1986 - I was stationed at Fort Belvoir, Virginia. My wife and I wanted to go camping, a trip to Ocracoke Island, NC I had recently purchased this Chevy S-10 Pick-up truck and had the shell put on. I was able to go to an furniture upholstery shop and bought a foam rubber mattress from an old hide-a-bed. I cut the mattress out to form around the wheel wells in the bed of the truck. My mother made a slip cover for it, like a gigantic pillow case. It fit perfect in the back of the truck.
We slept in the bed of the truck, never in the tent. We took the tent along so we could throw all our "junk" from the back of the truck under a roof so we'd have room for us to sleep. I even made a frame to hold the baby seat. We had a LOT of fun with this set-up.
I used a bicycle inner tube to use as a spacer between the shell window and the back window of the truck. This truck did not have air conditioning, and was a manual transmission, and hand crank windows and an AM radio only. We thought we were "king rats" with our little set-up! And the baby slept in the middle between us.
It's really hard to believe that little baby is now 30 years old. When these photos were taken, "I" was 30 years old. And that was 30 years ago!
We had a LOT of fun with this set-up. Of course, we later discovered that we could rent a pop-up from AAFES on post (Fort Belvoir) and then we were camping in style!
