WheatenLover
Senior Member
- Location
- Georgia
It was a more modern tent, from about 20 years ago. It wasn't canvas. If it rains where you are, try putting your finger on the tent side when you are inside it and see if a drop of water appears.I did that too, back in the day when everything was canvass material, but if I'm right here, I think you can get away with it a little under the more modern nylon tents, (I've been doing so anyway in my "nearly new four man tent", where I've not put up the second sleeping compartment to save a bit of space on the campsite as agreed with the very friendly owners and the rain is pooling a bit because its not being used as designed).
Why do I say "nearly new", well if I haven't explained already this is only the second time I've put this tent up, (having owned it for four years!), and did I struggle the first time when putting it up in a friends garden in Wiltshire, who luckily had been a girl guide in her day, so had some idea what to do when I did all the usual tricks of failing to read the instructions properly, and got the bracing struts/poles in the wrong order, (who knew there were two sizes???? ).
The lady who arrived yesterday afternoon told me her husband put the tent up quickly without her help, and asked me why I'd not chosen to use my tent very often,...., a good question and she liked my answer "It was so traumatic the first time"!, and how it all went back in the bag/box at the end goodness knows, but it did impress my friend in Wiltshire and her mum who thought I'd fail miserably.
We put a tarp under the tent, and one over the tent - tied to the trees above. This helped with rain problems. My best friend went with the kids and me. She was the one who knew how to do everything. I helped with the tent, and so did the kids, of course.
The first time I took the kids camping they were ages 2 and 3. We went on a church family camp out, tents supplied. For awhile, we went to Jellystone, a Yogi Bear themed campground. That was a lot of fun. They had family night every night, with all sorts of entertainment (live bands) and trivia games, and the like. Jellystone was where one of my sons came running to our tent. "Mommy, mommy! The people next to us have a barking cat!" It was a chihuahua. He'd never seen a little dog.
Then we graduated to the forest with the bears, and ditched tent camping. That was fun too, but in a different way. We took our rough collie, Teddy, with us. Everyone loved him. He loved the bears because we accidentally habituated him to them by going bear hunting in the SUV at night, to spot them. Once in awhile, we left Teddy to go to something like a county fair, and there was never a shortage of people who wanted to take care of Teddy. We stopped going when they wouldn't allow dogs there, although the forest rangers wanted us to fake Teddy being a service dog. I wouldn't do it, even though we could have gotten away with it. Teddy was a dog who learned how to do stuff after being told one or two times. He was super easy to train.