Steve Wallis is one of my favorite YouTubers lately, and his whole schtick at first was camping with cheap and unconventional gear.
Ten bucks of blankets from the thrift store, no tent, for instance. (The blanket fort remains one of my all-time favorite episodes.) Or a tarp and some straps from the hardware store. Or those $0.99 mylar "survival tent" things, what's the experience in one of those actually like? Another classic is the "can you make a tent from bubble wrap and survive in it in the dead of Canadian winter?"... No spoilers, but it's hilarious.
I forget which episode he explains it in, but the idea was that he was sick of seeing all the glamping channels with expensive gear in exotic locations, and their implication that camping and being out in nature was somehow a luxury for the rich, when it should be, no, it IS, everyone's to enjoy.
From there, his focus grew to the locations themselves. Opposite of exotic. Downright silly. Behind billboards, in a storm drain culvert, in the landscaping in the middle of a suburban roundabout... Not only can you camp without gear, you don't need a campground either.
Ten bucks of blankets from the thrift store, no tent, for instance. (The blanket fort remains one of my all-time favorite episodes.) Or a tarp and some straps from the hardware store. Or those $0.99 mylar "survival tent" things, what's the experience in one of those actually like? Another classic is the "can you make a tent from bubble wrap and survive in it in the dead of Canadian winter?"... No spoilers, but it's hilarious.
I forget which episode he explains it in, but the idea was that he was sick of seeing all the glamping channels with expensive gear in exotic locations, and their implication that camping and being out in nature was somehow a luxury for the rich, when it should be, no, it IS, everyone's to enjoy.
From there, his focus grew to the locations themselves. Opposite of exotic. Downright silly. Behind billboards, in a storm drain culvert, in the landscaping in the middle of a suburban roundabout... Not only can you camp without gear, you don't need a campground either.