Grab your bear can or camp chair, kick your feet up and chew the fat about anything Sierra Nevada related that doesn't quite fit in any of the other forums. Within reason, (and the HST rules and guidelines) this is also an anything goes forum. Tell stories, discuss wilderness issues, music, or whatever else the High Sierra stirs up in your mind.
balzaccom wrote: ↑Sun Apr 02, 2023 7:24 am
Hmmm. I am going to add a category between Ed's 1 and 2. MAybe 1A?
And yes, I guess our van qualifies as an RV--but not by Ed's definition.
IMO, your van camping is still in Category 1, car glamping. You do have amenities, but they are still pretty rustic, on par with the amenities of car glamping.
Van camping, as you do it, used to be considered RVing, but the typical RV set up, nowadays is orders of magnitude more accommodating than van camping in the 60s and 70s. The ready to camp van conversions out there today rival the truck bed camper inserts from the 1960s, and more! They still fit the RV category, but your set up sounds very basic. As the term modern term "RV" implies it is a vehicle designed and outfitted specifically for recreational activities, whereas your van sounds like a general purpose van you load with stuff when you go camping. Leave it to me (the bald guy) to be splitting hairs...
I think my truck camping gear became more "glamorous" when I bought a Tent Cot CTC a couple years ago. Not laying on the ground has been so much more comfortable, far less dusty, and much easier getting in and out at night for those nature calls.
We bought an Artic Fox 22G travel trailer and GMC2500HD to pull it back in 2018. We do a lot of astronomy camping on our own or at large regional gatherings such as the Golden State or Oregon star parties. I have enough solar on the trailer to run the air conditioning all day and we stay off grid without hookups up to about 8 nights before its time to empty and refill the tanks.
We eat well, sleep on a comfortable queen bed and enjoy our bath/shower even when we are heavily conserving water. A couple of thousand watts of solar means we don't worry about power. We have a Leer cap over the truck bed and a BedRug in the truck bed to keep the astronomy gear from sliding around and out of the weather. We stream or watch TV using a Dish satellite.
We enjoy astronomy under very dark skies and also golf so we spend several weekends a year at Likely RV and Golf. We also do about 1 road trip a year to go to places to enjoy astronomy and day hike. We have about 22 nights of astronomy camping planned for this summer.
We astronomy camped for about 10 years in a 5x8 converted ramp door cargo trailer with solar, furnace, added door, windows fantastic fan vent and other improvements. The astronomy gear filled the trailer when traveling and we emptied it and put up popup shelters so we could use the trailer as a bedroom. It allowed us to bring a lot of astronomy gear and have sleep on a 10 inch bed in the trailer.
The trailer is great because most of the stuff stays loaded in the trailer except for food. It is easy to get things ready to go and very comfortable staying at places without power. After each trip we put bedding and clothes in the wash and put them back in the trailer for the next trip.
We also enjoy hiking and are planning to do the complete PCT over 3 years in five 3-6 week chunks so we can take our time, hike in the areas when conditions are prime for enjoyment and give us 3 years of motivation to keep fit enough to take a couple of 300-500 mile segments each year. We don't care about the order of the miles so we will start at South Lake and head toward Oregon the first year. The 2nd year will be part of southern Californian and Oregon. The 3rd year will be the rest of southern California and Washington. This will be a big part of our first 3 years of retirement.
We have done the JMT 3 times, the Tahoe Rim trail, and a couple of other 10 night trips over the last 15 years. We did about 15 years of 5-6 night trips when the kids lived with us before that.
Back packing is easier than car camping because we bring so much less stuff. I like the adventure, physical conditioning, disconnecting from the Internet and rest of the world and weight loss that comes with hiking for weeks at a time. We could only do a big trip every 3 years or so before retirement because of limited time off when working full time. We also had to travel once a year to see very elderly parents back in Michigan.
I have always cringed a little at the term "glamping". I assume it was a word made up to attract people who dont like to get dirt on them to get outside
our van is somewhere between balz's van and a class B RV. We have 18 gallons of running water and 12v power and a generator or shore power connection for 120v in the van , but no toilet, shower, refrigerator, or built in stove. I still call it camping.
rlown wrote: ↑Wed Apr 12, 2023 10:10 pm
Ed is welcome to his opinion, but a trailer/camper makes a great base camp as we get older.
@ rlown
Russ, I have nothing at all against trailer campers; only just saying they have evolved to a level of comfort that has outgrown the general concept and lifestyle of what traditionally has been labeled as camping.
Now if we are commenting about the individuals who run generators at off hours, illuminate the entire camp ground and blare music so it can be heard 100 yards away, well those are bad actors, and probably would find a way to be just as distracting even if they were a humble pup tent camper. But again, that reflects on the individual, not on the mode they use as a base to access the outdoors.
@ sparky
I agree, the lack of built-ins on your rig definitely puts you in the camper/glamper camp.
Ed
Last edited by Gogd on Sun Apr 16, 2023 7:17 am, edited 1 time in total.
As a trailer camping astronomer, I prefer off grid sites which cut down on excessive light use. I also don't bring a generator. When it's dark I prefer looking at the stars and not a neighbors light show or blazing camp fire. The best camp sites are just public land with no neighbors at all.
When I started backpacking with the family I carried the all the gear for my 2 young kids. My wife shared a tent with them and I slept in a bivy to save weight. It was great seeing the stars all night. I would plan trips around the new moon so I didn't have the bright full moon waking me up when it was overhead. Several years of seeing very dark starry filled skies motivated me to by my first telescope.
I grew up backpacking in northern Michigan so our first backpacking trips as an parent with young children in Yosemite had a huge wow factor. The southern Sierra trips in the last 16 years took the mountains to another level.
JWreno wrote: ↑Thu Apr 13, 2023 3:23 pm
When I started backpacking with the family I carried the all the gear for my 2 young kids. My wife shared a tent with them and I slept in a bivy to save weight. It was great seeing the stars all night. I would plan trips around the new moon so I didn't have the bright full moon waking me up when it was overhead. Several years of seeing very dark starry filled skies motivated me to by my first telescope.
I grew up backpacking in northern Michigan so our first backpacking trips as an parent with young children in Yosemite had a huge wow factor. The southern Sierra trips in the last 16 years took the mountains to another level.
