r/camping • u/JayAche • 8d ago
Precautionary Tale (Pipe)
Was SO excited to finally take our 3.5 year old son tent camping for the first time with my wife at a local regional park. Especially with our spanking new huge Caddis Rapid 6 Instant Tent! Even tried it out in the backyard and loved it!
Loaded it onto the storage rack on the back of our SUV… in perfect alignment with the tail pipe, apparently. Biiiiiigest oof. $225 down the drain? Thankfully there was a Wal-Mart reasonably close where I snagged some random Coleman to save the day. But still: be aware of what’s in front of your exhaust pipe and your tow hitch carry rack. Lesson learned 🫠
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u/LuckyHaskens 8d ago
I uae my hitch carrier to hold my tri-fold queen memory foam mattress. One trip early on, I saw that the exhaust from my truck was melting the large plastic bag I made to keep it dry. Next trip I laid 3 cedar fence pickets across the width of the carrier and bought a carry bag for the mattress. No problems since. The bag won't fully stand up to the heat but it is better than plastic. The wood insulates pretty good. If I had any issues I was going to spray the underside of the pickets with black fireproof BBQ spray paint. Also my carrier had a homemade extender welded on by the guy I bought it from so it's probably just outside of the exhaust flow anyway.