Every year, my The family starts in summer – Aka Camping Season – spend a weekend in the high desert, during the day, it’s a very hot 90 degrees Fahrenheit, falling to the 40s at night. Every year, my desperate husband tries to fill our dogs, wives and kids by filling the various sleeping materials we have, from lightweight linings to camping quilts to my 0 degree mummy bag.
How do you arrange sleep materials when everyone in your family has different heat tolerances (my son and husband run, my daughter and I are very, very cold); when everyone goes to bed at different times; when your tent sometimes kills and sometimes freezes? We quit, keep awakening, adjusting layers, shuffling under extra blankets, pulling mummy bags or pressing other bodies in the tent (this is my son’s strategy, which I don’t recommend).
This year, we solved this problem with Rumpl bags ($250). This is the most amazing sleeping bag I have ever used. My son stole the tester sent by Trump (Rumpl) and then we had to buy another one for my daughter. I want to come back!
Sleeping burritos
Rumpl is a synthetic sleeping bag. It is rated at 20 degrees Fahrenheit and tested (via Rumpl) at temperatures as low as 10 degrees. You can also order a camp pillow in a matching color scheme ($60) that blends neatly into the hood. This has solved the problem that my child just grabbed the pillow directly from the bed and slept in the dirt for three days.
However, the temperature score is misleading because the genius of packaging bags is the exact number of insulation you can choose exactly how much insulation you want. The sleeping bag is indeed a clampable, foldable sleeping blanket. When you are hot at 8pm, you can turn it on completely; wrap one layer around the top of the child when the temperature drops by 10 degrees at 10pm; then wrap another layer on when it is colder at 1 or 2am, just like the fun color of a burrito.
“But Adrienne,” you said, “can you make this with a backpack quilt?” The interesting thing is you ask. I have Try it. That’s why my husband has developed the habit of nearly every sleep bedding I have on almost every trip. It is not until after a full day of swimming and hiking that you know the real, tired despair. You are trapped in a tent with the entire family, far from civilized. When your child falls in the darkness, your child crys loudly, trying to find the right layer.
This one is too hot! This is too cold! The zipper is stuck! Dog farts! We have endured so many nights that we can only fall into a tired lethargic at 4 a.m. when the sun starts to go out and wake up in sweat at 9 a.m. just as the tent starts to bake.
