How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love My $100k Camping Setup

Let's talk about the absolute fever dream that is modern overlanding culture. We've somehow collectively decided that the best way to experience the "wilderness" is to strap approximately $30,000 worth of gear and mods to a $70,000 truck, polish that paint job until it's literally reflective enough to perform emergency dental work, dress those 37-inch tires like we're prepping them for a photo shoot, and then... drive ten miles down a dirt road to Bowman Lake. The math ain't mathing, folks.

Peak efficiency: $8,000 worth of equipment to achieve what grandpa called 'lying down outside.'

Here's the thing that kills me: we've essentially recreated our entire living rooms on wheels and called it "getting away from it all." Someone's got a Starlink dish mounted next to their rooftop tent because god forbid we miss a single email or can't stream the game while we're "disconnecting." There's a full pizza oven strapped to the back—not a cute little camping version, but like, an actual artisanal pizza oven that probably costs more than my first car. Microwaves. Espresso machines that would make an Italian barista weep with envy. I've seen setups with dual-zone refrigerators fully stocked with ice cream that could keep a family of four fed for a month, mounted in custom drawer systems that cost more than some people's annual rent. At what point did we just become extremely expensive, mobile hermit crabs, dragging our entire existence down forest service roads?

And don't even get me started on the gear obsession. We're out here debating whether our recovery boards should be Maxtrax or TRED, like we're not just going to use them once as Instagram props before they collect dust for three years. Everyone's got a $200 shovel that's been "battle-tested" on exactly zero actual recoveries. The Hi-Lift jack mounted prominently on the hood? Yeah, that's a $150 accessory that 90% of overlanders don't actually know how to use without potentially killing themselves. But it looks absolutely sick in photos, so there's that.

The rooftop tent situation deserves its own intervention. We've convinced ourselves that sleeping on top of our vehicles—requiring a literal ladder climb after a few beers—is somehow superior to just... throwing a tent on the ground like humans have done successfully for millennia. But that ground tent didn't cost $3,500 and doesn't have the Instagram clout of a iKamper or Alucab. Never mind that you're basically creating a sail on top of your rig that murders your gas mileage and makes highway driving feel like you're piloting a drunk refrigerator through a wind tunnel.

The kicker? Most of these meticulously built rigs spend more time at meetups and photo ops than they do actually overlanding. We're out here at Usal Beach, parked twenty feet from our friends' equally absurd setups, comparing gear specs and awning deployment speeds like we're about to traverse the Sahara instead of spending a long weekend drinking craft beer within cell service range. Someone's inevitably got their drone out, capturing "epic" footage of our convoy of mall crawlers tackling a slightly rutted dirt road that a stock Subaru Outback could handle with ease.

And let's address the elephant in the rooftop tent: the social media industrial complex that fuels this entire charade. Every trip requires a minimum of 47 golden-hour photos, perfectly positioned camp chairs facing a vista, and at least one moody shot of your rig with all the lights on at dusk. We've got people spending more time setting up the perfect shot than actually enjoying the location. That moment when you drove past a beautiful viewpoint because the lighting wasn't right? Yeah, we've all been there. We've become Instagram photographers who occasionally go camping, rather than campers who occasionally take photos.

The community events are their own special brand of theater. Overlanding expos where people spend thousands on gear they'll use once, if ever. The collective FOMO when someone debuts the latest battery manager with bluetooth connectivity or a new roof rack system that can somehow carry even more stuff you don't need. We're basically adult Pokémon collectors, except instead of "gotta catch 'em all," it's "gotta mount 'em all to increasingly questionable spots on my vehicle's exterior."

Peak simplicity: canvas tent, Coleman cooler, firewood, and zero Instagram strategy required. These people are having more fun than any of us with our $10k setups, and that's the uncomfortable truth we refuse to acknowledge.

Don't get me wrong—I'm not judging from some moral high ground. I'm sitting here coveting that guy's integrated Goosegear drawer system and wondering if my roof rack needs just one more LED light bar. I absolutely spent last weekend debating tire pressure strategies for a trip that involves 95% highway driving and maybe 5% dirt road. My browser history is a embarrassing rabbit hole of "best overlanding gear under $500" followed immediately by "how to explain overlanding expenses to spouse."

But let's at least acknowledge the beautiful absurdity of spending $100k to do what our grandparents did with a Coleman cooler and a tarp. They drove their bone-stock trucks down the same trails, had just as much fun, and somehow survived without a portable shower system or a custom spice rack. The difference? They called it "camping," charged exactly zero percent of it to a credit card with "adventure points," and didn't need an always-on Starlink connection to validate the experience.

Maybe that's the real wilderness we're all searching for: the ability to just go somewhere without turning it into a full-scale expedition that requires a spreadsheet, a second mortgage, and a social media strategy.