Van Life Essentials: Why You Should Carry a Tent

recommend and why you would want to carry a tent some of you will be wondering why should i carry a tin if i have a van i really don't need the room or if you live in an rv even if you live in a car it's pretty obvious why you need a tent so we'll go on and now we'll we'll talk about that i have robert here with me hello everyone and uh you lived in a for a while in a car yes a toyota camry and you you carried a tent yes very helpful so why did you carry the tent in your car well one reason is uh storage space both living space outdoors and storage for gear uh when you get set up somewhere for a while it's nice to be able to stretch out you might want to sleep in the tent or you might just want to move some of your gear into the tent or your cargo you're carrying with you to make more room in the car to make a little more comfortable while you're set up for a while very good yeah i know several people in cars who carry tents for either one of those either living in or just to clear out space in the car another reason a second reason you might want to live in a tent is you might have want to carry a tent is if your vehicle is in the shop uh and let's face it you know our vehicles need to go into the shop every so often for different reasons and where do you stay this is the biggest question people have my car's in the shop i broke down where do i live it's my home uh well if you carry a tent and you can find either national forest or blm land close by a lot of times shops now will take you to and from something that's really common a courtesy vehicle so maybe they will take you to a nearby campground say you find a campground near an rv park nearby you can set up your tent in a tent space and live just about as cheaply as you reasonably can 10 to 20 dollars a night would be fairly normal for a tent space and that's about as cheap as you can live they will come and move you back and forth as a courtesy vehicle to you while your car is in the shop big reason to carry a tent you some people carry bikes and even maybe you could bike a few miles out of town onto blm or national forest land i have been several places where that would be entirely possible so a tent could be very handy while your uh it broke down and in the shop a third reason is some campgrounds require it for example i know several campgrounds uh that will literally require you to set up the tent some will require you to sleep in it but most will not they don't know they don't care but they want the tent set up i do know a campground that was on a lake you had to walk you parked in the parking lot you walked in oh 20 30 50 feet something to the lake and you they required you they actually checked that you weren't staying in your car or your van and so you had to so there's a very occasionally you have to have it to stay at a campground or a certain situation a fourth reason is one i know you do and that's for recreation well absolutely we get to travel to some amazing places and some of the places we go it's it's uh there are hiking trails or other areas we might want to access further off the beaten path getting away from from the established campgrounds and having a tent allows you to throw in the backpack and take it out with you and and do some camping and out in the back country and some some real awesome areas and backpacking is not just for young people there are a lot of places where just five miles will take you to a really great place five miles in spend the night it's been a two five miles out even old guys like me can do that uh and if you're young and healthy maybe you go 50 miles it's up whatever whatever works for you a fifth reason is for security now that's a one you maybe not think about i have a friend who travels in her car she's a single female female loan and she sets up her tent mainly for storage but one day she noticed people coming towards her camp and she was a little concerned she was in her car she lives in her car the tent is just storage but somebody who comes up on your camp will look at it and say that person's in the tent they don't even consider that you're in a car this is a prius who thinks someone can live in a prius no one but of course you can very well so they went and examined the tent while she was safely in her car in that case she didn't do anything but she could have started the car and driven away better to walk leave your stuff behind than to risk personal harm it acted like a decoy and that's actually a really good reason to carry a tent if you're a single woman woman traveling alone is as a decoy they go there you're safely in the car or even van uh and so giving you an escape route finally another reason to hold to on a tent is to hold your space yes absolutely i did that several times this summer bob uh when you're camped in a national forest or something and uh you just have your car you might be comfortable in the car but then you want to go to town to get water or to get rid of trash or whatever and if you leave your spot you may like the spot you're at and want to come back to it but if you leave somebody else might come in while you're gone so setting up the tent kind of holds the spot is a makes it an occupied campsite so everyone knows that someone's already staying there right yep i've done that myself really often uh attempted a site that i love that that's just the only way i could keep it so there are numerous reasons why you might want to carry a tent uh in our tiny spaces especially you in a car uh you everything has to justify the space it takes and for me a tent does it it provides enough usefulness that i will i will carry a tent even if i i may not use it once a year uh but it's still worth it to me okay now let's compare some tents robert you've got yours here why don't you tell us what the tenth about your tent okay so it's a um pretty standard uh two-person uh backpacking tent uh purchased from walmart inexpensively um so how much was it about forty or fifty dollars forty bucks so fairly affordable if you're on a tight budget besides it's it's functional it's not the easiest thing to set up but it's it it does work if you're if that's what you need and you're setting up for a while and it's reasonably small and light yes it's not it's uh fairly light for the size and uh and they're fairly sturdy so and you weren't an avalon uh camera camera that's right you're in the camry and uh it did it was worth the space to you oh yes yeah even with a relatively small trunk and a camry that was a good good use of space good yeah no that's what most people in cars find a tint is worth carrying uh did you ever use it as a bathroom um i didn't use it as a bathroom because the place i was at i didn't need to but it could have been it could have been could it could have done that um i used it for sleeping sometimes i used it for storage uh to store extra gear that i didn't need in the car and again for hold a spot so right right it would have did plenty enough for you it was a useful tool yeah and this is a good tent uh you know it was our trail makes surprisingly good stuff from walmart and you've been happy with it yes yeah okay uh do you want to start setting it up for us and show us how it goes sure we can do that okay okay so while he's setting that up folks let me show you this tint this is the one i'm recommending now that's a good tent and if you buy that you won't be sorry i don't believe you get a lot of money a lot of tent for your money this is a genji sports tent this belongs to my friend sue ann uh who uh travels in her prius and carries this tent now when you live in a prius or traveling a prius you really gotta uh measure every inch of space so when she gave up this space it meant it really was something useful to her now she uses it primarily for the storage aspect and for the security aspect um so when she gets to a camp she stays there for a while she sets this up and her stuff goes out there giving her a lot of free open space inside the prius so now robert's still working on his he's working away well it's going to take a while isn't it so let me show you why i like this tent this tent is a pop-up and i am not an expert at setting it up uh in fact uh suanne has only showed me one time exactly how to set it up so uh let's see if i can do it now most times i wouldn't i'd be very suspect of a pop-up uh i think that they're uh a lot of work they they seem just the idea of them seems fragile and i would not normally recommend a papa but i've traveled and camped with suanne for probably uh oh three four months and i've watched this tent endure 30 40 50 mile an hour winds and heavy rain and i know for a fact this tent is really good and is not fragile this is a pretty solid tent i'm gonna put a link in down in the description let me see and it comes with a this is just a simple rain fly a very simple rain fly and uh stakes and its bag so roberts for getting his all set up uh first he pulled these out these at the four corners [Music] and stand them up all four corners out first so the corners are out and then lock in the legs and then this goes like this how you doing over there robert are you getting there still working on it all right that goes in there this hook goes through this hole and now that can't come out it can't come undone these are all latched and then we have to latch this pole we straighten it out and that's latched that one's latched that one's latched and you know what we're done the tent's up and down are you done i'm still going you're still gone okay let me move this over i like all cell standing dance you grab it you move it you're not quite done yet no so if we're having a race you're not doing good no i'm losing this race okay we're still working and this one isn't hard to put up it's just standard yeah i've set out much worse tense oh yeah this is not bad compared to to most no the the four well no i haven't gotten stakes out and you have well you sort of have to stake this one down to hold everything together and and then when you put the rain fly on to cover the screen you have to stake that in a number of places too so right she puts so much weight on it that even i like i said i've been there and watched this stint stand to 50 mile an hour winds i am going to buy one of these as soon as they come on sale while at amazon cheap enough uh suan says they're about 115 is what the full retail usually is i've had it in my cart for probably a year and and it's down to 90 now uh suen paid 85 for this tent and i think it's to 85 i'll probably buy one but i'm not in any big hurry because i carry a tent i carry a very expensive mountaineering tent might carry a 600 tint like any tint it's really time consuming well you're almost there a few more stakes all right so uh really why would i recommend this tent because i've seen it stand up to strong winds uh it's so quick and easy to set up and if you just want to throw this thing together for to hold your space you don't want to fight with that uh and then drive away and wonder if it's gonna blow away uh now this is held up so really well for suanne it's two years old uh standard you know door this is uh waterproof material the fly goes on but just to cover this mechanism and uh so you but she's never slept in it so she doesn't know anything that's waterproof is probably going to have a condensation problem one of the things that's always suspect on a cheap tent is the zippers and even after uh two years of pretty substantial use uh all all the zippers work except one uh it still works well enough to use but it it's starting to go the zippers have held up well are you done we finally got it done okay good so you can see this is a lot faster and a lot easier uh i'll turn this around you can see in there a little bit it's big it's a big tent surprisingly big and uh easily hold two people and a dog i think you can see uh well [Applause] robert got his up we got mine almost up and down in the same amount of time i talked a long time before while you were starting you got a good head start um so i recommend this tent because personally i've seen it withstand heavy weather uh it's super easy to set up and down trust reasonably frustration free um a good price ninety dollars right now on amazon uh in october 16 2016. i do recommend this tent and i recommend you examine your situation and see if there's a reason why you should carry a tent in there okay so thanks a lot we'll um we'll stop on this video rather than go on and on and on and uh be sure and like us on youtube and subscribe to the channel and we'll visit with you later [Music]

Channel: CheapRVliving

Views: 203,335

Keywords: live, living, car, van, RV, nomad, gypsy, camper, camp, boondock, travel, full-time, tent, vandweller

Id: N_puVaKeO00

Length: 14min 41sec (881 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 26 2017