The canopy tent has mesh walls on all four sides and an edge of polyester fabric (also DWR treated) at the ground that deters mosquitos and other critters from invading from below. Like many tents of this type, the REI Screen House Shelter has a fabric hook in the center of the ceiling that accommodates a small lantern or other light. The REI Co-op Screen House Shelter is easy to set up and pleasant to use, providing good protection from bugs, sun, and gentle rain showers. A high ceiling makes the tent feel brighter and more airy than other camping shelters with a similar footprint. Temperatures ranged from the 50s at night to the 80s during the day. A full rain cover, two vestibules, and an extra-sturdy pole structure make this the best choice for couples who want to get outside in any weather.
Pitch a truck bed tent right in the back of your truck to keep your sleeping bag off the ground and be ready to get up and go whenever you need to. Look through a variety of truck tent sizes to find the best fit for your truck bed and enjoy a tent that takes advantage of the solid foundation and protective qualities provided by a truck. Unlike our top pick, the Tungsten 4 is coated with flame retardants. Weighing just 7 pounds, the tent is light enough to double for backpacking trips, especially if you divide the pieces among hikers. The Clam Quick-Set Escape weighs 34 pounds and comes in a 6-foot-long, ski-bag-shaped carry case that is too big to fit into most sedan trunks.
When not in use, this was kept outside the shelter to prevent odor. The size of the shelter was adequate for this function, and the venting made it fairly comfortable, even when the temperature outside was in the mid 90s, and the shelter was in the direct sunlight. There is no administration fee charged for entering into a special payments plan. Each month during an equal payments plan you are required to pay in full by the due date that month’s equal payments plan instalment. Any unpaid portion not received by the due date will no longer form part of the equal payments plan and interest will accrue on that amount from the day after the date of your next statement at the applicable regular annual rate. An avid swimmer, surfer, hiker, and camper, she currently lives on the island of Oahu in Hawaii, where she can be found, as much as possible, in water.
If the Mineral King 3 is out of stock, or if you’d like a slightly larger tent, we recommend the Marmot Tungsten 4. The Tungsten 4 shares many of the Mineral King 3’s best features, and provides 10 square feet of additional living space as well as excellent weather protection—as long as you ozark trail canopy tent set it up properly. Like our top pick, the Tungsten 4 is a sturdy, two-door dome-style tent that can be deployed in about 5 minutes. It uses high-quality materials such as aluminum poles, breathable mesh, and water-resistant polyester fabric, and it comes with a full fly and a footprint.
It’s pricey, though, and unless the other couples’ tents we recommend, it doesn’t include a footprint. It’s constructed with heavy-duty 210-denier poly oxford walls and the heftiest bug-blocking no-see-um mesh we’ve encountered in any tent. The thicker, darker netting also makes the whole structure shadier, even without the optional side panels. Fellow campers and sun-baked spectators consistently gravitated toward the REI shelter over the L.L.Bean.
We also wanted self-standing tents, which can stay up on their own. Even so, you should, ideally, stake down each corner securely; in some crowded campgrounds, however, finding a flat spot with soil soft enough to do that can be difficult. A tent that requires staking to stand up—especially a larger, six-person tent—is unwieldy, and it’ll be impossible to set up on a hard surface such as blacktop or on raised wooden tent decks. The whole thing is remarkably easy to set up, even for one person; the family at the next campsite was amazed at my tent prowess when I set it up solo. Takedown is similarly simple, though Clam provides an instructional video if you need help. Trailspace’s community of gear reviewers has field-tested and rated the top tents and shelters.
As a shower enclosure, about the only complaint I have is that the solar shower bag hangs very low, so it is necessary to squat in order to wash your hair.
It’s unlikely to be as durable, though, as the softer, stronger polyester found in our other picks. Like the Mineral King 3, the Tungsten 4 has a mesh canopy, though the opaque polyester part of its walls go higher, and provide more privacy, than the Mineral King’s. Its tape-seamed bathtub floor and fly had no problem handling rain. The Tungsten’s fly is not adaptable in the same way the Mineral King 3’s is, but it is treated for extra UV protection, which should help lengthen the tent’s lifespan. To test the tents, we first opened them, splayed out their parts, and tried to put them together without consulting the instructions.
You can also set up the tent without the fly while retaining some privacy, since the tent body has a high polyester wall on one side. The Coleman 15 × 13 Instant Screenhouse is essentially a larger version ozark trail canopy tent of the Coleman 10 × 10 Instant Screened Canopy, and it has similar shortcomings. The sloping walls make the interior space feel much smaller than the generous footprint might lead you to expect.
(We don’t recommend the smaller version of this tent for couples who might actually take it on the road; it was just too flimsy in our tests.) Also note that this tent does not come with its own groundsheet. Coleman says that the tent doesn’t need one, probably because its floor is a crinkly (though tough) tarp-like polyethylene, not a taped-seam polyester as in our other picks. Though the Marmot Tungsten 4-Person Tent lacks the Mineral King 3’s adaptable fly, which makes access and protection from the elements such a breeze, the Tungsten 4 provides more living space and equal protection against the elements. A full rain fly with easy-attach color-coded clips covers the tent body and adds two large vestibules. Like the Mineral King 3, the Tungsten has aluminum poles that are connected at the top (for lightning-quick pitching) and pre-bent, which increases the dome tent’s headroom.