There’s A Tent In My Living Room

There’s a tent in my living room.

Quite a large tent, actually.

With my annual float trip fast approaching, I decided to go for comfort this year. Instead of using one of my lightweight (but bomb proof) backpacking tents, I decided to go for a larger “car camping” style tent that is large enough to hold… an air mattress.

Yep, I’m giving in this year. This is a leisure camping trip, it’s not like I’m throwing all this stuff on my back and hiking ten miles, so an air mattress is going to be subbing for the old backpacking pad this year. I think my body’s going to appreciate it, because I’m turning into an old fart.

But back to the tent in my living room…

I wanted to assemble the thing, because I suspected that it might need a little prep work, even though the specs claimed that the floor and rainfly seams were factory taped. That was true, but sure enough, there are some exposed sidewall seams that were NOT taped. They just got a nice dose of seam sealer. If you’re just an occasional car camper, you probably don’t even know what I’m talking about. Unless they’re taped, every seam in the tent has a corresponding hole in every spot that the thread goes through. Water likes to go through those little holes. So you “plug” ’em with a little bottle of seam sealer, available at most camping stores, unless you relish the thought of sleeping in puddles during a rain storm (I don’t).

This tent isn’t bomb proof like my backpacking tents, but it seems pretty solid now that the seams are sealed. The Kelty is actually a pretty good compromise between low-end car camping tents and the more bombproof backpacking tents (going bombproof probably would have added about $100 to the total, which seems silly for a leisure tent that won’t get used that often).

Now if the seam sealer will just dry, I can pack the silly thing and put it away.

By the way, if you are planning on the little float trip and don’t have contact info for me/Callie, please email me.