Tent Life
Many people view life in a tent as "roughing it." They picture sleeping in a sleeping bag on a mat on the tent floor, running everything on batteries and having to wake up in the morning frozen stiff. I have taken people camping more than once and changed their perspective about camping. One person who didn't even like to camp did so only because he enjoyed fishing. One weekend when I went down to camp he came over and said, "You know, I usually don't enjoy camping but I like it when you come down." With just a little creativity and thinking you can turn your camping experience into one of the most memorable times. No sleeping on a cold tent floor, no carrying buckets of water up the hill from the creek.
When we become accustomed to our lifestyle of living in a house with hot & cold running water, sewer, electricity and other modern conveniences we might afford, it's hard to think about life in a tent. But it's not so hard when someone shows you how. Did you know that you can have hot and cold running water in a tent? Even have a nice hot shower? It simply boils down to a change of lifestyle. You can have hot and cold running water by turning a dial just as you do in your house. A shower tent next to your regular tent with a tarp over it and a heater will keep you comfortable on those cool autumn evenings and you can still enjoy all the comforts of home while "roughing it."
Someone seeing how I camp once said to me, "That's not camping!" I said, I beg to differ. Why go camping if you can't enjoy it? I work hard all week, I don't need to do so when I'm out camping also. I want to park my backside in my boat, drift out onto the fishing hole and sit there most of the day as I bring in those trophy fish. Then at the end of the day I want to stroll into my campsite and turn on the dial in the shower and watch hot, steamy water come pouring out for me to crawl in and enjoy!
I carry with me one regular tent, one shower tent (doubles as the outhouse) a tarp to go over it all. Usually a 30' tarp is what I take with me. I have a 40 foot tarp but it's a beast to get it over everything. I've used it when setting up a sleep tent and screen tent with about 4 feet of space in between and put the shower tent on one side. It leaves enough room for the pets to stay in there and get out of the bad weather when there's a thunder storm. It's a lot of set up work however, usualy 4 or 5 hours for one person. So I've restructured my setup as you can see in the photo at the top of this page. This was one of the best and easiest setups I've done and can entertain company. I think we've had a dozen or more people and if it rains there is room under the tarp. As you can see the kitchen fits nicely at one end of it without interfering with other things. Roughing it? Now I ask you, what's so hard about this set up? It's very enjoyable, doesn't take long to setup and is very comfortable as well.