Kelty Noah’s Tarp For Car Camping

Yes! I love mine. A 12 footer. Plenty for four sitting on a park table. 16 footer would be a friggin palace. Not neccessary but would be nice They are easy to pitch thanks to the cats. Im sure the snow peak ones and msr ones are better but for the price they want ill stick with the kelty (which is a company i love to hate, btw… Sorry glavin :) As far as pitching, i use those nite ize figure 9's and some trriptease its not too bad unless its windy. Two people is better for height reference and at least the ridgeline pitch IMO

Brian, I picked up a 12' x 12' Noah's Tarp a few years ago with my 20% off REI coupon (I'm running out of things to buy there, it seems). My buddy and I have used it quite a bit for car camping. We back our trucks up to each other with the rear bumpers maybe 10 feet apart, open the hatch backs, and string the huge tarp between the trucks, over the open hatch backs. We tie the ends to the roof racks, and then use 4 adjustable poles at the 4 corners, plus one tall pole to support the center (for the center pole, I cut an old tennis ball in half, turned it inside out so that the rubbery lining sort of grips the silnylon, and it serves to protect the tarp from the stress of the pole tip). I also added guy lines to every tie-out point, which allows us to get a very secure wind-worthy pitch. This gives us plenty of room for 4 people and lawn chairs to hide from the rain or direct sun. It does set up more easily with two of us doing it, mainly to get the initial attachments of the ends to the two roof racks. I think that the 16' x 16' version would be overkill and unwieldy, and that the 9' x 9' one would be too small for 4 people.

I have the nine footer. The tarp itself is perfect for what you're describing except I'd go with the 12' mentioned above. I've enjoyed more than a few adult beverages under mine during a rainstorm.

Another vote for the 12". Need to replace mine since I drove off and left it behind once when we packed up at 3am. They work just fine.

The 12' is great. I've enjoyed mine over the years. The 16 would probably be ungainly. I've got two of the shorter REI tarp poles and it's a great setup for car camping. I've used it in the sun in AZ and during long rainy days on the CA coast.