A decent mule to haul your stuff. Photos: YouTube//Screenshot
When I was a few years younger, I really, really enjoyed roughing it. I worked out of tents all summer for years in Northern British Columbia, battling fires, swarms of horseflies, and generally hating every minute until I realized I was loving every minute. Winters were generally spent shitting in sandpits on the beach, chasing waves, shooting fish, and getting an old van stuck in deep sand. As I’ve aged, I still have a deep appreciation for how much fun misery can be, but I’ve learned to lean into the occasional creature comfort. Nate Florence is a guy who likely enjoys both of those things too, and on a recent-ish remote surf camping adventure, he hopped into a rented Toyota Hilux with two roof-top tents and hit the road.
Another thing I’ve come to realize with age is that there’s a wide gap between sleeping in a board bag on a beach and sleeping in a king-sized bed in a hotel when you’re on a surf trip, and you can take full advantage of the gap. I think I spent far too many years only doing one or the other, and rarely dipped my toes in the in-between. On the surf-camping trip you see here, the middle ground is thoroughly explored, with a perfect little cabana-type thing to keep the night out and all (well, most of) the comforts of home packed away in the truck.
Safe to say they scored, but as with all the best trips, the waves were probably just the icing on the cake. The cake itself was in the search.
