A little background:
I'm no stranger to camping. I'm an eagle scout, was an assistant scoutmaster, and spent many a night in a wall tent at camp Tomahawk in WI, and many other nights in a tent here or there all over America. That was before they beat the boy scouts with the gay bat
but anyway...
Things have changed since those days. Its no longer I, its "We". Myself, the wife, and at least one of the girls (dogs). A decade and change ago our first Christmas together was camping themed. Sleeping bags for all, a new tent for the wife and I, one for our daughters, an airbed, etc. Our daughters grew up, and moved away, but we are still in our ten year old tent. Its a Coleman Durango 7 x 12 dome tent, and while its been a great tent, its getting worn out. I figure that ten years of use was pretty decent for what we paid for it. We've also outgrown it. We have far too much gear now, and neither of us get up off the ground or stoop over quite like we did when we were younger. Plus we have dogs that...well, at least one comes with no matter where we go. Between the gear, the dog, and the fold up frame airbed we need something bigger.
We tried the airbed in our tent, and there is just no way. A dome tent has great space at the floor level, but for every foot you go up off the floor, you lose room side to side. We borrowed a friends 13 x 11 Coleman dome, but the airbed was tight in there as well. We had our hearts set on the Coleman evanston elite with the built in lighting and the hinged door, but its just not going to work. So a dome design is out of the question, which leaves the strait (ish) wall design types.
The criteria is as follows:
Floorplan of at least 12 x 12. We have a lot of gear, and I do mean a lot of gear. So much that we carry a small 4 season dome tent with internal pole design as our pantry and cook gear tent. Inside our "sleeping/sitting" tent we will have neoprene floor tiles covering the floor to protect it. We picked them up at harbor freight when we picked up the
trailer , but we will likely pick up more so that we can cover roughly the entire floor of whatever tent we get. Also inside will be plug in cooler, some sort of lighting system, inflatable night stands, a table at the end of the bed for the laptop, the laptop, clothes, a small wastebasket, collapsible clothes basket, the emergency bag, and a big bag of "just in case" junk, in addition to ten other things I'm probably forgetting. We're looking for a squarish floorplan rather than a long and relatively narrow strip.
It
must be capable of "single room" configuration. I've seen a lot of the larger tents with a nice floorplan, except the sewn in room dividers, and those are a dealbreaker. The bed has to fit with room all around it. We both get grumpy when we sleep too close to a wall and wake up wet from touching it at some point in the night.
Lots of standing room. Neither of us get up off the ground easily anymore. The wife has spinal arthritis and fibromyalgia, and I took a crate of hardwood flooring in the back a few years ago that about crippled me for a while. Plus I was...never very smart about the abuse I put my body through in my youth. I personified the phrase "stupid human tricks" when I was young and careless, and thought myself invincible.
Price. Looking at what some of the canvas tents go for these days, one could make a house payment easier than buy them. 450 at the highest is what we are looking to spend, but preferably a lot less than that.
Features. I was hoping to get a Coleman with the hinged door, its such a nice feature. Coleman does not make a tent of the size and shape I'm looking for though, so that's out. Decent venting for summer, but decent weather resistance and semi decent heat retention (as tents go) for those times it gets cool. Electrical cord port. We more often than not camp where theres water and electricity, and have an inverter for the car for those times we don't. The car could idle running the inverter for days and not use much gas.
Difficulty of setup is not a huge factor for us, within reason, and from reading, I get the impression that none of them that are made these days are terribly difficult to set up.
Brand. I'm not
terribly brand loyal when it comes to camping gear, however, I am not a fan of the cheapie brands. More often than not, when you spend money, you get what you pay for, and I take that to heart when it comes to monetarily large long term purchases. A brand that at least has some degree of customer support and the ability to provide replacement parts/decent warranty service should it be needed.
I've been looking for maybe...5 months now. And this is what I came up with:
The eureka copper canyon 12
Its a bit bigger than I was looking for, at 12 x 14, but eureka doesn't make the 1312 anymore (13 x 12) sadly.
I'd be grateful for any information anyone has, about any brands/models that I might have missed or overlooked.
We want to get it right the first time.
CMD