Travel restrictions remain in place in many states. But that doesn’t mean you can’t get away. This summer, close-to-home adventures, like camping out in your own state, could be the new European vacation.
What It Is:
Lunolife’s 2.0 inflatable double mattress is perfectly sized to fit in the back of your car, so you don’t need to worry about setting up a tent or towing a trailer. It redefines car camping by turning your car into a poor man’s camper van while setting you up for a good night’s sleep whether you’re loaded for a spontaneous overnight or a summer road trip.
Pete Ducato (dirtbag/product designer/LunoLife founder) came up with the idea on his regular snowboard trips to Mammoth Mountain. Unwilling to pay for a hotel, he’d sleep in his car with a camping pad, and think about how the car camping experience could be improved.
His answer was the 15-pound, 4-inch-thick, two-person mattress that looks like two luxury camping mats permanently mated. Each side has its own inflation and deflation port. When you’re ready to snooze, slide your driver and passenger seats forward, unfold the rugged, nylon mattress in your trunk, hook up the included 12-volt electric air pump to your car’s outlet and the mattress. In five short minutes, your trunk turns into your bed.
Printed rectangles on the mattress top indicate where your pillows should go, though there’s no reason you can’t flip and sleep with your head near the hatchback instead of the front seats.
Why We Like It:
Sleeping in the back of a car has only ever been awkward—multiply that by two if you’re sleeping with a friend. Cram two mattresses into your trunk and they’re certainly going to overlap (or leave a gap).
This mattress practically guarantees a good night’s sleep. It encourages snuggling and ensures no one will fall through the gap, whether your bedmate is human or a canine. And if each occupant prefers a different mattress firmness, that’s easy to control, because the sides are mated but the inflation for each side is independent. It also means when your mattress mate flips and flops during the night, you won’t experience the turbulence you would sharing another inflated double bed.
In addition to the mattress and pump, LunoLife comes with two inflatable cubes that stuff behind the driver’s and passenger’s seats to support the head of the mattress when your wheel wells are empty. It was a good call to make them auxiliary. I typically use the wheel wells to store cooking gear, clothing, and more. Partially inflated cubes did a great job of taking up empty space.
LunoLife version 1.0 felt like an inflatable airbed you’d buy at Walmart. Version 2.0 is much more rugged, tough enough to resist dog toenails, and the scraping and scratches of many seasons of use. It also dissipates body heat better so it didn’t feel clammy. The inflation and deflation valves are now easy to get to, with reflective chord on the plugs that made them easy to pull out.
Because this 4-inch-thick mattress is designed to be used inside a car, it’s not insulated. Four inches of air provides an R-value of 1, which is perfect for spring and summer nights. If you’re using the mattress in winter, bring extra bedding for under and over you as an extra buffer against the cold.
When you’re not using the LunoLife, store it in its denim-looking cinch-top bag, which is big enough to hold the mattress, behind-the-seat cubes, and the pump. A pocket in the pack contains a patch kit.
Later this summer, LunoLife will release its XRD overlanding mattress. The XRD will have a center zip to separate the sides when you’re traveling solo and packing a lot of gear, and it will be even tougher.
Nitpick:
The 12-volt electric pump supplied with each mattress sounds like a hairdryer on steroids, and the noise felt incompatible with the serenity of the woods, the mountains, and nature in general. I’d love a quieter inflation option, whether it’s manual, like a stuff sack that mates to the mattress valves, or a quieter pump.
Also, we hope LunoLife’s next product is a universal screen for car windows and back hatches. Because the only thing bad about camping in your car is having to choose between sweating with the windows closed or getting chomped by mosquitoes.
[$225, lunolife.com]
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