Purchased 2006 Prius in May of 2015 with 101,000 miles on it, new Michelin tires. I love just driving along and looking at our beautiful country and I love mountain scenery so I had lots of that. This was more of a driving trip and stopping somewhere to sleep overnight than a camping trip. If I was younger I would love to do it and spend more time camping and hiking in the mountains. I drove it all the way to Alaska and back a total of about 11,486 miles without any problems whatsoever and did about 51mpg for the trip. I did get the oil changed up in Canada somewhere, averaged about $3.19 for gas and used 225 gallons for a little over $700, spent $500 on food and lodging, only used a motel twice for this 22 day long trip. I had a porta pottie but never had to use is since I found plenty of gas stations, McDonald's Wendy's, Walmart's, rest areas etc. so that part worked out good, I never really camped in one place more than one night so didn't use a lot of the camping gear that I took along. I would say that the Prius makes a pretty good hotel and I would say the Japanese engineers did a pretty good job! I have Garmin 2597 GPS which I relied on a lot and it never failed me for finding eating places, Walmart's etc. and the right directions, I would have been lost without it!
Here I had removed the rear seats and the center armrest. I like my armrest much better than the original! It was about 16" from the mattress platform to the bottom of the foot wells and about 10" down to where the back seat normally is.
This was my mattress platform and the front piece of plywood was removable so when I was ready to go to bed I moved the drivers seat all the way forward and then laid it down on the supports, next morning I would remove the ply, fold the mattress back over and lay the ply on top of it and then I could move the drivers seat back for driving. It could be hinged too for a little easier manipulating.
My new arm rest was made from 1/4" plywood and had rails glued inside for trays to hold things, the top tray was about 2" down from the top, inside I had the 12V power plug which I used to plug my Road Pro cooler into.
Picture showing my 12V RoadPro cooker which I used for heating my food, soup, brats, chili, burrito and whatever else you would like and it worked well, took about 20 minutes to heat a can of Campbells soup up to eating temperature. I got spoons, etc. from McDonalds, Wendy's etc.
This is a picture of my bed sorta made up and ready for sleeping, my first attempt at sleeping quarters was just behind the passenger seat but I found that it just wasn't enough room for me to toss and turn so I re-did it using the whole width of the cabin and it's about the size of a regular queen size bed. About 80" front to rear and about 53" between the back doors and still 36" or so between the wheel wells so plenty of room for me at 6'1".
My mattress, 1 1/2" thick, a 3" would have been more comfortable I think but this one did work out Ok.
This is the bulkheads I installed to lay my 1/4" plywood mattress floor on, I removed the rear seats and the arm rest then built an arm rest from 1/4" ply to take the place of the original arm rest. I had plenty of storage room and some things can even go below the seats.
I installed some netting on the rear windows with velcro tape so that I can get cross ventilation when it's hot outside and it worked good. I could reach the power button from my bed to turn the electric windows on.
Where I removed the rear seats I had a lot of storage space for food behind the passenger seat and my clothes behind the drivers seat.
On the passenger seat I had a 5 gal water jug and some little attachments for my glasses and writing pens etc. I had a nice 6" foam arm rest which was comfortable, much more so than the Prius arm rest. The box for the arm rest was 6" wide inside and I made (2) platforms inside to lay the arm rest on plus another below it for other stuff. I had a 12V cup to heat water for coffee but never used it because I was always able to find gas stations or fast food places for coffee. I purchased the RoadPro cooker and cooler through Amazon for a pretty reasonable price. I only used about half of my drinking water as I filled my drinking cup some times at McDonal's or Wendy's. The Alaska Highway is a pretty long drive but not in too bad of shape, several places they work on maintaining it in the summer time so gravel, washboards, potholes, dust are a common thing but they have to do it when they can in the warmer weather.
Dick Kelly, Fort Myers, FL
