We tend to stick to “car camping”, since we like camping but we’re not really into backpacking. In 2005 we bought a Toyota minivan. We wanted a minivan anyway, so the fact that it works for camping is a nice bonus. The kids sleep in the front seats, and adults sleep on a custom foam mattress on the flat part of the floor.
We like the minivan over a tent, since we’re immune to wind and rain while we’re sleeping. We use our old tent to hold all our junk, including luggage, hiking gear, etc.
We still have to worry about temperature while sleeping. Starting in the 2006 season, we began starting the engine when it was very cold, or very warm as it was later in the summer. The hard part with that is that one of the adults has to climb over the kids to start the engine, and make a point not to fall asleep, so that the engine can be stopped in a few minutes.
Preparing for the 2007 Season
In preparation for the 2007 season, we have installed a remote start on the minivan. With the remote start, we can use our keychain to start the engine without having to climb over the front seats; and, we can fall back asleep, knowing that the engine will stop in 20 minutes.
It’s not the usual remote start that gives you a new remote for your keychain; rather, it is one that uses your existing remote. You push “lock”, “unlock”, and “lock” within a short time period, and the remote start fires. The engine runs for 20 minutes (configurable), and then shuts off.
Why did we decide to go with this strange remote start? For one thing, the remote that came with our minivan is pretty good. It has a rather good range,much better than what’s on our 1998 Subaru. So throwing that remote away seemed a waste. We also like the “chirp” that the Toyota minivan uses when locking and unlocking. All of the other remote starters had no “chirp option”, unless you also bought a car alarm, and we didn’t really want to buy a car alarm.
If you’re interested, we bought ours from Alta Mere in Broomfield, Colorado. They also installed it. Unfortunately, that branch soon went out of business. Our only problem happened when the minivan’s battery went dead, and we didn’t notice for a few days. The remote start lost all of its programming. I got installation/programming information from the Audiovox site, but never quite got it working. Audiovox’s phone tech support was extremely unhelpful. Fortunately, when visiting Austin, TX, we stopped at another Alta Mere branch, and they were able to reprogram it. The guy who did it said that he failed on the first few times when following the instructions, but to just keep trying!
Safety is important, of course. We bought a couple of portable carbon monoxide detectors, to make sure nothing bad is happening when the engine is running.