What’s The Best Camper?

Slide in, tow behind, wedge, or just roughing it? None are ideal, but I think I have a pretty good solution that combines the best parts of each.

Matt asked me to share some experiences with different types of truck campers. This seems particularly useful given that it’s typically hard to try these things before you buy one, they cost a fortune, and committing to one also typically dictates a dedicated truck purchase and build.

Who’s This For?

People who like camping, and understand that to mean heading out into nature, away from modern conveniences. If your idea of fun is expanding your RV’s slide outs at some trailer park in Fort Lauderdale this is not the guide for you.

Here in North America, we’re fortunate to have pretty much unfettered access to vast swaths of public land. So, with a little forethought, you just head into the mountains, prairie, river, or beach, and camp where you please. This guide is for people who want to leave other people behind.

(Photo: Andy Didorosi)

Slide-In Truck Campers

I think the worst night I’ve ever had in a truck camper was at Canon de Guadalupe, a private campground south of Mexicali, where every site has its own hot spring. I’d borrowed a fully built Nissan Titan HD from Hellwig Suspension, complete with a ginormous Lance slide-in, and we’d driven it down for a long weekend in Baja with our buddy Andy Didorosi and some batshit crazy chick he was dating at the time.

After loading up with extra DEF, just in case, nearly running out of fuel thanks to an improperly-wired aux tank that screwed with the truck’s fuel gauge, and stopping to tighten loose turnbuckles half a dozen times, we eventually bumped our way up what should have otherwise been an easy trail in time to catch the sunset from camp.

I’m pretty sure it was the water pump switch for the sink that we forgot to switch off, but after campfire tacos and a relaxing soak, Virginia and I turned in (Andy and the crazy girl slept in the provided palapa), only to be awoken by every alarm in the camper going off sometime in the middle of the night. That water pump had drawn down the camper’s batteries, causing everything from the carbon monoxide sensor, to the fridge, to like ten other things to start blaring all manner of fault and low power warnings. There was no way to fully shut it all off until the sun came up, and the solar panels put enough charge into the batteries to make everything happy again.

The next day, after getting several hundred more dollars of diesel and re-tightening the turnbuckles every 15 minutes, we found our way over to a beach on the Pacific Ocean. The rig was way too big and heavy to get out onto a beach, so we camped along a dirt road, a few hundred yards from a nice Mexican family. Andy had to spend most of the night retrieving crazy girl when she would wander over there to try and fight them.

We’d also left the propane-powered fridge running, and it’d eaten up all of our fuel. So everything got warm and gross, and we ended up cooking over a campfire the next morning, harvesting wild mussels off the rocks and sautéing them in tequila for a surprisingly good brunch.

We tried to stop for al pastor tacos at El Trailero in Ensenada on the way back north, but the truck wouldn’t fit down the side street and I couldn’t find a place to park it. So everybody got hangry at me while we waiting for four hours at the border.

All U.S. customs cares about is whether or not you’re carrying fruit, but I somehow managed to waffle when they asked me about that, so they made me pull into the inspection line. Two brief off-road trips on easy dirt roads of the kind easily tackled by a 1982 Toyota Tercel with two flat tires had proven too much for the camper, which had burst its gray water tank, flooding the interior, which was then soaked the couch cushions and broken dishes that had fallen out of the cupboards. The customs dude took one look at the filth, and told me to get the hell out of his parking space.

Several hours later, we finally got home to Hollywood, totally exhausted and not in the mood to find a parallel parking space big enough, so I just ate a $60 parking ticket to get us out of the thing.

Good stuff:

• Like a tiny cabin you can cart around in the back of a truck.

• Kitchen, bathroom, couch, bed, TV, fridge, you name it.

• Generally impervious to weather, when stopped, when it’s not winter.

Bad stuff:

• You’re looking at like $30k, absolute minimum, and more likely multiples of that.

• So heavy you can’t safely carry one in anything less than an HD pickup, and even then you probably need to spend $10k+ on suspension to make it work.

• Absolutely destroys any off-road capability. You’re restricted to easy dirt roads, only, and even those will likely cause signifiant problems.

• Needs to come off (on precarious jacks) and be stored if you want to use your truck for anything other than camping. And you’ll then have a truck sprung to ride well with thousands of pounds in the back, not empty. You’re probably going to pay for that storage.

• As fragile as a fabergé egg.

• Onboard toilets seem like a good idea until someone needs to go poop while other people are in the camper.

Pitfalls

• There’s a bunch of hyper-unethical companies that want to try and convince you to haul one of these things in something smaller than a Super Duty. The only reason they haven’t been sued into oblivion is that they kill their customers way before they’er able to hire a lawyer.

If You Must

• Find the simplest, most robust option possible. The only example I can think of here is Scout. I actually priced out their new pop-top Yoho the other day, thinking it might be nice to put one of their upcoming larger versions of that camper in a hypothetical Super Duty. Priced for a mid-size (you cannot safely carry any Scout in any mid-size truck), it was $30k. Jeeze.

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Sprinter Vans

Back when I was working as a handyman in London, we used to drive around in Ford Transits and Mercedes Sprinters. There, they make really practical utility vehicles in a market that, at the time, didn’t really have pickups yet. Low load heights, tall cargo compartments, and high payloads paired with efficient little diesels made them really practical workhorses.

And that’s what these things are designed to do: move materials and tools around densely populated Europe. That continent also has a thriving market for little campers that can fit on their roads before being parked in a farmer’s field for the world’s most disappointing camping trip.

Note that none of that describes an adventure vehicle. None of these things was ever designed to be used on even a gravel road, let alone an actual trail.

Go back to that opening paragraph where we talk about how difficult it is to try some of this stuff before buying, and I think we can get an idea of what goes wrong here. A bunch of people follow the van life hashtag on instagram, there’s not enough guidance in this space, and they get the idea that for the low, low price of $300,000 they can get a tiny apartment they can take anywhere in order to stage the ideal selfie. Vomit.

Good Stuff

• Some people think a Mercedes badge is desirable.

• Look great on the ‘gram.

• Two people can very nearly fit inside one so long as they’re both professional rock climbers!

Bad Stuff

• Significantly less off-road capability than a 1982 Toyota Tercel with two flat tires.

• All that stapled together MDF spontaneously combusts the first time you hit a pothole.

• Highway crosswinds.

• Everybody knows how much money you spent.

• No low range, AWD instead of 4WD, no locking axle diffs, no articulation, .000000000000000001 degree breakover angle, tiny tires…I could go on but hopefully you can see the kind of off-road capability this all ads up to: zero.

Pitfalls

• If classified as an RV, you can buy these things on a 30 year mortgage. Which is why there’s so many unemployed rock climbers driving $300,000 vans. And also why those unemployed rock climbers will never be able to afford a physical house. Mortgages are meant to be taken out on appreciating assets, not something that halves in value the second you poop in its composting toilet for the first time. Please take that as legitimate financial advice.

If You Must

• Think of vans not as adventure vehicles, but rather as tiny RVs. That makes them a poor choice for that style of camping, but I think there is a realistic role for them as road trip vehicles. I’m tempted to build one out for travel between cities, where we stay with friends and in hotels. A low roof, and an interior that prioritizes comfort while driving would give us the ability to bring the dogs along on trips we’d otherwise fly out for.

(Photo: Stuart Palley)

Trailers

A couple summers ago, Black Series sent me a $60,000 HQ12 to try out. I promptly took it up an easy dirt road, where the kind of dip that wouldn’t even phase a 1982 Toyota Tercel with two flat tires tore off the black and gray water pipes.

That caused me to go down a rabbit hole, where I realized these things are white labeled in Chinese factories and sold under numerous brands. Those factories are constantly changing spec to respond to whatever shitty supply chain they rely on, so there is no guaranteed ability to find replacement parts, even for something as simple as PVC drain pipes.

That was just the first thing I broke. The trailer showed up with a bunch of random trim pieces laying all over the interior, which had fallen off during shipping or delivery. Other stuff (like the heater’s ducting) was just entirely absent, or simply not connected. The tires were some mysterious off-brand that I wouldn’t have trusted on a highway, let alone trail, and the electronic and gas systems only occasionally decided to work.

The thing was made so poorly that I managed to break at least one more component every time I touched it. They actually tried to bill the PR guy who sent it to me for all the damage, which ended his relationship with the company.

And I only really got one night outdoors in the thing across an entire summer (waiting on parts to arrive ruled it out for a bunch of planned trips). Towing it there limited us to 55 MPH on a drive we normally average 85 on, and towing it the Land Cruiser’s fuel economy fell from 11.5 to 6 MPG.

Good Stuff

• Lots of interior space.

• Pretty nice in there when stuff works!

• Can easily drop trailer then take truck into town or whatever.

Bad Stuff

• Black Series’ abysmal quality is actually higher than most products in this space.

• Towing sucks.

• Towing sucks so, so much more off-road.

• Same note about actually using the toilet if anyone else is in the trailer.

• Prepare to pay for storage.

Pitfalls

• RV and trailer quality is notoriously, unbelievably, nonexistent. These things are put together with staples and hot glue, in a best case scenario. Same cautionary tale about taking out a mortgage on something that should be in a landfill.

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GoFastCampers

The worst night I’ve ever spent in my GFC was on a beach in Baja, when an atmospheric river dipped south unexpectedly, after I’d crushed sunup-to-sundown miles in order to try and escape it. A friend camping like 50 miles further south said a weather station at that trailer park measured 75 MPH winds. Speeds were probably quite a bit higher where we were trying to sleep.

The winds came on unexpectedly, after a calm evening. Not expecting significant weather, I’d parked the truck with the camper’s wedge facing out to sea, which exposed its wide end directly to the storm blowing from the west. By the time the winds had picked up, they were too strong to pull the camper closed.

Virginia and I laid there all night in wide-eyed terror. I’m amazed the roof didn’t get torn off. But, when the winds broke in the morning, there was absolutely zero damage.

I’d actually been caught in something similar, but less severe on that same beach a few years previously. If you need to understand why a GFC is worth the upgrade over a ground tent, then that’s a good example. In that first storm, the fabric on my two-person Big Agnes was ripped from the poles, forcing me to spend the rest of the night in my old Land Rover’s driver’s seat. All the rest of my camping gear in that tent was destroyed. In the morning, a nice Mexican family came and found me, brought me home, and cheered me up with black coffee and beanie weenies. That was obviously the end of that trip. This time, in the GFC, we were able to continue our trip a little tired, but otherwise fine.

Good Stuff

• Safe to run on any truck, even something as light duty as a Ford Maverick, Toyota Tacoma, or Honda Ridgeline without further modification.

• No compromise to off-road capability, at all.

• Works as well in daily use as it does on an adventure by working as a bed cap, doubling storage space and adding a roof rack.

• Most affordable camper ever made, no mortgage necessary.

• 8 foot vaulted ceiling inside.

• Strong, lightweight, versatile, simple, durable.

Bad Stuff

• You’re definitely still camping, and need to think about things like wind direction, temperatures, etc. I don’t actually consider this bad, just managing expectations.

• Limited availability and long lead times.

Pitfalls

• Last I counted there were like 28 fly-by-night brands trying to directly knock off GFC’s original design with heavier, weaker, less practical, more expensive, lower quality alternatives. Don’t fall for those scams.

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How I Camp

From late January through April this year, Virginia, the dogs, and I headed down to Todos Santos, in Baja Sur. Just wanting to get south of the border as fast as possible, we crushed miles on the 15, and just grabbed a room at a Best Western in Beaver, Utah that first night, once we got tired. This was during the first of two atmospheric river storms we drove through on the way down.

One thing we didn’t get to do after our wedding (we got married on March 13, 2020, the day the pandemic was declared), was stop in Valle de Guadalupe, Baja’s wine producing region. So I booked us two nights at a really nice AirBnB on a vineyard, and we had a great couple days tasting wine, eating amazing food and making friends. The area is full of winding little driveways, tight parking spaces, and none of it is paved well, so having an unencumbered mid-size truck really helped us navigate all those tight squeezes without stress.

After that, I wanted to camp, but with another atmospheric river inbound, knew we needed to cover some distance if we were to get south of it. So, at first light, we hit the road, and took the 3 across the peninsula. If you have’t driven that road yet, it is equal parts stunning, and deadly. There’s tight curves, no guard rails, and a pothole situation so bad it’s the worst I’ve experienced anywhere in the world. So you’re navigating relatively high speed mountain road conditions, passing semis, dealing with other semis coming at you square in your line in blind curves, all while dodging craters and trying to take in the views. We got to San Felipe in time to parallel park on the promenade, enjoy a late lunch, then made the two hour drive down the twisty 5 to Bahia San Luis Gonzaga. I probably should have booked us a night at Alfonsinas, but thought we cleared the storm. We hadn’t.

The next morning, it was still rainy and cold, and we were just exhausted. So I made the decision to book a hotel room in San Ignacio, and drive all day to get us down there.

Sounds like a great camping trip so far, right? But we finally woke up to some nice weather the next day, and I was armed with some GPS coordinates for what Sinuhe Xavier promised was, “the holy grail,” somewhere out past Mulege. Twisty roads, tight trails, one very steep side slope, and some soft, deep sand later, we finally had that warm, beautiful beach all to ourselves. We stayed there two nights, and just really relaxed. It was needed.

We were actually driving south at the same time as friends from Missoula. Thacher also has a Ford Ranger, but with a newborn in tow, also a camping trailer. We were sharing intel and coordinates as we leapfrogged each other, and he was ready for a good campout by this time too. There’s no way that trailer could have made it out to the remote beach we were on, but I did scope out an easier one for him, half a mile or so off the highway. They had a good time too.

Get the idea? Driving an unencumbered truck, one we can easily parallel park, that doesn’t mark as out as assholes, and which is capable of tackling even the most challenging of trails while maintaining the ability to safely tackle twisty mountain roads gives us a remarkable amount of flexibility. Things don’t always go according to plan while traveling, and set up like this there is no need to carefully plan out each day’s destination and drive as you must with a large camper or trailer, and we’re free to check out trails safe in the knowledge that we’ll be able to get through them.

The GFC is by no means a luxury camper complete with marble countertops and leather recliners. But it is a comfortable shelter that gets us out of the weather, which adds maybe 15 seconds of setup and takedown time to our already long days, and which keeps all of our stuff safe and secure as we navigate everything from off-road trails to city streets. In short it empowers us to better enjoy our time outdoors, which we then bookend with nice hotel or AirBnB stays.

After a few more really incredible drives and nights (I want to share what I think is the best route in Baja with subscribers), we rented a beach house down in Todos Santos for two months. Unlike pulling into a trailer park, we were able to use that to host friends and family, and enjoy our own private pool and secure yard for the dogs. We kept using the truck and GFC for driving around town, exploring new hikes, plus day trips out to new towns, beaches, and into Los Cabos to run errands. The entire trip cost a fraction of what even the cheapest slide-in camper would have cost, never mind the truck we’d have had to build to haul it down there.

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I should also mention that those surfers got murdered right after we got back. We saw a lot of people in vans, or burdened by trailer and slide-in campers that were forced to sleep in shitty, exposed, crowded places due to their lack of vehicular capability. But we always feel safe in Baja. One part of that is a combination of smart decision making and an ability to become a part of local cultures as we travel. Another is our truck-camper setup. Our formula for a safe, relaxing experience outdoors, no matter where we are, is simply to find a crux that even a 1982 Toyota Tercel with two flat tires can’t tackle, then camp well on the other side of it.

On our last night in Mexico headed back north, we camped back on that beach in Bahia San Luis Gonzaga. The weather cooperated this time, and we enjoyed some final beach campfire tacos and a cozy night in the camper. When we drove out the next morning there was a burned out hulk of a stolen Camaro with California plates sitting along the dirt road, a mile or so from the highway. It was a good reminder that, while bad stuff can happen and bad people do exist, it only takes a little preparation to avoid them.