Camper hacks

Some of our camper hacks for this trip are detailed below.

 We are heading to Alaska in the summer - the Land of the Midnight Sun.  Thanks to my Dad, we decided to outfit our windows with Reflectix.  It makes a huge difference with regard to the light coming in as well as insulating the tent beds.

Next, we needed to make the beds comfortable for our family.  We will have two adults, three teens and a 10yo on this trip.  Long days of driving or hiking will require a comfortable bed!  

We used to put an egg crate foam on our bed, but it didn't work so well with the expandable beds and having to fold up the mattress to stow for travel.  Enter my new favorite blog:  The Popup Princess.  Thanks to her, we decided to put inexpensive, interlocking foam under all the bed areas, except the jackknife sofa (I will address THAT issue in a bit).

The next problem was the floor.  DH loves to have area and throw rugs in the camper.  I don't.  They are hard to keep clean, they slide around, and make me generally unhappy.  So, we decided to put the foam on the floor too!  This makes for an easy to clean, padded, non-slip solution which has the side benefit of added insulation (we enjoy winter camping).

Now, for that jackknife sofa!  Someone will have to sleep on it, and while we are in bear country, two people will need to sleep on it.  It is not comfortable.  It is wide enough for two small people, but the gap in the center and the downhill slope of the seat do not make for a restful night.  So, I got inventive.

The egg crate foam is no longer needed on our bed, so I cut it down to size to fit the jackknife sofa.  I had a couple skinny strips, and one wider strip.  The skinny strips, I wedged into the gap of the jackknife, then put the wider strip under the down-slope seat.  Using some spray adhesive, I glued the pieces together, then glued an old sheet over it and made an envelope, essentially creating a custom mattress topper.  It is NOT pretty, but the issue of having two people comfortably sleep on the jackknife sofa is solved!

Also, as part of the sofa project, the table was leaning into the bed, so I removed the window curtains and their lower brackets (which pushed the table out 3" into the bed!!  Next, I am going to mount a small block near the top of the table on the adjacent wall to keep the table flush against the wall when it is stowed.  These 3-5" make the difference between that area sleeping one verses two people!