I was sure I’d never have to pay any attention to rooftop tents. Why devote precious cargo-hauling space to a place to sleep when ground tents take up such a small footprint inside of a car and can be set up in minutes? Plus, I had a built-out camper van with a comfortable bed in it and a teardrop trailer with an even better mattress. I couldn’t imagine the scenario where a rooftop tent made sense.
Then I tried the Thule Approach. I get it now.
The thing about tents in a bag is the roomier they are, the more annoying they are to set up. Yes, they’re easy to move around, but the bigger the footprint, the harder it is to find enough level ground in some spots. They have to be staked down in the wind and covered with a suffocating rainfly when it’s pouring out. That’s why we upgraded to camper vans and teardrop trailers, but each of those has disadvantages, too. The van guzzles more gas than my Subaru Outback, and the bed I built for it is a little too short, so I have to sleep diagonally in it. The teardrop has a longer bed, but towing a trailer is nowhere near as nimble as flying down the highway with the Approach attached to the roof rack.
What really sold me on this particular rooftop tent is the bed. I also have an iKamper SkyCamp Mini 3.0—it lived on the Subaru for a while, then I moved it to the Promaster—and it’s great in a number of ways, especially the ease of setting up. The iKamper unfolds after unbuckling two small clasps on the entry side of the tent, and it’s ready to roll in minutes. The Approach, which is easily installed via lockable mounting brackets, needs to be unzipped all the way around the car, which is why it’s better on my Outback than the Promaster, but once it’s open, the included mattress that folds out is, bar none, the most comfortable thing I’ve ever slept on outside.
In part, that’s about the sheer size of the thing. Even the medium Approach comes with a dual-layer foam mattress that’s 95 inches long and 51 inches wide, which feels palatial, especially in the outdoors. Neither the bed in my van nor the teardrop is anywhere near that long. It’s liberating. But the Approach is also glamorous for its other features: a water-resistant 600D polyester ripstop canopy, mosquito screens, and panoramic skylights that keep everything breezy.
If I had a beef with the Approach, it’s a small one: that the mattress is such a funny shape, it’s hard to find a fitted sheet for it. Bougie, I know, as I could easily just haul around a sleeping bag and be perfectly comfortable. But sleeping bags can be hot and sticky and are harder to launder than sheets and blankets. Thule sells one for $59, and it’s entirely fine, I just bring a separate flat sheet for the top, plus a weather-dependent blanket to stay warm.
$2,800 | thule.com
Read more: Rooftop Tent Skills — Buy, Bolt-on, and Bug Out
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