23Zero Tents Allow Us To Stay Out There!

How it all started…

We started this full-time travel lifestyle with a ground tent… we wanted to test the waters and see if we even liked traveling full-time lifestyle; we realized pretty quickly we loved the lifestyle but not so much the tent…. So we started our extensive research into rooftop tents, hoping to find something that would be easier to set up and more durable. We found and quickly fell in love with 23Zero. They have a great selection of many different sizes and styles. Being a big family of 6 with littles, we still wanted a tent that would hold all of us.

For this reason we decided on their largest tent, the Walkabout 87

Folded up this tent was 48×87!! It took up every single inch of space on our full-length victory 4×4 roof rack. Unfolded it was 96×87, absolutely massive with 2 ladders. We also decided to get a winter liner and a full-length annex since we travel full-time and avoiding cold weather is not always possible or desired, we LOVE the winter!

This tent was awesome!

We had it in -8F with the winter liner and a small heater and it was toasty with the 6 of us inside. The canvas with LST coating that they use is very thick and holds heat very well!

But it’s also awesome in the summer heat! It has screened windows on all 4 sides as well as both roof panels. Because of this the wind blows threw the tent as if it isn’t even there!

Not to mention you can get some pretty awesome panoramic views or have some epic stargazing all right from the comfort of your bed!

Fast forward 6 months to when we purchased our Off-Road/Overlanding trailer…

We were excited to move our Walkabout87 to our new trailer… However, we quickly realized that it was the wrong tent for that specific trailer. You see our trailer required us to install the Walkabout87 so that it opened to the driver’s side; the NOT safe side. With the tent on our trailer, it either put the ladders into the trail or made most campsites unusable due to how we had to situate the trailer for tent access. Because we preferred to have the full-length annex installed, we lost access to our fridge slide, making the back kitchen shelves inaccessible. Needless to say, we were not thrilled.

We were eager to find a better solution…

We knew we wanted to stay with the 23Zero rooftop tent lineup because we had been very impressed with the quality of our Walkabout87! It also helped that their customer service was AMAZING! Since our new Off-Road/Overlanding trailer has an XL Full-size bed inside the cabin, we were able to choose a smaller tent that does not hang over the side of the trailer this time around! We chose the 23Zero Kabari, their original hard shell.

Why the new Kabari works better for our current Off-Road/Overland trailer:…

1. It fits our boys!

It has an XL Queen-size mattress. For this life stage, all 4 boys still fit inside (our plan is to move to a second Kabari on the 4Runner when they grow more).

Our oldest 3 sleep long ways next to each other and our youngest sleeps perpendicular to the other 3 at the opening of the tent! This works out great right now.

2. Its a hard shell rooftop tent

Since it is a hardshell rooftop tent, we can now have solar panels mounted on top with the Kabari Roof Bars, killing 2 birds with one stone! This allows us to use our ground solar panels less frequently because we have now permanently mounted some serious solar on the roof. With adding as much solar as we have, we did need to find some upgraded shocks for the tent which was an easy find. Jeremy wired in the panels and BAM, we never had to plug in again!! Talk about finally being able to disappear for the weekend! Since we pair these panels with our 4 heated lithium batteries from Battle Born, we now have the opportunity to go WAY out into the beauty of nature and camp for however long the food lasts! This was a game-changer!

3. We don’t need an additional ladder!

Due to our trailer having built-in steps that already go up to the roof, we opted to mount the Kabari “reversed”, approved and installed by 23Zero themselves. We no longer needed the provided ladder. So now we just have 6 tires on the ground at camp. I can’t begin to tell you how easy this change has made everything! Being able to spin the rig at a moment’s notice for wind, rain, or need of solar has been incredible! It has opened up soo many campsites that previously did not work in locations we wished we could have stayed.

This is our current setup and we have gotten it down to a science. It only takes us 10 minutes to set up our full campsite (everything out), and 10 minutes or less to pack it all away and be down the trail and onto the next adventure!!

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