Lots of good ideas already, but here is my two bits worth. My experience with my Tacoma is that a couple pieces of 4" cheap mattress foam support up to two kayaks just fine. When I don't have the camper on the truck, I put one piece of foam on the cab roof, and the other on the fiberglass canopy. You need pieces of foam that each support the kayak hull(s) for about 12" -16" or so of hull length. If you don't have or want a canopy, you could easily and cheaply build a 2x4 ladder type support for the rear foam pad. You would only need one. With the foam setup, I carry two kayaks side by side just fine. With two kayaks aboard, I also put pieces of foam between the two kayaks to prevent them from chafing one another. When you tie to the Tacoma, stern and bow lines will both be pulling the kayaks forward (unless they are longer than ours). This means (this is important) that you need to run another line from the rear of the truck (I have eyes on the outside ends of the rear bumper) against the fronts of the coamings to prevent the kayaks from shifting forward, thereby loosening their bow and stern tiedowns.

One downside of this arrangement is that if you do lots and lots of miles on gravel road, eventually the foam will get enough grit in it to abrade the truck roof or kayaks. I have yet to experience this, but my mileage so far has been modest. Also, I am not too worried about this in any case (older Tacoma; minor scratches on kayak hulls are normal, and easily repaired.)

When I have the camper on, I use aluminum roof racks that are bolted onto the camper jack supports, not the roof of the camper. The kayaks are supported on the aluminum cross bars by plywood supports padded with the good old mattress foam. As mentioned elsewhere, camper roofs may not be structurally up to the task. Also, the quickest way to develop roof leaks in a camper is to drill it full of holes to mount roof racks, structure notwithstanding. If the camper roof can handle the load, I would just use the two pieces of foam approach. If not, a trailer may be the only option while you have the camper aboard. Since the camper is a pop-up, racks attached to the jacks would not work easily.

Good luck,

Allan Edie

: I need a new way to carry my two great auks. I was using Yakima
: truck racks until I traded in the 2001 Tacoma for a 2011 Tacoma.
: The yakima's don't fit the newer Taco's so I switched to a
: trailer. Honestly, I like the trailer best because it's easy to
: load/unload. Now we've decided to get a Popup camper and I need
: ideas.

: My crazy idea is to hitch the boat trailer to the camper. That got
: about 1 second of serious consideration. My new taco is taller
: than the old so I think I'll need to load from the rear and
: push. Yakima is out, Thule is expensive, but there is also
: "TracRac TracOne" or usrack.com's Windstreamer,
: Paddler's Rack and Rail Rack. Anyone have experience with any of
: these?

: Please help me get over this OCD dilemma.