I remember the first time that I got to help my dad to pick out a family camping tent when I was a kid. It was the first time I got to go to the camping equipment store with my father. I thought it was the coolest thing ever. You see, at the time I was immersed in a typical fantasy that little boys have. I loved thinking about the old West, cowboys and Indians, and the adventures that one could have in the great outdoors. A family camping tent was just the thing that we needed to start to live these adventures. Although I would have rather gone on vacation by myself, the family camping tent still provided a great possibility for travel and adventure.
The tent we got was a Eureka tent. Neither my dad nor my mom had much experience camping, so we didn't really know much about buying a tent. We figured that we would get a camping family camping that was rated for four people – the number of people in our family. We didn't realize how family camping tents were actually rated. A 4-person tent, you see, barely has room for four people sandwiched together tightly. You can't take any of your gear in the tent, and you have no room to turn over, roll around, or move. Needless to say, this does not make for a very good outdoor camping experience.
We didn't actually try out the family camping tents until we gets to our campsite. This was a bad idea as well. Camping gear is not that hard to use once you get used to it, but the first time it can take a while. In our case, we did not get into the campground still somewhat late. It was the evening when we started setting up the family camping tent, figuring that it would only take about 10 minutes. One half an hour later it was not put together, it started getting stressful. The sun was setting and soon we would have no light to see what we were doing with the family camping tent. When we finally got the family camping tent together, it was too dark to cook. We ended up eating cold beans out of the can. When we finally crowded into the tent, hopelessly huddled together, we were all miserable. Although we have had better camping trip since then, the first trip with that family camping tent was not a lot of fun.
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