Followup conversation
Called Jol Flemming today and let him know we were interested in both the course and the equipment hire.
In addition to the gear mentioned already, we'll get a second tent. Mine is only (barely) enough for two people. He has more the Sears-style tent -- large roomy tent that you can stand up in, etc.
Britz?
We talked about other logistics.
I'd looked to rent a 12v refrigerator from him. The one issue we'll have is that on any truck we rent, the only power we're going to have is from the cigarette adaptor. That means all sorts of equipment competing for this one power point.
Spontaneously, Jol suggested my original idea -- have one truck and have one BushCamper as the mobile kitchen.
I'm not sure what to advise.
Bushcamper pros
Bushcamper cons
I feel like it boils down that there are two serious reasons to have a bushcamper:
1) if you guys profoundly prefer sleeping in a cab rather than in a swag inside a tent.
2) if we feel like we must have an electric refrigerator that is built-in, such that we can run the CBs and laptops etc. simultaneously.
We could semi-obviate the need for #2 if we used handhelds that took batteries, or if we just used a cooler and fucked the icebox entirely.
I think the storage crampedness is really annoying, and that the quality of sleeping in the Bushcamper is fine, but not so much better than the swag...
Route
He also made some remarks about us planning to stay for two nights at Mt. Dare. He sounded quite cool on that. Whether it was because the alternative of staying at Dalhousie Springs was so much better, or there was some problem with Mt Dare or its keepers, I don't know.
At any rate, we can be flexible with the schedule and decide then whether to spend the second night at Mt. Dare or Dalhousie. It will partially depend on the lodging conditions, and how far we want to penetrate into the Simpson Desert.