Go car camping without having to relearn how to drive in reverse.

It’s summer, and people are on the road going camping. Some are pulling trailers or pop-up tent trailers, which are literally and figuratively a drag; a few have pop-up tents on their roofs; I suspect most have a car filled to the brim with stuff that they have to take out and set up; have a look at what Katherine drags along besides three kids and a husband. If you have a little car, that can be a real challenge.

That is why I am so intrigued by the Hitch Hotel; it is not a trailer, with all of the problems of learning how to back up finding a place to park, but it does go into your Class II trailer hitch. It was originally designed as a storage box for bikes, so it has solid fiberglass sides and is a lot more secure than a tent.

I call it a TEM

The magic is in the three nesting boxes that pull out on what looks like heavy duty European drawer hardware into a bed-sized box. You then drop down legs and you have your own Terran Excursion Module, looking vaguely like a LEM from the Apollo program.

Wheel-free and totally suspended off the ground, it is designed to give you a safe and streamlined place to call home wherever you are. In its closed position, the Hitch Hotel provides over 60 cubic feet of secured, suspended, watertight space for all your gear like bikes, coolers, bags, and sporting goods. In its open position, the Hitch Hotel is a patented, revolutionary sleep-space with over 135 comfortable cubic feet for 2-3 adult adventurers. No more hassles, no more sleeping on the ground. Just you, the open road, and your anywhere hotel room.

A Class 2 Hitch can support 350 pounds, and the Hitch Hotel only weighs 240, so you can fill it with gear and have more room in the car. My little Subaru Impreza or even a Mini can handle that (although I suspect that the handling will take a bit of getting used to, and goodbye backup camera and rear view mirror). You get almost all the benefits of a small trailer, like those teardrops I am so fond of, without the trailer issues. This is a real innovation.

All my camping has been by canoe or foot while backpacking, so I often look askance at people towing big trailers, thinking I could grab my backpacking stuff and car-camp out of my other car, a 1990 Miata. But I definitely see the charm of a comfortable bed in a secure box up off the ground that bears can’t easily bite through, or having to set up a tent in the driving rain. It also has such a small footprint that it would be comparatively easy to store; for people living in apartments, if you car is not too big it could fit at the end of a condo parking spot and double as a storage locker to boot. This is definitely an idea with legs.