Remembering our time with memory foam

After our first two weekends out with Toto, Sooz and I agreed that the mattress provided with Toto — innerspring, full-size, with a beveled corner at the foot to make it easier to enter and exit the trailer — is a little on the firm side.

There’s plenty of room here for sleeping, or reading, or watching a show on the tablet or laptop, or napping, or for two terriers to hang out in the daytime. Is there room for Sooz, Doug and Tyler overnight? Not really. Yet we try.

Better too firm than too soft, yes? Firm is good if  you have a dodgy back, and I have one of those. But if part of your dodgy back care routine is to sleep on your side, then there are Pressure Points to consider.

Pressure Points is one of those terms you learn at Mattress Sales University. No, I did not attend, but I am pretty sure it’s in Mattressology 101, because you hear and read this term all the time, and it always comes from Mattress Sales People or perhaps Mattress Marketers. The Pressure Points are going to keep you awake, ruin your sleep, end your marriage and possibly threaten world peace. They have to go. And the way to make them gone is… add a topper, or purchase a mattress that has a cushy topper built in. Either way, this adds to the Mattress Company’s profits.

I can be gullible, and I can be impulsive, but really I am just mostly attentive. I hear you, Mattress Professionals. I will get a topper, I thought. In fact, my studies have revealed that any number of other Escape trailer owners have added mattress toppers of one sort or another to their boudoir arrangements.

So we tried one from Costco. It was light blue. It was a Gel Memory Foam thing. When we opened it up inside our house, it took a few hours to expand to its ultimate size — just a tad smaller than Toto’s mattress — and we trundled it out to Toto and set it in place.

Setting it in place was as easy as making Toto’s bed, which is to say, it wasn’t at all easy. The only way to walk around the side of Toto’s bed is to walk outside the trailer, and the walls are difficult to reach through. So everything must be done by  reaching from the foot of the bed, or by crouching on this or that part of the bed while you’re working. Great dodgy back therapy!

But we got the new topper on the mattress, and encased it all in the cotton cover that came with the topper. This was in late February.

When the bed is all made up, and before it is subjected to terrier rooting and other activity, it looks like this. That thing on top is called a Travasak, and we’ll likely see a review of its qualities from Tyler or Wally in the near future. Shams by Sooz!

Then we took our trip out to Cape Disappointment State Park. We slept on it. Also, we crawled across it. Back and forth. Our early assessment: more comfortable to sleep on, not so easy to move around on. Getting in and out of bed was a little like walking, crablike, on your feet and hands, over quicksand.

No Pressure Points. In fact no sense that there was anything at all underneath me while I slept, or rather went through the motions of sleeping because who can sleep in quicksand?

But that was just three nights, so we decided to leave it in place for our Big Trip to California.

(This is the thing about Costco… you can take things back if you don’t like them. We don’t ever want to abuse that privilege, but…).

So we used that topper for our 11-day, 10-night trip to California. We thoroughly tested that topper. And so did Wally and Tyler.

Did I mention the topper’s weight? It weighs a little. I think this is generally true of memory foam mattress toppers. But you will recall that weight is an issue for Team Toto — especially weight toward Toto’s hitch, which adds to Toto’s Hitch Weight, and how TinMan considers too much hitch weight a pain in the… bumper?

Last week, Sooz washed the topper cover, and we took the topper back to Costco. They were gracious about it — even somewhat impressed that we were able partially stuff it back into its box. We got a credit on our credit card, and spent the money again, instantly, on paper towels, canned kidney beans and a vat of Yoshida’s Gourmet Sauce.

I read recently (on WinnieViews) about the idea of using a self-inflating foam pad — the kind used by backpackers and tent campers — as a mattress topper. Well! We happen to have a couple of those, left over from our kayak-camping days which seem to have ended (or at least paused). They don’t fit the bed just right, but they’re oh so light, and the concept might work. We’re going to try them on our next trip out, which will take us to the sunny end of the Columbia River Gorge. If they work out, we’ll find some that fit the bed.

Will report back after our experiment. You’re probably anxious to know how it goes, but don’t lose any sleep over it…