I tried many different car sleep strategies. I sleep on any front seat, go through the rear seats, remove the rear seats, and fold them up. I set up a tent next to the car and sleep in the RV. I own a foldable bed. Modified the back of the truck. Now, I also sleep in the roof tent, except for the RV, which is the best way to sleep in the car. However, this does not mean that it makes sense to tie one to the roof.

Full disclosure: Roofnest wanted me to test their "sparrow" roof tent which was too bad, and they borrowed one for me. It is in my car now.

When I started building my Lexus, the roof tent or RTT was not part of the plan. They look cool, and many cooler Instagram-ready versions have them, but I have two beautiful tents, one of which is big enough for my whole family to sleep comfortably in my car. However, this did not stop me from wondering what it would be like to live with one person. So, when Roofnest came to me, I was playing games.

Initially, my plan was for me to check a new, larger model, but the pandemic intervened and we decided to try Roofnest Sparrow Adventure instead of waiting for the new model.

The tents are transported and assembled, so the freight carrier will handle them instead of your regular UPS personnel. I sat in the back of a van with two people who were not familiar with the idea of ​​rooftop tents. The box is large, about the size of a queen-size mattress. I think the weight of the tent is about 130 pounds, so I add a lot of cardboard.

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The one that appears in my house has no accompanying instructions, maybe because someone forgot to put them in the box, or because they are on YouTube, or because it takes about 5 minutes to figure out what needs to happen, install it and stick it on your roof superior.

Basically, you lift it up, put it on your roof, and then slide the small padded strap shown in the picture below under the crossbar and tighten it with small plastic nuts. That's it.

If I install it on a Lexus stock roof rack, or if I have smaller arms/hands, it is absolutely trivial. Because I put it on my Prinsu shelf, I had to ask my wife to tighten a few nuts. Since her hands were not particularly strong, one of them failed and my family fell into a ditch. Just kidding, it's okay. I let it open for a while to let the smell of glue and plastic dissipate.

After setting up the tent for a few hours, we came to an abandoned rural campsite, where my friends and I often drank and tried to kill each other when I was young. We found a place by the river, spread a blanket, and started looking for firewood. Setting up a tent means unlocking a few locks and loosening a few straps. The hard plastic roof rises on its own through four booms. There are some metal rods that can turn the small flaps you see on the side into an awning, and there is a small foldable ladder, a shoe bag and a small cushion that allow you to kick off the sand from your feet. The mattress is a strong memory foam. it's great.

Soon, we found that it can accommodate two adults or one adult and two children, but it cannot accommodate two adults and two children. So I hung a hammock for me and the mosquitoes.

After eating the hot dogs, we put the children in the tent, and were busy sitting by the fire and yelling for the children to settle down and go to bed. they do not. One thing we didn't really expect about RTT was that it was too fun for the two children to sleep on their own. By 11pm, they were still shaking and rolling, so we aborted the mission, piled our belongings, dogs, and about 30 olb of insects into Lexus, and drove home after learning some valuable lessons.

One lesson is that the most difficult part of putting the tent away is to fasten the first strap. My guess is that because Sparrow Adventure has rails that allow you to install MaxTrax and other equipment on the roof of the tent, the mechanism for lifting the roof is adjusted to be stronger than the strength required to lift the roof alone. This means It is also a bit difficult to hold down, at least the first few times you use it. There are two people, it is no problem to pin it and fasten the belt. As far as you are concerned, there is a learning curve.

Soon after, my friend Peter Hughes, who occasionally writes for Jalopnik, sent me a text message with the following text: "Hey, I just prepared a campground for the Watkins Glen race this weekend. You can take two A car. Do you want to come?" I looked up at the only ten-hour drive, and said, "Yeah." For a 2-year-old and a 4-year-old child, it will eventually take about 12 hours to drive. But when we reached our website, the children were definitely angels and were ready to attend the party.

As you can imagine, I had to stop and refuel. In the process of owning this car, when I installed a huge light bar, the fuel economy experienced the biggest drop. If I had to do this again, I would choose a single row of LEDs. I guess Robin cost me another MPG or two, but I bet that if I abandon the headlights and reinstall the standard configuration of the rack, the impact will be even smaller.

This time, I brought our small tent so that my wife and I can alternately sleep in Robin and the ground tent. The children are used to tents, and most of them are killed by walking a few miles every day, so they sleep well, even taking a nap there.

Roofnest should really sell these things to racing fans, because waking up and looking at the car outside the window, above the other cars using the infield campground is one of the coolest track experiences I have ever had. And, unlike the nearby touring car, I can easily throw everything back into the tent, and then leave the track and run into the city. Rooftop tent? It's more like a racetrack tent.

For many people of the GridLife type, RTT mounted on a trailer will change lives.

Last summer we opened Roofnest for the third time, not overnight, but a car trip. We watched the LeBron version of Space Jam, which is not very good, unless the purpose is to remind the audience how many bad movies Warner Bros. has been responsible for recently. When driving into the venue, the performance will start at around 10pm when the sun sets. Children usually get off work at 8 o'clock, so we think the tent is a good place for them to take a nap. But, because "Slam Dunk in Space" is a movie for kids, they like it very much, and the whole thing stayed up late, shouting and shouting. It was a good time.

We parked the car in the back row, being careful not to block any sight, unlike the person on the opposite and right of us in the picture above, he had to be asked to turn off his light bar. The tent gave us an excellent long-distance screen, and we bought a small radio to play audio in the tent. Most importantly, we avoided mosquitoes.

This is the first time I have experienced such a tent, so I can't say how it compares to other tents on the market, but my goal is to talk about the feeling of living with a tent and answer the question whether a roof tent makes sense.

About a week ago, we had another failed attempt on our camping trip. It ends with pizza on the beach, so it's not a huge disappointment. We may have at least another cold weather camping trip this fall-unfortunately there are no children, but my attitude towards CPS is on thin ice.

So, we will use Roofnest a few times and it will stay on my roof the rest of the time. I long for more camping. This is the real reason why I own this GX, but I have been unable to give myself a day off. Here we are. So if the question is: if you camp 1-4 times a year, is it worth having a rooftop tent? The answer to this question is: Probably not.

There are two disadvantages to having such a tent. One is that when you are not using it, it is in your car. I have a barn now, if I want to keep this thing, I might set up a pulley system to lift and store the tent when I am not using it. If you don't have a place to put it, you may have to put it on the roof rack. Given the ease of installing Roofnest, it's easy for two people to lift it up and lean it against the garage wall-again, if you don't mind giving up space.

Another disadvantage is cost. The cost of this tent is about 3,300 US dollars, which is a lot of money for a tent. In other words, it is cheaper than campervans or RVs, and does not really reduce off-road capabilities. It is much cheaper than Sportsmobile or modified Sprinter. And, just like anything else, when you learn more, you will start looking for ways to justify the cost. Roofnest even provides financing...

If you camp so often that spending more than $3,000 on a tent starts to make sense to you, then yes, please buy a rooftop tent. The Roofnest we borrowed is very comfortable, provides good protection against various factors including bugs, and most importantly is very easy to install and dismantle-if you are on the beach or hanging out with friends and aware of yourself In the danger of missing a critical nap time, you can eject it without worrying about the deletion process. You can even put your bedding there, which is an underrated part of the RTT experience.

During the long weekend road trip, you camp elsewhere every night, and the roof tent is more meaningful than anything else I can think of. I don't mind sleeping on the ground, I can fall asleep almost anywhere. But I got more actual rest from sleeping on the roof than sleeping on the ground. If I were to spend more than a day or two in the field, I think the extra rest time would add up.

Hope I can buy another driver in the next few months and let GX retire to camping/cross country. If I do this, and/or if I can put my things together and actually start using GX, as I planned to use when I started assembling it, I might look for a roof tent large enough to sleep mine All crew. I think you can say that I aspire to be the kind of person who owns a roof tent.

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