Tent Tribulations: Choosing Our Tent Part One
Choosing a tent for your touring, camping, or Overlanding adventures is one of the key decisions you will have to make. The options available are more varied than bikes, cars, or women’s shoes. YouTube and internet reviews sites can provide more information that can be assimilated on what type of tent to buy. To help narrow your choices at the very beginning, start with the type of camping you will do and the number of people with you.
My trip is a combo of biking and camping out of the car. I needed something that was good for bike touring; compact as a result and easy to set up. I also wanted a larger tent for camping out of the car. I decided a larger tent would be best to make the camping as comfortable as possible for David. I wanted plenty of room and I wanted to cook, or sit back protected from bugs, flies, and mosquitos.
This turned into an annoying, multi purchase odyssey. Read and learn from my experiences. Keep in mind, I had videos showing the setup and selections of the various tents I went through, but the technology gremlins attacked my SD card, and I could not bring up any of the videos. It’s like they just disappeared overnight. Thus, I will do my best to wordsmith all of this out for you.
I started with a Coleman 6-person Instant tent. Instant or quick deployment tents are a relatively new type of tent. As the name implies, the goal is to make pitching your tent as quick as possible. In the case of the Coleman, they operate it with poles that you just extend out and lock into place. The process from unfolding the tent to it just securing the guidelines and adding the rain fly is quick depending on the size of the tent and number of people helping.
I opened the Coleman tent and got it set up in under 15 minutes by myself. I felt rather pleased with myself, although the tent is designed to make you look like a camping guru. Walking inside the tent was a disappointment. Understand there was nothing wrong with the tent per se. There were no rips, tears, or damage. However—and this is a common theme for ALL TENTS—the tent was not that big. Sure, it was plenty large for two people, but when these tent companies give you a number for how many people will fit in the tent, they are exaggerating. The only way six people would fit in the tent is if each person lined up like sardines in a can. The tent was not large enough for David and me, and cooking gear, portable fridge, etc.
If you are only camping up to say, um three people with just sleeping bags and basic gear the Coleman is a great option. I had different needs, so I returned it and started looking for tents with screened-in porch options. One tent that was recommended by dozens of people on an Overlanding Facebook group was the Gazelle Hub tents.
Gazelle uses a different process for fast deployment of their tents. They use a “pop-out” system, whereby you pull out the sides of the tent and the wall is automatically in place. Quick, though, every video demonstration on YouTube showed putting the tent away took longer than to set up. Below is the tent I wanted to get. However, because of Covid, everyone who never thought about camping wanted to do so now. Gazelle was sold out of all their tents, with none that would be available by the time I was leaving for my trip.
With Gazelle not an option, I began my research again and returned to the Coleman brand. Coleman has a quick deploy tent that is an eight-person tent with the ability to turn one section into a screened-in porch. It was just what I was looking for, or at least I thought.
The eight-person tent is like the six but has three poles on either side to set up, rather than just two. Those extra poles make all the difference. The extra pole makes set up by one person impossible, especially with any wind present. I truly wish I had the video to show you and the struggle I went through trying to set it up. No matter what I did, each time I would extend one pole the tent would fold in on itself or get tossed around by wind. And to be clear, there was very little wind that day.
The lesson here is that large tents will need more than yourself to set up. The poles can easily bend as the weight of the tent and wind blow the sides around as you try to set up. In the end, I sent this tent back as well.
My third attempt was with an Academy Sports brand, Magellan, tent. Academy has a design rip off of the Gazelle tent hub configuration. Below are photos of it next to the Gazelle, so you will see what I mean. I normally try to stay away from knockoffs, but with Gazelle out of stock, it left me with little choice.
The tent worked to perfection. I got a little video of me walking through it with my phone after setting it up. Unfortunately, as mentioned before, the Gremlins have the longer video.