As I write today’s post, Beth and I are about 3 weeks away from leaving on our National Parks tour. Our journey, starting at Congaree National Park in South Carolina, will take us all over the United States, visiting 35 of the 38 National Parks we haven’t seen in the continental United States. Due to travel logisitcal issues, we will not get to Isle Royale National Park in MIchigan or Dry Tortugas and Biscayne National Parks in Florida. We are substituting Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore in Michigan in place of Isle Royale.
Our plan is to tent camp for the 3 months of our travel. Crazy you may think, and you may be right! However, we have done our share of tent camping over our 40 plus years of marriage and through it all, we are still happily married. Our longest tent trip prior to the upcoming escapade was a 10 day stay in the mountains of the Asheville area of western North Carolina in 2020. We not only survived that trip, but we actually really enjoyed it. The success of that camping experience gave us the courage to plan our upcoming travels. Granted, 10 days in a tent is a far cry from 90 days in a tent, but we remain optimistic that we will enjoy almost every moment on the road.
It had been about two years since we last used our tent so we thought it best to take advantage of some nice weather and practice setting it up to refresh our memories. We have a 9 x 13 Coleman tent which includes a nice screened in “front porch” area before entering the actual sleeping quarters, which is a little larger than a queen sized inflatabe air mattress. The tent provides 117 square feet of luxruious “indoor” living space, if you consider a tent “indoor” space. Most people would not. Regardless, this tent will be our home for the duration of our trip. Sure, its about a 1300 square feet smaller than our actual home, but who needs three bedrooms and 2.5 baths when traveling across the country for 3 months?
According to the instructions sewn into the tent’s storage bag, it should take about 15 minutes to set up the tent. I couldn’t remember how long it actaully took Beth and I to set it up two years ago so before we began, I started the stopwatch function on my phone. This would be a good benchmark for trip planning purposes. I figured if we could start at the 15 minute mark, perhaps we could get the time down to 10 minutes by the end of our trip, having set the tent up around 45 times over 3 months. I personally am shooting for a sub 10 minute mark by July. While this will not be as singificant an achievement as Roger Bannister running a sub 4 minute mile, it will be something for us to aim for.
Ten seconds in, I was feeling quite confident. We had successfully gotten the tent out of the bag and spread out on the ground without any arguing. We removed the telescoping tent poles and stakes and set them in their respective positions. Apparently, neither Beth or I remembered exactly which order to place the support poles, but that is what instructions are for.
I have to be honest at this point. For those of you who do not know me, I am challenged when it comes to assembling even the simplest of objects. Prior to the birth of our first child, it took me 4 and a half hours to assemble a 5 piece Bentwood rocking chair for our nursery. I don’t know what the instructions claimed the assembly time for the rocker was, but I’m certain it wasn’t 4 and a half hours. I mention this character flaw as a way of defending my lack of real effort to assist Beth in the tent set up. I pretended to be helping, walking around the tent, picking up a pole and mumbling some things, but this was Beth’s time to shine. I was trying to stay out of the way. At the ten minute mark it was time to lift the tent from the ground. This task was something I could help with and together we raised our future home to its full height and glory. It was a beautiful moment.
Beth reviewed the instructions for properly placing the rainfly over the tent. The rainfly was a bit tricky. It is quite light and is designed to provide an extra layer of protection from rain. There was enough of a breeze blowing to create perfect kite flying conditions and our rainfly did attempt to take to the skies a couple of times before we were able to wrestle it securely to the tent.
We were almost done with the set-up. Just a few cords to secure at the tent corners and we were finished. I stopped the clock and looked expectantly at our elapsed time: twenty-one minutes and forty-five seconds. Six minutes and forty-five seconds longer than the average set-up time, but I always considered us above average, so I was ok with that. The benchmark had been posted. We now know what time we have to beat as we travel. Perhaps the sub 10 minute mark is a stretch, but I am holding out that we can do it. Surely, our efficiency should improve over 3 months.
While not as critical as the set-up, the tear down process needed rehearsed as well. The tent instructions didn’t have any time attached to tear down, so we were not feeling the pressure that we had with the set-up. I still wanted to time it, so I engaged my stopwatch once more. Turns out we were able to tear down and rebag the tent in fifteen minutes and forty seconds. With no knowledge of the average time it should take, I consider this time quite good. Perhaps a sub 10 minute tear down is a possibility as well.
In addition to our palatial 9 x 13 tent, Beth and I are also bringing our smaller 2 person tent in the event we want to do any back country camping. This smaller tent definitely won’t accomodate a queen sized air mattress. As a matter of fact, it’s a good thing Beth and I are both on the smaller size because the two of us and a couple of sleeping bags is about all that fits in this tent. Still, we needed to practice setting this one up too. While it is about a quarter of the size of the bigger tent, it still took about 9 minutes from start to finish for set-up and about 5 minutes for tear down. At the end of the day. we had succesfully set-up and torn down both tents. Check off another pre-trip task. Conditions were good for our practice sessions. We will hope and pray that conditions on the road will be equally as nice.
We had two more items to check out before departing: our inflatable air mattress and our camp stove. As mentioned above, we have a queen sized air mattress to sleep on. Because most of our campsites do not have electricity, we will have to use the cigarette lighter port in our car to inflate the mattress. I am happy to say it worked perfectly and we should have a nice bed to sleep on during the duration of the trip.
Finally, we fired up, literally, our Coleman Gladiator two burner propane gas stove. I’m Italian and I liked the name, so we bought it. The Gladiator works with a 16 ounce propane tank and one tank will provide enough gas for about four hours of cooking. The stove only has one part to assemble so even I was able to get it ready to test. After I connected the propane tank, Beth turned on one burner at a time and the familair “hiss” of flowing propane soon began, followed by a small puff sound as the propane ignited. We let both burners run for a few seconds before shutting them off. The stove passed with flying colors.
It had been a successful day. While it was not like we were testing a Space-X rocket for pre-launch, to us it was critical that we felt comfortable with setting up our housing, sleeping accomodations and stove during our time on the road. Our equipment and our abilities passed the test. We feel like we are ready for the great adventure that awaits us.
