A lots been going on for me this past month. The main thing is I’m preparing to start going car camping, something I’ve never done before. I have to learn a lot since I’ve also never been camping before (besides in a camper, and that was when I was younger). It’s fun to have something to challenge me. Since I haven’t been working, it’s been on me to challenge myself, and most of my recent challenges have been related to my health (aka not fun stuff- also, how many times can I say ‘challenge’ lol).

The first thing I did was make a sleeping platform for inside my car. My dad helped since I don’t have any tools or experience with building something like this (or anything really). The issue was making the platform level, as there’s about a 3-inch difference in height between my trunk and where my back seats are folded down. I have a Ford Escape (for those who are interested in knowing).

It took us around four hours to build the platform. It’s two pieces: one sits in my trunk, the other on my folded back seats. This way I can easily take both pieces out. We were originally going to put a hinge connecting the two, but with the front piece up, I wouldn’t be able to see out my back windshield when driving, so they’re going to stay disconnected.

The next challenge was privacy for sleeping. I’d seen people use both curtains and boards to cover their windows, and I decided to use both. The curtains were to cover the front seat from the back, and I also used two to cover the back windows. I used foam board to cover the quarter windows in the back, as well as my back windshield.

These curtains gave me lots of trouble. I started by thrifting two floor-length curtains, then cut them in half to make four. I hemmed the bottoms of all of them and used clothing wire to hold them up (they have eye hooks screwed in at the end). Now, the issue was how I was actually going to attach them to the interior of my car. I didn’t want to screw anything into the walls, so I attempted to use binder clips in the headliner seams to clip the clothing wire to. The binder clips ended up falling right out, so that didn’t work. Next, I tried different types of hooks that could latch over the seam, but nothing would stay (or they’d just get stuck). I finally landed on making some wire hooks that looped over the plastic post under the headliner and had a loop for me to attach the clothing wire to. This ended up only working for holding up two of the six ends that needed a place to sit.

After many other failed trials, I ended up attaching picture-hanging wire to the grab handles, connecting the ones on the right side to each other and vice versa on the other side. This created a place for me to attach S-biners to and then connect those biners to the eye hooks at the end of each clothing wire rod. I still plan on using the wire hooks I made for the two ends that need to reach the trunk. I also used binder clips on parts that were drooping (like on the side curtains I connected binder clips to the hooks under the grab handles). It was all very confusing to figure out, and Google wasn’t much help.

Next, I used paper bags to trace out the two quarter windows and the back windshield to create a template for my foam board. This took a lot of trial and error with sizing, but I got there eventually. Once the size fit well, I cut out the boards and adjusted their shape as needed. Finally, I covered each side in fabric (the side facing in is a fun pattern, the side facing out is a dark blue) with hot glue, and then taped the edges using duct tape (no sewing needed here).

Between doing all this, I was doing research and looking into things I need to buy for camping. I’m slowly getting things, but at this moment I haven’t got everything yet.

After figuring out the privacy, I clipped a blanket down to the platform so it doesn’t get scratched (I used small binder clips to attach it), and also got a mattress pad from my dad. I cut the pad to fit around some grooves of the interior using a box cutter.

Overall, just planning everything out has been a fun experience, and I’m hoping I like car camping. Doing all this is definitely not necessary, and I’m on a budget, so everything I’ve done has been cheap, if not free. I am also chronically ill and disabled, so comfort is key for me personally to avoid flare-ups, hence the work I’ve put in to make my car livable.

I’d love to document some of my car camping adventures here and explore how my health impacts how I go about things and enjoy it.