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Our Bunk

I have seen a lot of discussion over the beds supplied with most pop up campers.  Like most, ours left a little to be desired in the comfort area as it is basically a few inches of foam covered with a quilted, padded case.

We decided to add a little more padding to increase the comfort. The photos at the bottom of this page show the lengths we were willing to go to to achieve a comfortable nights sleep.

 

We finally decided to try an Aero Bed Sport (renamed minute bed sport).  This is basically a heavy duty air bed.  Purchased in the Queen size, we discovered it fit between the bed end poles on our Fleetwood Folding Trailer(FFT).  With you head/feed side to side it provides a queen sized mattress.  As out FFT mattress is their "King sized", we have a strip of about 8 inches that is not covered.  While it sounds silly to loose bunk space, we divide this "lost space" between the front, where you would not be able to sleep against the canvas anyway and the camper side where it gives a small area not raised so Natasha can jump up easily. With a sheet on the stock mattress (under out Aero Bed) it looks fine.  After two seasons it has developed a very slow leak, so that it is slightly soft in the morning, but still comfortable. It comes with a rechargeable inflator pump.  

 

Our old system is detailed below.

All photos on this page are thumbnails, click to see an enlarged version

To add a little in the comfort area, we decided a little more padding was in order.  We had a ThermARest self inflating mattress from our tent camping days and it seemed that it would add some comfort.  So, we bought a second one so that it would cover a little more of the bunk. The photo to the right shows the 2 mattresses side by side on the front bunk.  It covers the entire bunk, side to side and leaves about 6 inches at the top (where the pillows normally are) and about 5 inches at the bottom (where our feet don't really care). Bunk1Web.jpg (34169 bytes)
On top of the 2 ThermARest self inflating mattresses, we place the stock Coleman mattress.  While this adds to the comfort, I did not think we were quite there yet. Bunk2Web.jpg (29961 bytes)
On top of the stock Coleman mattress we add a piece of egg crate foam. This now provides a very comfortable surface for sleeping!  Over the top we use a quilted mattress pad and Coleman sheets and a blanket if needed.  In extreme cold weather, we keep our sleeping bags from the tent days in the pop up for emergency use. Bunk3Web.jpg (25610 bytes)

 

Obviously, we have added a lot of height to the bunk and the top WILL NOT close in this configuration, don't try to force it.  We remove the 2 ThermARest self inflating mattresses and place them on the dinette during travel.  Even then the egg crate adds sufficient height that you need to be very careful to pull (or push, depending on where you are standing)  the tenting completely over the bunk before closing the top.  We have found that this procedure only adds a coupe of minutes to the set up and tear down time.  Time that I feel is well worth it as we now sleep soundly, on a very comfortable mattress.

   Revised: May 08, 2007

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