A Short History of My Life As a Car Camper

When I pulled into the Rockridge skatepark in Bend, Oregon, one warm August morning, two police cars were parked beside a large, dented, late-1980s van. Covered with ski and outdoor stickers, the young owners left the van’s sliding side door open, revealing a carpeted beige interior littered with crumpled blankets and containers of camping gear. The rear doors were open, too, and a twenty-something stood back there setting up his Coleman stove on an overturned plastic crate. Maybe the cops had searched them. Maybe the owners weren’t hiding the fact they were sleeping in there, the way I used to do.

I parked my van next to them. There we were, side-by-side, their old blue and gray van and my tan 1995 Toyota Hiace—different styles united in the cause of getting adventurers on the road. I’d been sleeping in cars since my dad let my friend and me take his Oldsmobile Silhouette van on a summer road trip in 1995, all the