When did $2000 tents become a thing?
 

Why???

I think it's cool. Much better than people taking motorhomes into a campsite and pretending they are camping

One of my supervisor is actually looking into it. He love going outdoor and he was looking at that cost something north of $10k.

Yea, but is it $2,000 cool. I think that's the real question.

How much $ do people pay for golf clubs? I agree that the price is gross. But if people pay that much, the inflation will never end.

The tent is only worth $500 tops but because it's attached to a vehicle it had to go through bumper and emissions certification. $$$ :confused0068:

Oh, and probably the liability coverage when someone rolls out of the sack half pissed from the night before and forgets they are 6 ft off the ground. That covers most of the cost over the rest of it I suppose.

Well they could have made it bigger, more weatherproof with kevlar or some other tough outdoorsy material, have stronger frames, have some kind of insulation and an awning and it should EASILY cost $500 dollars. I mean what were these tent makers thinking gouging us on these costs.....

That 2 grand would probably get you 8 nights at the ramada inn.

lol right. I was just thinking about how many "normal tents" I could buy with 2k. Not to mention I wouldn't want to have to pack up camp just to take the vehicle somewhere.

Exactly... and oh, by the way... I am pretty sure you lose the ability to put bikes, canoes, windsurfers, etc on top of your car with these too.

More money gets vaporized by trendy outdoorsy "gear" than by car mods.

Don't worry the price will come down after they make more and more until people all have them and then they will be sold at near cost. But it is effcient/cheaper than buying a whole RV and does keep you off the dirt which has it's advantages. Right now that's easily worth the $2k for some... The rest can camp the old fashioned way for now (or buy an actual RV). Besides as long as people are scared of getting sick from other people they will take their chances outdoors (bringing up costs) just like boating.

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And if you see a momma bear with cubs, walk up to her and ask her if she's vaxxed. I'm sure it will go over well

Feel free to add in a 3000 dollar mountain bike. I'll buy it from you in 2 years for 800

i can't complain so much about that. we've never gotten so much free firewood, or entertainment, as we have in the last 2 years with everyone thinking they can just go out and buy a brand new truck, and a brand new camper, and automatically know everything about camping!

it's like setting up a lawn chair at a boat ramp, the week after the boat show!

$3k? feeling cheap?

Lotta money being spent to live like a homeless person....






/sarcasm

No, I need money for a 2jz swap after I destroy 3 fa20s

Roleplaying is fun!

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/6c/fc...49899f9f8b.jpg

(Probably not much of a help but maybe make you feel better up there if a bear did come around).

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My buddy used to trailer around a pop-up camper to camp and what not but now uses a roof tent. Easy to use and looks pretty awesome. I'm an avid outdoors guy but can't find myself to spend anything more than 1k for a roof tent. I'll stick to my $60 tent :happyanim:

As a lifelong tent camper, first as a kid with my family, then as a young adult with my wife, then with our kids, and now back to just my wife and, I've made the progression from a canvas built-like-a-tank, heavier-than-lead Wenzel tent back in the 60s (GREAT tent) that my Dad and Mom used with us, to my first incredibly cheap small dome tent of unknown make (manufacturer wouldn't admit it, probably), then the usual Coleman and Sears "Hillary" suspects cabin tents, then a Kelty Mantra 7 which we loved but had one serious design flaw, then a North Face trailhead 8 which was even better except it lacked the great ventilation ofthe Kelty design. Now have a newer North Face something or other that is fantastic. Have tent camped everywhere from deep woods under lots of wooded canopy to severe windy open sandy areas in bad storm conditions on the OBX and Prince Edward Island. The Kelty and Northface tents were almost always up to the challenge, but would occasionally get some water pooling inside despite my best attempts to dig proper drainage channels around the ground tarp and guy out the rain fly coverings securely and properly.

Why the background? Because we spent $1000 on a used Tepui "Ruggedized" Autana 3 rooftop tent a few years ago. It's worth every penny. New Northface tents are going for not a whole let less than that now anyway, and the cheaper maker "department store" tents are really only useful in good weather in sheltered areas with light winds. Here's the "why"s behind the rooftop tent..

1. Takes 10 minutes to set up. Also 10 minutes to tear down. "Breaking camp" to drive someplace for the day isn't the ordeal you'd think it would be, but yes, it's not as easy as just driving away and leaving your tent setup.

2. You're off the ground. I can't emphasis just how great that is in rainy weather. No drainage ditches to dig. No worries about only setting up the tent on higher ground. The lack of sand, dirt, and insects in the tent is an additional benefit, as is not having to "police" the area for sharp sticks, stones, etc., that might damage your ground tarp or tent floor when setting up. Did I mention setup takes one person 10 minutes?

3. The build quaility is a WHOLE different ball game. Since weight isn't as much of a factor as the tent remains attached to your vehicle, the materials used in the walls, floor, and flys are much, MUCH stronger and denser than even the best standalone tents we have. In a blowing wind, sandstorm, and driving rain, that extra strength is incredibly welcome. In even the worst rains and driving winds, we haven't had a drop of water inside this tent.

4. There's a built-in mattress. No blowing up air mattresses, setting up cots, or unrolling thin uncomfortable backpack pads... just a comfy night's sleep on a firm but compliant mattress.

Really, the only two minuses are the initial difficulties of getting it up on your roof and secured, then removed if you wish to store the tent and need the vehicle for other duties (the tent is heavy enough that it takes two pretty strong people, or four average people to lift it overhead and onto the roof of a tall vehicle; any two people can carry it easily at waist height), and the aforementioned need to fold it up if you want to drive somewhere. That second drawback isn't as bad as you would think, although we do sometimes still use our ground tent if we plan on doing a lot of day trips but not moving "base camp."

The comfort, ease of setup, foul-weather capabilities, cleanliness, etc., make this tent our favorite method of camping with 50 years of experience. It's not the cool factor... it's the other stuff I mentioned. I do admit that I enjoy having folks come up to me and ask me about it when we are in areas with other people.. so yeah, there is an undeniable cool factor, but as others have said, THAT part ain't worth close to $1000.

As to the various comments about tent-camping being for silly folks who just want to pretend to be homeless.... Hey, it's definitely not for everyone, and that's fine. My wife and I like being off the grid, out in the middle of nowhere, enjoying the gifts of nature, knowing that, at least for a while, we are completely reliant on ourselves and no one else. We also enjoy the occasional opposite kind of vacation, too.. don't get me wrong. There's just nothing like tent-camping. The experiences we've had doing that are the ones we still talk about much more than the more typical resort/beach-apartment/touristy type vacations we've taken.. They're ALL good... just something a bit more satisfying about tent camping. The rooftop tent just makes it that much easier, comfortable, and secure. Almost feels like cheating.

I've had four personal encounters with black bears, and that article is accurate. Two of the enounters were in a remote area of Quebec, one was in the Adirondaks, and one was in Letchworth park in midwestern NY state. The two in Quebec were a little unnerving. Once a black bear cub wandered into an open area where an RV was parked (Quebec), the owner of the RV approached the cub to scare it away from his RV, and then Momma bear showed up out of the woods. RV man backed away immediately, Momma retrieved her cub, and no one was harmed. On another trip up there, a black bear clawed away a corner of our tent while were sleeping, possibly smelling the remnants of cooked food on our clothes.. who knows. There wasn't any food in the tent. We stayed still, and it left after a few minutes. THAT was a little scary.

The two in NY were more sightings than encounters.

No campers were harmed.

We don’t have brown bears in my area, only black bears. They are skittish. I run into them all the time hunting and hiking. They usually run away on their own. Sometimes they stop on the trail and look at you out of curiosity. I just raise my arms and yell at them and stomp my feet and they run away.

Thanks for sharing your experience.

I will only add this. I've done a decent amount of camping, and some in bad weather as you describe. I have a different solution for when the weather gets to the point where you say the rooftop camping is an advantage.

I sleep in my vehicle.

Even in the cases you describe, if I had a rooftop tent, I would still sleep in the vehicle.

I've tried that, especially back in the "not enough money for even salad" days of my youth. I could never do it because the vehicle was just too stuffy, clammy, and usually hot with the windows up, and you couldn't roll down the windows in a driving rain.. or, if you did, you got eaten alive by mosquitos. I barely slept at all, and probably would have been better off in a water-logged tent, assuming it was still standing... ;)

Serious question... how do you deal with those things, or do you just "tough it out?"

Well, first, I rarely camped in the summer, it was usually either early spring or late fall. If the car was too "stuffy" I would run the A/C or heat for a bit. I also always made sure I had a near full tank when we got to the campsite. Mind you, this didn't happen often. A couple of times when it was just an overnight though we would just sleep in our Astro, which had a 4x8 flat area with the seats out.

Ppl think it's cool & easy to setup





Just the fact if you need to go somewhere, u have to pack up & unpack everytime u move is a nono. It's only good for "TINY" parks.



*unless you are one of those who can hike/bike 30 miles+ a day then kudos to u

this is really no different than any motorized rv. my one set of grandparents, he hates towing trailers, so they've always had a class b van-rv/campervan/conversion-van, whatever you want to call it...

i'd have to ask him, as i know he has a log book of the miles, but i believe over the course of 40 years, they've racked up somewhere near a million miles overall, travelled everywhere in the US, and driven to alaska at least twice... all with the 'problems' that you say exist for car-top tents.

he's got more than a few stories though of them setting up at a site for a week, leaving to run to the store for an hour and finding someone else taking over the site and trashing their lawn chairs/ table cloth 'because you left'.. they always left a sign in the middle of the spot that said "this spot is occupied", half the people would back over it to get their rig into the spot, one guy tried claiming damage from it...

*oh, and just to rub it in, this same grandfather is turning 90 this year, and is still riding his bike 5-15 miles every day depending on how bored he gets at home ;) (at least that's what he tells us, we're all suspicious that he's biking closer to 30 miles, but he won't admit it)

I think you miss the most important part in my message, these tent on the car requires to be setup like a tent, Unlike RV. You can drive ur RV to the destination & be done with it. You gonna have lots fun getting to ur destination in total darkness & try to set these up .



RV is a RV, you can tow a car/motorbike with a RV & is comfortable like a house. A car with a tent is a car with tent, unless you are driving 2 cars or have another trailer behind you & you still need to set up the tent.

Yeah, when camping in state parks with designated sites, private campgrounds, etc., that can be a real problem, and a real drag, once again showing the bad side of humanity. Sigh. Sorry to hear about your grandparents' experiences.

Our solution, rather than rely on people's ability (and willingness) to read a sign or respect two camp chairs and a table cloth left as an indication of occupation, is to take along a $30 piece of garbage little dome tent and set it up in the middle of the site in a highly visible area when we use our rooftop tent in a public/private campground like that.

Huh ?

It takes my RV friends comparable time to setup as I do with a tent. They have to back into the campsite, which can be a a PITA(we usually only camp at primitive sites), then they have to level the thing, un stow everything that was put away for travel. Dig everything out of the tiny outdoor accessible cubby’s. It is far from pull up and park.

It all depends on what you like to do. For us, the whole point of "camping" is get away from the trappings of "civilized" living and get back to a more primitive, simpler life (with admittedly a LOT of upgrades over pure survivalist "take a knife into the woods and try not to die" type of endeavors) with some of the rigors and extra work that entails. For others, "camping" is just a means of enjoying other locations with minimal disruptions to creature comforts and an easing of workload over day-to-day living.

Trying to say that RVing, or tenting, or even knife-in-the-wilderness experiences are inherently better than one another is futile. They are different, and different folks like different things and have different goals. That's all.

^yep. i like my a/c, and the point for me is to get away from reality a bit-- and just like anything else, we all do it similarly, but in different ways.

i can't stand tenting, mostly because my mom traumatized me as a kid with the words "DON'T TOUCH THE SIDES!". and also, i only remember it raining when setting up and packing up. as a kid, until we got a pop-up, we might've only had 1 or 2 times out of 50 trips that it didn't downpour in the middle of everything being open... but i'm more open to it now than i used to be, mostly because all tents are much better engineered than the one's my parents first had that would take 4 people and an hour to setup...

as my buddies shirt says "one day camping is better than any day at work!"

up until covid at least, everyone that camps generally has much of the same mindset, so it's very easy to stop and chat with anyone from all sorts of backgrounds. hear some really interesting life stories just asking the guy pulling up next to you what he's about...


tenting used to take a lot longer to setup about 10-ish years ago. but lately, all the companies generally have their act together, and even a standard 8 person tent could be ready to go within 20 minutes. my parents hybrid trailer takes about 10 minutes for the raw setup-- backing in, dropping the bunks, connecting the water/electric. but then there's generally another 45 minutes of all the 'stuff'. unpacking the trailer, getting sleeping bags on the bunks, moving stuff around, setting the canopies up, etc. biggest difference is the a/c and heat, and being up off the ground.

the only real difference between a trailer and a roof-top tent other than amenities is going to be where you can take it-- most trailers aren't rated for offroad duty..


btw, i highly recommend Expedition Overland on amazon, if you've got the account and the time. muse, there's a lot of bugs, but it's easier if you're not living it!

https://smile.amazon.com/The-Beginni...t-video&sr=1-1



and you missed the part where i said the entire reason that he has that type of RV is so he never has to deal with a trailer.

i would also argue very much that his rv, being the standard width of a full-size van, is not comfortable like a house.

When did $2000 tents become a thing?
 

A lot of times I get either too lazy or too drunk and end up sleeping in my hammock the first night anyway.

oh, in the middle of fall, there's nothing better than stoking up the fire and falling asleep by it. until it inevitably goes out at 3 in the morning and it's 35 degrees out.