Tarps and tents for car camping

I just ordered a Kelty Green River 6- with my REI Dividends..It sleeps six and has Large screened vestitube.

My wife was complaining about are current setup–I was very happy with it but she's always right.

The Kelty comes in at almost 30 lbs and my Golite Hex and Gossamer Gear SpinnTwinn comes in at 38oz… Anyways Kelty makes some really good car camping tents.

Try looking into Kirkham Springbar tents. Expensive and heavy
but worth every penny. http://www.springbar.com/

Jay, that Kelty Green River 6 is very nice. Also probably 20% off now from REI, though I'd like to see it even cheaper (these things tend to sell cheap on special sales on STP after the season, or from REI used gear sales – saw someone pick up a 6 person like this for $80 during a used gear sales this past summer). That's ideally what we'd be looking for for a car camping tent – full fly coverage.

The tent my buddy has I think is also a Kelty, but it's one of those monster 10-11 person tents where the fly doesn't fully cover the tent, but rather just the roof and tops of the doors, and I can't imagine tents like that are weatherproof. I think that tent must weight 40-50lbs.

I'm sure it will be fine but the Green River had some bad reviews, citing durability and setup. Might have been by people who don't know how to set up and take care of it. REI also carries the $200 Kelty Yellowstone http://www.rei.com/product/712565 without a screened-in vestibule, which would work well for us if we have a separate tarp to cover chairs/table. But again, the fly doesn't fully cover.

Also saw a very weatherproof REI model with full fly coverage – REI Basecamp 6 http://www.rei.com/product/777755

Any tarp/pole suggestions for tarps I can attach to our roof rack? This is just for sheltering table and chairs.

how about a huge thick blue tarp with some cots and bug nets? sure beats paying 400 bucks for a non technical tent.

It’s certainly not the cheapest tent, but for the occasional big tent camping adventure (we use it for river camping canoe trips or car camping) we have a Big Agnes Big House 4. It’s fantastic!

If you look at the pic on their site without the rain fly on, you can see it’s got tons of mesh – 360 degrees all the way around (although the back door/window is zipped up in the pic). As you can see below, the rainfly rolls up to the top of the windows and attaches with toggles. So on nice nights and sunny days, our tent looks like it has a little hat on – we love it.

Look at this: http://www.rei.com/product/763451

and this: http://www.rei.com/product/763453

for possibilities for your car tarp option. They come with their poles.

Also REI has a new big family tent with a full-coverage fly called the Kingdom. It comes in 4-person and 6-person sizes, and you can get an accessory vestibule for each. According to the REI web site the 4-person version weighs 16.5 lbs. without the vestibule. Today we put a 4-person up for a customer at the store where I work, and it was really big and roomy.

The REI Base Camp is pretty rugged–it's used in the REI gear rental program.

These are very nice:

http://www.kelty.com/kelty/products.php?activity=6&type=8&id=151

Have you considered one of the larger Golite shelters? It is now our family shelter for car camping and backpacking. It is actually something that you could take backpacking for group trips: http://www.adventureinprogress.com/family-shelter

Very strange – I didn't receive any alerts for the last few posts. Thank you for the helpful suggestions. Sometimes choice can drive one mad.

I found a forum called Expedition Portal which seems mostly but not exclusively aimed at car, truck and RV campers and did a Springbar search, and these came up (not suggesting these, just listing them):

-Springbar Tents (Traveler 5 is 10 x 10 ft); canvas
-Australian Oz Tents (even more expensive than Springbar, though haven't checked them out yet); canvas
-Kodiak Flex Bow Tents – similar to Springbar but seem heavier for same size; canvas
-Cabelas Alaskan Outfitter Tent 6 person (90 sq ft) or 8 person (120 sq ft) tent – seems to have more roof ventilation than XWT
-Cabelas XWT Extreme Weather Tent 10 x 10 ft model (from picture not sure if inner tent has any roof ventilation)
-Eureka Tetragon (on Cabelas) – looks like my buddy's 8-10 person Kelty, with a fly that doesn't fully cover.

The synthetic tents have the advantage of being lighter than the Springbar and Kodiak canvas tents, and those with a full fly are probably more weatherproof.

For car camping, would you prefer taller tents that allow you to stand?

There's clearly a trade between height and stability, unless you go with a very stable dome or teepee. This must be particularly true of tall rectangular tents.

All I can think about is an experience I had car camping at the base of Mt Washington in NH during a very intense August storm with very high winds – in a fully occupied campground, by morning only 1 other campsite had people in it and they were in an RV – and there were snapped branches everywhere – it was as if we woke up in one of those "day-after" films – we securely staked out our Sierra Designs Meteor Light and we made made it through the night fine without any snapped lines, broken poles or ripped fabric, though didn't sleep much because of the noise and tent movement. Taller = higher face to the wind. In that situation, I'm wondering if a taller tent would have made it without collapse.

BTW, next day we drove into Acadia National Park in such a heavy fog, one of us had to walk ahead outside the vehicle at several points to spot for signs. Took us forever to find the campground.

Mina, I was looking at that same Kelty car tarp – which it was a bit larger, but that's the idea we had.

Pamela, have you used the Kelty carport? Does the thing always want to lift off in wind? A lot more expensive than the Kelty plain rectangular car tarp, but it does give you some upper side coverage and a window.

Can you get no-seeum mesh for the sides, or would you suggest getting some separately and fashioning bug protection?

Are there any car tarps out there with no-seeum mesh or a no-seeum mesh kit?

I think that teepee tents are a great compromise between height and stability. For us, we spend most of our time outside of the tent, and the only time we really find standing can be helpful is when changing clothes. Teepee tents work great for that. The rest of the time we are just sitting or lying down, and for that we don't need much height.

Good point (re height).

Would anyone trust this style of tent to be weatherproof without full fly coverage – this is the style of tent my buddy has – big, nylon, but without full fly coverage. These are as close to good examples as I could find. His tent is sleeps 8 I think. Same style as below.

http://www.campmor.com/outdoor/gear/Product___20272

http://www.sierratradingpost.com/p/322,1197X_Kelty-Merced-6-Tent.html

I just realized that I have a Sierra Designs Bedoin 6 tent in my closet that I was planning on selling this spring. It sleeps 6, has a high ceiling that you can stand in, a full fly and 2 vestibules.

http://www.sierradesigns.com/tents.display.php?id=12

It was our family camping tent before we purchased our GoLite this past fall. It is used but in very good condition. If this is something that interests you PM me.

Damien, wow, the Shangrila 6 with tent, mesh inner nest tent, floor, etc. adds up to $850 before tax! Do you use all the components?

Also, is the mesh inner tent almost as big as the outer tent (looks very small in pics).

Do you find yourselves ever bumping into the center pole/poles when you are all moving around inside?

I'll check out the Bedouin. Lots of choices, need to look them over as soon as we have a chance.

Hi EJ,

Take a look at the Marmot family tents as well. (See http://marmot.com/spring_2009/equipment/tents/family).

We have a Halo 4P that we use for canoe tripping and car camping. It has tons of space and has been bomb-proof in all sorts of weather. We use it for my wife, our two boys (ages 3 and 4) and myself.

Cheers
Al

We are using the Shangri-La 6+ outer with the Shangri-La 4+ inner mesh tent. We don't have the floor (the mesh inner has one built-in), so the total for those two is $625. This is enough room for our family of 5, but I wouldn't recommend it for 5 large people. We decided on this route because pairing the smaller mesh inner with the larger outer created a nice vestibule (a requirement for us). Normally none of the Shangri-La tents have a vestibule otherwise.

The Shangri-La doesn't have as much head space (especially around the edges) as the Bedouin does, but that was a sacrifice we were willing to make for the weight savings.

The center pole hasn't proven to be a problem so far.

This worked really well for me. The 4 person version below is sized right for two, in my opinion.

http://www.eurekatent.com/p-54-timberline-4-tent.aspx

For a tarp, I suggest looking at the cheap blue ones sold at Walmart.

Jon

Could you use Kelty's catenary cut Noah's Tarp 16 (16 ft x 16 ft) http://www.mountainsports.com/msmain.asp?Option=Detail&Detail=081992

like this smaller Kelty Car Tarp:

http://www.cabelas.com/cabelas/en/templates/links/link.jsp?id=0053086518119a&type=product&cmCat=SEARCH_all&returnPage=search-results1.jsp&Ntk=Products&QueryText=kelty+car+tarp&sort=all&_D%3AhasJS=+&N=0&Nty=1&hasJS=true&_DARGS=%2Fcabelas%2Fen%2Fcommon%2Fsearch%2Fsearch-box.jsp.form23&_dyncharset=ISO-8859-1

Might be nicer to have the larger size Noah's tarp for more room and to be able to have the wall opposite the car go down most of the way.

Have to check if the Noah's Tarp has grommets where we'd need them for use as a car tarp.

Hi Jon,

Are those blue tarps fully waterproof and light (not ultralight, just not super heavy), do they come pretty large (16 x 16 ft) and do they already have grommets? If they don't come with grommets, I think DIY grommet kits are very cheap.

Those WalMart Tarps work just fine and yes, they do come with grommets. They come in big sizes just like you want.

hope that helps

they are fully waterproof, cheap and work great. we've been using those for over 20 years of car camping. they work as lean to's to cover gear or bikes, picthed over for shelter over the picnic table, thrown over a not so waterproof tent, tucked under tents as a waterproof ground sheet… They are just great for use up here in the northwest, where it rains for days on end. Cheapest place to buy them is from harbor freight when they go on sale. you can pick them up for like $3 for the smaller ones to $10 for the larger ones. Then we have a 500' spool of polypropylene rope that we got at harbor freight for $10 and use it to string up the tarps in various pitches…

Wow those are cheap and very light at Harbor Freights. Would you suggest the royal blue ones (cheapest) or the reflective silver ones which are about 1 lb heavier per same size and about $10 more expensive.

I'm assuming Walmart sells the same ones.

What's the cheapest source for shock-corded aluminum poles? Perhaps the Kelty ones are a value.

I found out that Kelty uses a 3rd pole in their Car Tarp across the edge that's against the car, to keep it taut. I don't know if that's really necessary if you don't mind the car side of the tarp sagging down in the corners along the rear and front of the car.