent a few years ago. I was in Snoqualmie in the pouring rain at dusk, because Seattle, just crashing there after driving across the country before moving on the next morning. The guy at the site next to me rocked up with an Xterra with a rooftop tent on it and just folded the thing out and climbed in. Meanwhile I was out there getting drenched working on hammering my tent stakes into the damn hard packed clinker they dump all over the camp sites there. At that exact moment I did not hate any person on earth more than I hated that motherfucker and his rooftop tent.