Sleeping

So, if I’m camping in a car, one thing I really need to be able to do well is SLEEP. And if you’re 6’1” like me, a good night’s sleep in a car is highly dependent on being able to stretch out. My early car-camping days started in our 2003 Honda Odyssey.

Our 2003 Honda Odyssey on a winter camping adventure at Whitewater State Park in Minnesota.

In hindsight, van camping (vamping?) was a luxury – 4 x 9-½ feet of space to stretch out, with plenty of headroom. If you needed me, I could be found “in the van down by the river.”

However, as the Odyssey aged and got demoted to our teach-two-teens-how-to-drive-van, we had to go searching for a replacement vehicle that would do well in the snow, would have decent fuel economy, would be fairly reliable, and would most importantly (of course) allow me to continue camping. You need to understand that shopping for a car can take me a while. In fact, right now, I’m practically shopping for the car after our next car. After much research and many discussions with friends, we narrowed our search to a Subaru Outback. We learned that the Outback is longer but not as tall as the Forester and that the Forester is taller but not as long as the Outback. I needed the length.

To keep it in our budget (and to avoid future freak-outs over shopping cart dings), we were looking for something a few years old with reasonable miles on it. In short, we needed an Outback that would come slightly “pre-dented.” Our first attempt to actually look at an Outback “in the flesh” was arranged through a Craigslist ad. Our primary goal in this first interaction was to not get murdered. My secondary mission was to test whether I could stretch out fairly comfortably with the seats folded down in the back. So, we met the guy in the parking lot at Hilldale Mall in Madison, Wisconsin. The 2010 Outback looked good but was a little overpriced. After a good test drive, and before we headed home to think about it, I nervously approached the owner, “So, uh, there’s one more thing; I’d like to make sure I can sleep in here.” He graciously obliged, we folded down the back seats, and I crawled in. Success! This model would work. Bonus: We didn’t get shot, stabbed, or robbed. We made an offer the next day, but the car had already sold. Subaru’s are apparently a hot commodity in Madison.

We looked quite casually over the next several months (see, it’s a long, drawn-out process), until we saw another Craigslist ad, this time for another 2010 Outback, only this time at a local dealer. I called, and the salesperson said, “Sorry, that one’s sold.” Bummer. Maybe next year. The next day, though, the guy called back, “Sorry, but I was mistaken. That Outback you wanted to see hasn’t been sold yet. Actually, it wasn’t in my paperwork yet. It just came in. We haven’t even had a chance to detail it. Unfortunately, though, it’s a six-speed manual transmission.” I tried to restrain my excitement, but on the inside I was screaming, “Yesssss!!!” I learned to drive on a 5-speed 1988 Plymouth Voyager (yes, there was such a thing), and all of my favorite cars have had stick shifts. We dropped the phone and drove across town for a test drive. Perfect! The price was right, and since it still had crayons in the doors and crumbs in the seats from the previous owners, the sales guy offered a $200 discount in lieu of cleaning it. Deal.

My wife and I at the dealer after finally finding a good deal on a 2010 Subaru Outback.

At that point, my mission was to outfit the Outback for car camping. In the van, the floor was perfectly flat. In the outback, the back seats don’t fold down all the way; they stick up at about a 15-degree angle. So, I needed to build something to even that out a bit without taking away too much of the very limited headroom. After making some sketches on the back of various napkins and on random pieces of paper in the middle of the night, I got to work. I needed a piece of wood just slightly larger than me, a few inches taller and a few inches wider – obviously, a door! So, I ran over to our local Habitat Restore (a used building supply place benefiting Habitat for Humanity) - http://www.habitat.org/restores. Our church helped build a Habitat home for one of our families several years ago, we have personally donated some building supplies to Restore over the years, and it’s one of my favorite places to shop. I describe it as a “Goodwill for Building Supplies,” and I am a Goodwill connoisseur.

A tiny fraction of the doors available at our local Habitat Restore, many starting at $5.

With a large selection of doors starting at $5, I found exactly what I needed. Since I wanted to have the ability to still be able to carry a backseat passenger, I needed the platform to be no wider than 26.5 inches so that only one side of the 60/40 back seats (the 60% part) must be folded down.

With some careful measurements, a few scrap 2x4’s, and some work on the table saw, I constructed a platform that would 1.) Get me sleeping level, and 2.) Give me a bit of bonus storage. The platform is 79 inches long, 26.5 inches wide, and there are two supports under it – the first is 5.5 inches tall and 3 inches back from the back of the car, the second is 3.5 inches tall and 32 inches back from the car. NOTE: In hindsight, I would allow more overhang at the back (moving the 5.5-inch support a few inches closer to the front of the car (perhaps 12 inches from the back), to allow for the storage of shoes while camping. Note, however, because of the slant, that this support would need to be slightly shorter (to maintain level). In the pictures, notice the slight cutout in the bottom right-hand corner. I cut the corner in this way to allow for the corner of the car, allowing the platform to extend farther to the back, gaining about two inches of length.

To avoid having screws pull through the thin veneer of the door and to avoid any snagging on top, I used what I believe are referred to as "finishing washers." These are basically washers that provide their own countersinking, without actually countersinking (if that makes sense).

Testing the platform for fit before finishing. Note the cutout in the lower right-hand corner (to fit the car better).

The front of the platform simply rests on the back of the folded down rear seat.

After construction and testing, I sanded and finished the platform with stain and polyurethane. I then used heavy-duty double-faced carpet tape to secure some sample carpet squares to the top of the platform (the carpet came from Restore at 50 cents per square).

Carpet squares affixed with double-faced tape.

When camping, I put an Alps Mountaineering Comfort XL self-inflating pad on the platform (http://www.alpsmountaineering.com/products/pads/self-inflating-air-pads/comfort-air-pad), topped by a sleeping bag.

The platform is topped with a self-inflating sleeping pad.

The platform is then ready for a sleeping bag.

The way the setup fits in the Outback, I put it on the passenger side, I fold down both back seats, and I get in and out of the car (while camping) through the backseat driver-side passenger door.

Since SLEEPING is the subject of this entry, I should also make a brief note about curtains. Privacy is not a huge concern when sleeping in the dark in the woods in a car with tinted windows, but I’ve created curtains to be deployed as needed, depending on whether 1.) You’re at a campsite with a neighbor just a few feet away, or 2.) You’re at a campsite with some kind of horrific light shining right in your eyes as you’re trying to sleep. I’m getting better at looking for hidden streetlights when I select a campsite during daylight hours. Nevertheless, it’s good to at least have the option of blocking the windows. After doing much research, I couldn’t really find a good solution.

An early version of towel curtains in the Odyssey. This first edition used the 3-M Command Adhesive Clips. I quickly learned, though, that they couldn't stay stuck on the window in the heat of a van sitting in the sun all day.

The towel curtains in the van eventually evolved to sheet curtains (lighter and smaller to pack). These were held up with little plastic clips from Staples, originally intended to be used on top of presentation display boards.

So, after some trial and error, I settled on some tiny clips that are sold as clips for name badges. I de-badged them, put some crazy sticky double-faced tape on the back of each one, and installed them at each of the pillars. I then got a black sheet from Goodwill and cut it in pieces and hemmed it (thanks, mom!) to fit the windows.

The name badge clips are an unobtrusive solution that can stay in the car when not in use.

In all of my camping adventures in the Outback over the past year, I’ve only had to deploy one of the curtains once, just this past week. I’m currently at a campground in Tennessee with some neighbors pretty close on one side, and there is a gazillion-watt LED on the front of a new bathhouse at the other end of the campground, and the light was landing right on my face. The curtain worked perfectly, just as intended.

In future posts, I’d love to pass along a few things I’ve learned by experience by addressing ventilation issues (summer and winter), what to bring along on a car-camping trip, how to stay safe, how to wire the car for “shore power,” ideas on where to camp, how to heat and cool the car overnight, and even how to shower in the woods (with warm water, in the snow)!