Nights camping with various cars

Over the last week or so, in my abundant spare time, I started going through all the photos I have taken since I got my first 4WD, the venerable old Suzuki Grand Vitarra back at the start of 2004. I've compiled a spreadsheet of all the day and camping trips I've done using the Suzuki, then the NS Short Wheel Base Pajero and finally the BT-50 and camper. In its roughly four years of active life the Suzuki was out camping 12.5% of the time (171 nights), this includes my three and a half month long service leave trip around Australia in 2005. I predominantly used the OzTent RV-2 with the Suzuki. 

Then came the NS Short Wheel Based Pajero, simply known as the Paj. I got way more adventurous with the places I could go when driving the Paj as it had more clearance and was simply a better 4WD than the Suzuki. It was out camping 9.1% (282 nights) of its roughly 8.5 year life. I had a multitude of possible ways of sleeping when camping with the Paj. The aforementioned OzTent, a pop up tent under the awning, a stretcher and swag also under the awning and finally a Coleman Instant Up tent. 

More recently, I have refined my camping setup with the Mazda BT-50, commonly known as Blute, and a Rhino Slide on camper. I have been using this setup for about 6.5 years. In that time I have been camping in Blute 14.9% of the time (355 nights), about 4.5 of those years I have been retired. The camper on the back of the Ute is by far the best camping setup I've used as it's extremely quick to setup and pack up, so it's perfectly suited to long trips where I'm moving every day. If I'm staying in one place for awhile I use a gazebo that not only provides shelter from sun and rain and March flies but also marks my camp site so I can drive around and have my spot to come back to. 

Blute has a few years of life left in it yet so my next travel and camping setup is being contemplated but nothing is decided yet. Just don't mention to Blute that I am thinking of eventually retiring it. 😊

NOTE.

- For comparison a normal job in Australia has four weeks of holiday leave per year, so if you were to use all those holidays camping every year that would be about 7.7%

- this also doesn't include trips where I have have helped other people transporting cars around and any overseas trips like a conference in Scotland and a trip to Antarctica.

Bye Jeff.

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