Iโve been in love with the Napier truck tent series ever since I first saw one of their ‘Backroadz’ tents on the internet.
Itโs such a unique and handy looking design, and I knew I had to take it on a big camping trip across the United States.
Fast forward to 2021, and I’ve now had the pleasure of doing three major road trips with the Napier tents — a total of more than 30,000 miles traveled across the USA.
This article is a quick rundown and review of some of our adventures with the Napier truck tents, and why you should own one yourself!
What Is It?
For decades, Napier Outdoors has been pioneering the idea of vehicle tents, where a tent is directly attached to your vehicle for extra comfort and convenience.
Their Backroadz tent, which is made to fit in the open bed of a pickup truck, is especially popular, and that’s the model I’ve used over the years.
It’s a handy design that can be ordered to fit a wide variety of vehicles, and with a bit of experience you can set it up easily in less than 10 minutes.
Napier Truck Tent in Utah
Our Experience: 2021 Road Trip
Our latest experience with Napier was a 2 month road trip through Colorado and Utah with Napier’s updated 19 Series Backroadz tent.
The 19 Series tent has newly added window flaps, improved zippers, a color redesign, and another small mesh vent at the top if you need more air.
During this trip, we did lots of hiking in the Colorado mountains, knocked out a bunch of U.S. National Parks, explored more than a dozen of the best slot canyons in Utah, and completed the infamous Angels Landing hike in Zion.
For a truck bed mattress, we used the Airbedz PPI-PV203C mattress by Pittman Outdoors. Napier also makes a Sportz truck bed mattress that’s a bit cheaper and seems to be well liked, although we don’t have experience with that one.
It was a wonderful trip. The tent held up well, and it was a joy to use.
Roomy!
Valley of the Gods in Utah
Throwback: 2017 Road Trip
I first wrote a review of the Napier Backroadz truck tent in 2017, when I used it on a massive 20,000-mile road trip that covered a bunch of U.S. states and lasted almost 6 months.
Most of this time was spent exploring the National Parks and other scenic places in Utah, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Washington, and Oregon.
The Napier Backroadz truck tent performed great from the start.
Colorado — one of my first outings with the Napier Backroadz truck tent when I wrote a review back in 2016.
I got caught in a huge thunderstorm in Kansas on the very first night of that road trip (go figure!), and the ground around my truck had deep puddles of water.
When I woke up it almost looked like I was camping in a pond or something. Any other tent probably would have been submerged and soaked, but the Napier truck tent kept me high and dry.
Having the tent elevated above the ground is also nice for keeping out bugs and other crawling things, and the flat bed of a truck will always be more smooth, uniform, and comfortable than your average patch of bumpy dirt (or tree roots).
Some of our favorite places we explored on that road trip were the Sawtooth mountains in Idaho, the Tetons in Wyoming, the coastline of Oregon, and Glacier National Park in Montana.
Tetons sunset
Final Thoughts
I like the improvements Napier has made on the latest 19 Series Backroadz tent, and our Napier truck tent has already survived a lot of abuse.
The new grey color scheme is also nice, although I must admit I kind of miss the green colors of the older model. If Napier offers even more colors I think that would be a great idea for people wanting more choices.
One of the things I love about vehicle tents in general is how they donโt take up any extra space on the ground, so it makes finding that perfect camping spot even easier โ just roll up to a level spot and put your vehicle in park!
Sometimes when I visit new countries, I miss my Napier truck tent and wish I could bring it with me for overseas camping! It really is that comfy.
Napier has a winner on their hands!
About Napier Outdoors
Napier Outdoors is based in Canada, and they’ve been selling vehicle tents in the USA for more than 30 years.
You can shop for their truck tents here or visit the official Napier website at https://www.napieroutdoors.com/.
8 comments
great article and amazing idea with a truck tent !
I went on a road trip a few months ago but with a camper van.
It’s a lot of fun!
I have an SUV Napiar tent snd need to replace some tent poles.
Please contact me
Hi Janet. I’m just a blogger. You can get tent support from Napier at https://www.napieroutdoors.com/
Just got one and need to buy a mattress. What have you used and recommend?
Hi Terry! We’ve used and could recommend the Airbedz PPI-PV203C mattress by Pittman Outdoors. Napier also makes a Sportz truck bed mattress that’s a bit cheaper and seems to be well liked, although we don’t have experience with that one.
Had one and returned it. Why? Water leaks, especially with wind pushing the rain water in where it connects to SUV.
That’s not been my experience, but we’ve only used the truck tent, not the SUV tent.