tent camping

When I was a kid we used to go camping. We had an old 9 by 9 canvas tent, and we all slept in that rather small space.

When the kids were young it was pretty intense and we didn’t go camping too much, but we did on occasion.

Now that we are just the two of us, we do quite a lot of camping. It is our low cost way to “vacation.”

On one trip, I got an inspiration.

It would be fun, I thought as well as a good challenge, to put together a tent camping system that would fit into our little car, and yet provide comfortable camping. The gear would have to be carefully chosen, not just for size, but for cost, since our budget is always tight.

It also had to be comfortable if the weather turned cool or rainy.

It turned out that we spent more than one dry and cozy night sleeping through a mountain rain storm. And sometimes we sit in the light of our lantern, Miriam reading a book and me typing on my MacBook!

So we have a fairly large tent, a porta potty, comfortable sleeping and seating, enough cooking gear to eat well, and it all had to fit in that little car.

It has worked out very well. A few years ago I built a small teardrop trailer, which is over the top in comfort, but it is a bit more spendy to take on longer trips. So often we take the tent gear and luxuriate over the 30 miles per gallon.

Camping season is here, except that the weather is cool or even cold. Soon, it will be warm to hot and camping will be where we will go often.