A Tent Story (Saturday, September 3rd, 2016)

Our oldest daughter and her husband wanted a little get away for Labor Day this year, and we all decided that the cabin would be the perfect place.  Steve and I thought it would be fun to provide all of the food, and let the kids and his parents just relax.  

We got up to the cabin early on Friday, and Steve's parents were already there.  So we unloaded the car, got dinner started, and waited for the kids to get there.  

One of our biggest goals in retirement has been cleaning out the house.  We've taken many, many truckloads of donations in, we've sorted out things that we thought the girls might want, and we have thrown away so much stuff.  And we both agree that it is one of the most satisfying things we have ever done.  We love the feeling of a much simpler, junk free life.

As we were diving back into our storage room a few months ago, Steve pulled out a bunch of old camping stuff, and among it were two identical tents.  Steve thinks he remembers getting them on a great sale, so he bought two.  I had to laugh, because that is Steve. If they are cheap, you have to buy them, even if you don't need them.  That is an old habit that we are now trying to break in our new clutter-free world.

So to make a long story short, we offered one of the tents and some of the camping equipment to our oldest daughter and son (in-law) when they moved out, and they were very excited to have it.

They arrived at the cabin much earlier than we had expected, and as they started unloading the car, we noticed that they had brought the tent that we gave them.  They decided that this would be the perfect weekend to check it all out, make sure they had everything they needed, and that it was all working.  

On Saturday morning we all decided to jump in with tent assembly. Unfortunately, there were no instructions with the tent.  We had set it up at Lake Powell one time many years ago but we couldn't remember how so it was all trial and error. 

We staked the tent down with the plastic stakes that came with it, and then began trying to figure out where all of the poles should go. There were three different lengths of poles, all of which were color coded, but there was no indication on the tent where each color should go.  

Unfortunately, as we played around with the poles, trying to figure out where they all went, the stakes kept pulling out of the ground, and as the guys would hammer them back in to the very hard ground, they all started breaking off at the head.  

So all of the guys piled in the car and headed into town to go get some steel stakes.  The tent came with eight stakes, so they decided that eight stakes should be enough.  

Before we knew it, they were back with their new steel stakes. 

Since the plastic stakes are much fatter than the metal stakes, we now needed to move the tent and start over.  But of course, it wasn't that easy.  The plastic stakes were impossible to get back out of the very hard ground. 

We finally got all of the old stakes out, moved the tent to a new location, re-staked it, and once again began setting it up.  But even this wasn't enough.  More stakes were going to be necessary.  So back in the car all of the boys jump, and once again headed to town for more metal stakes.  We ended up needing 16 steel stakes to hold the tent securely, and once we figured that out, our life became much simpler.

We figured out where all of the different length poles went, and finally, then tent became a reality!

Just to make sure that it would be easier next time, we labeled each section of tent for it's corresponding poles.  Ingenious!  Blue poles are to the right of the door, red poles are in the middle, and yellow poles are to the left of the door.

Once we tent was all set up and ready to go, Steve gave the kids a lesson on using the portable cook stove, and to our amazement, it worked on the first try.  

But lucky for them, I'm doing all of the cooking this weekend, so they won't have to really use it.  

The kids slept out in the tent on Saturday night, and they seemed to have some differing opinions on how it went! 

Our son (in-law), who slept out under the stars during Ranger School for several weeks, and who now spends time in the field, quite often with his platoon thought it was great, but maybe a little over-kill.  

Our daughter who has rarely tent camped, thought it was a bit uncomfortable.  She said that next time she'll need a little more padding.  But at least she did refer to "next time". 

We had about as much fun tearing the tent back down as we did setting it up.  Even with the windows and doors open, getting the air out was more challenging that we thought.

For now the tent is put away, where it will stay until "next time".