I have had a very chaotic last two years, and as a result have gone camping only four out of the last 760 days. I miss it. Quite dearly. I underestimated it’s therapeutic properties.
But we have some hangups... We don’t have a legit camp/glamp vehicle. I felt... and this is ME talking here... that the longbed was once an exceptional camping vehicle. It was reliable, and half of the bed was still vacant after loading all gear. It was disposable, so you didn’t care about a little gravel.
However, it’s three years later. We have a dog that won’t fit in the single cab with two bucket seats. Admittedly, I took it on some reeeeeally dicey gravel roads north of Skykomish... roads it should have never been on but the reward was the perfect campground so I have no regrets. My wife feels unsafe in the tin can and does not feel safe in it. She doesn’t like that she can’t drive it at all (my wife does not care for three pedals). Moreover, it’s become apparent the last two years or so: she’s getting old. We changed gears last time and took the Vibe. And MAN I did not care for it. We used every cubic inch of our 54 cubic feet of cargo space with the seats down and doggo crammed in somewhere. It was like a cartoon where the guy attempts to close the cargo hatch 50 times. Pushing on it, leaning on it, panting in exhaustion. The seats are okay, but are a total pain after 2 hours of driving. I told my wife I don’t want to take that thing again. And while my IS is soooo sosososo enjoyable, it is the least glamp-worthy vehicle ever. No cargo, lowwwwww to the ground, RWD, and the inside is too clean and smells nice to abuse it with smelly camping torsos.
And on that note... Jumping back to 2017, I inexplicably bought that IS even though I was considering the 4Runner, XJ, T100, and early Tundras (I was also considering the TC, Celica something, E91 that was beyond my budget, and so on. I don’t regret the decision, as I don’t like to DD larger vehicles. But for a while there I considered a T100 as a “do-it-all” vehicle. Ultimately, I couldn’t stomach getting rid of the longbed, nor could I justify owning two trucks (three, with the work truck)... for the second time in my life. Moreover, a decent T100 is freaking expensive. The utility of my current 7.5' bed on a disposable, low-cost pickup cannot be overstated. My fear of buying a passenger pickup (extended cab) is that lost utility. Percentage of drives that require my entire bed: 75%. Percentage of time I wish I had more room for more people/mammals and some stuff in the bed: maybe 10%? But man, that 10%...
And to complicate matters even further, I had hoped to replace the longbed with another... longbed!
So yes, I am thinking about a Dolphin, or XJ, or 3rd-gen 4Runner. But I know if I got a pickup, it would basically kill two birds with one stone. The snag is that either scenario necessitates the sale of the IS and/or the longbed. My wife once offered to get rid of her Vibe to DD an XJ or 4Runner, but that would leave me with a fleet of fuel guzzlers. I don’t want the household to get fucked when gas goes over $4.50 a gallon again. And my wife drives A LOT so that would hurt each day. Still, such a sweet lady. And yet in the midst of all this, some days I wonder if I’d own, like, a GTI in the future. I’ll never live long enough or make enough money to own all the vehicles I want! :(
So I don’t quite know what to do yet... This is my internal debate that I expect to take two to five years to solve.