Back in February I bought a little Toyota truck that I found on Craigslist for a decent price. I figured it would be worthwhile to have a second vehicle and there were too many times recently that I thought a pickup would be handy. It came with a little aluminum camper shell that was kind of cheesy so I was keeping my eyes open for a better one.
A couple months ago we were on our way to a birthday party at a pool and we were parked behind another pickup with a shell that caught my eye. It had a "For Sale" sign and a picture showed the shell unfolded to a huge rooftop tent. The owner of the truck was just getting there so I struck up a conversation with her and asked about the camper. She'd had it for a bunch of years, didn't want it anymore, and said she'd sell it for a "good price" but she wasn't sure what it was worth. I got her number and told her I would contact her.
I got on the internet and researched the tent. It was by a company that had been defunct since the mid-nineties, and it was the camping company Lowe Alpine that designed the tent. They originally sold for about $3000 new, although these days a used one was in the $600-700 range. Nobody was selling one locally although there was a database dedicated to this product and I read some of the posts and it seemed people were willing to drive many hundreds of miles to buy one. It looked like the demand certainly exceeded the supply. Since she said she would give me a good price I was hoping she would let it go for half of what I'd found.
I called her up and found out that she would indeed sell it for $300, but then we started talking some more and she said if I didn't need my current shell she would take that as a partial trade, she wanted something on the back for security, just didn't need the monstrous camper. We got the trucks together for size comparisons and then she floored me by saying she would just do an even swap for the two camper shells! I couldn't believe it! So I quickly agreed before she could change her mind. The shell fit on my truck like it was meant to be there, the color even matched somewhat. The only drawback is the thing is HEAVY, it took four of us to move it from one truck to the other. My old shell I could just lift on and off whenever I needed without a second thought. I remedied that pretty easily by buying a pair of camper jacks for $50 that lift the thing right off and allow you to drive away, and then back in once you want it back on. So now I have this huge tent built in to the back of my truck. It's real easy to set up, it has a couple of telescoping poles that pop up and a few legs that drop down for support. Check out the pictures:
At the top of the page is a picture of it all folded up, it looks just like a regular camper shell. I don't know how waterproof it is, (single walled, no rain-fly) but living in Arizona it probably won't come up very often. I've only slept in it once (in the driveway) but it's a lot of fun and Griffin thinks it's really cool. Since we have two kids "car-camping" is going to be where it's at for the next few years, this should make it fun.
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