The truck has recovery boards, a roof tent, extra lights, and a shovel attached where everyone can see it. On Saturday morning it travels four blocks to buy oat milk.

Its owner parks far from the entrance because the vehicle is tall enough to make the parking garage an unpleasant thought. A child asks whether the family lives on the roof. Not yet, the owner says, though he has practiced opening the tent twice in the driveway.

The equipment is real, and some of it would be useful on a long trip. The trip is also real, if currently hypothetical. This does not make the truck a fraud. It does make the grocery run an awkward setting for a machine that looks prepared to cross an entire desert.

Back home, the owner unpacks the milk and checks a map. There is a public campsite two hours away, reached by a paved road and a short gravel spur. It offers a good place to begin, even if the shovel never leaves its bracket.

The following weekend, the truck carries the family there. They cook dinner, sleep badly, and wake to a morning worth the effort. The roof tent works. The recovery boards remain clean. Nobody at the campsite asks whether the drive was difficult enough to count.

On Monday, the truck goes back for groceries. This time it smells faintly of campfire.