Camping...interrupted

We have had a pretty busy summer with family get-togethers and such, and last week we thought we'd take out the tent and do some camping. Got some cookout appropriate food (i.e. hot dogs) and headed for a campsite sufficiently far away that it felt like we were out in the middle of somewhere, as opposed to the backyard...

It started well enough, except that I might add that Friday late afternoon/early evening is not the ideal time to go in search of camping supplies, unless you want plenty of company, and the accompanying longer lines at the store. By the time I returned home, it was starting to cloud over a little, but we hit the road anyway. What's a few clouds, right?

Having arrived at our destination, we got a fire going and while I took over the culinary responsibilities, my husband set up the tent and our children took off and climbed a tree, etc. It was interesting to me that in the bordering campsites there were mostly campers complete with electricity, dining rooms, and all the comforts of home, and few to no other tents. (I suppose I may have missed some if they were blocked by the larger campers.)

The clouds were darkening, but we managed to get through dinner for the most part before it started to rain. The problem was, the wind picked up as well. The children ran into the tent, but as my husband started to put the final cover over it, he said we might have to call it quits, not because of the rain, (we had our vehicle, and set-up on the tent was nearly complete) but because of the wind. The way things were going, it looked like there was a great possibility that the tent would end up being blown over, and that was not a pleasant prospect. So, to everyone's disappointment, while the children sat in the vehicle, my husband and I put out the fire, packed up the tent, and drove home pretty much drenched. The weather got better the closer we got to home, but what can you do?

We chose to return home because we had that option. If we hadn't, and the tent had blown over, we could have taken (likely uncomfortable) refuge in our vehicle, and ended up packing up either in the middle of the night or early the next morning. But here is my question to anyone who is willing to offer some advice--what could we have done to better weather out the "storm", and lessen the chances that the tent would blow over? Are there any practices that we don't know about that we could have utilized? It would not be pleasant to have no other options than a tent and not know how to make the best of the situation. Like HermitJim from Coffee with the Hermit commented on my last post, "knowledge is power!" So feel free to share... :)

"Roughing it"..in the backyard

Well, we now, at long last, own a tent. If I were to do my poll from awhile ago, I would now be able to mark something besides, "we have a vehicle that would provide us shelter" in the case of an evacuation. Ah, sweet progress... :)

My husband and older children broke the tent in last night, while I stayed with the youngest in the house. Once the youngest stopped crying and standing at the door wanting to go out with everyone, my night was relatively peaceful. I heard this morning that one of the children was up approximately every hour and a half making the rounds of the tent. I asked my husband why he didn't just relocate that child to the inside of the house, and apparently pacing the inside of a brand-new tent is just much more desirable than getting to sleep longer periods in the not-so-new house. Oh well.

What I learned recently about tents/sheltering in tents:

--It is a little hard to tell everything about a tent just by looking at a picture. This might seem glaringly obvious, but before you stop reading, let me explain. This tent was ordered on-line, at a price we could afford, so we didn't have the box in our hot little hands during the purchase process. I have since looked at the box, and I'm not sure that it would have made a difference anyway. The picture shows the tent with the "rain fly" (thanks to my husband for the technical term) in place, so it was quite a surprise to us when, as he was setting up the tent, most of the tent roof appeared to be nothing but mesh. This may be why the tent was in our price range. This may be standard so that the tent can be used anywhere, including a hot climate. Whatever the reason, it was still an unexpected feature for us. The only way you can have privacy is to install the rain fly.

--Having the rain fly installed is fine. Until it gets windy. Wind+ rain fly = noise. All in all, a small price to pay for more room than is available in our vehicle. So if noise is an issue for you, and you're in the market for a tent with privacy, you might want to look for one made of a different material than netting. I personally didn't hear how noisy the wind/rain fly combination was, but I will take my husband's word for it. :)

--A well-placed phone call to my best source (Mom) last night led to a few extra purchases at the local national chainstore. According to her source, who has particpated in survival activities, if you don't have something between your sleeping bag and the ground in an outdoor activity such as the one that my husband and children were about to participate in, you will get a lot colder than you want to and /or should be. Apparently, the contact with the ground takes a toll on your body temperature. So I bought some camping pads for them to put their sleeping bags on. It was probably a wise choice, because my husband said that when they came in this morning, the temperature outside was somewhere in the 40s. (Special thanks to my husband, who, having participated in the scouting program, has done outdoor activities without such luxuries as camping pads. Personal experience notwithstanding, he was still willing to say to me, "Just get what you think is best." Expensive words for him--but oh, so useful ones for me. :)

--At the local national chainstore, there were two types of camping pads available that I saw, and one ran close to $6.00, and the other ran close to $12.00. So there are options available. While I was in the camping section, I saw a lot of things that I thought would be useful in an emergency situation. Priorities, priorities... :)

Well, I'm glad that we have a tent, have been able to set it up and use it before winter sets in, and that we have more information than we used to have. Our emergency preparation is a work in progress--glad to have moved another step forward.