The New Tent Arrived

So the first thing I noticed when I went to put it up was that one item ("tent stakes, 30, in bag") appeared to be missing. This was a problem, but not anything I was going to let stop me.

I was able to round up five stakes from the old tent, etc. Then I got into my toolbox and started using screwdrivers and chisels as stakes, just to hold the thing down until I could get to the store.

Got it staked down, as it were, went in and placed the pole, so the tent was now "up."

When everything appeared to be as close to right as it was going to get, checked things out. Pretty nice, but there was a lump under the floor.

It was a bag.

With 30 tent stakes in it.

Cool.

Tent Living Update

I gave up near-full-time outdoor tent sleeping last summer, by which time the Ozark Trail dome tent had been continuously deployed for about nine months. 

When we arrived in Florida, I decided to put it back up, and have occasionally slept in it since (including the one night that it got down to 19 degrees fahrenheit, because I figured "who the hell gets to sleep outdoors in 19-degree weather in Florida?" It's located back in the pines toward the rear of our acre lot, far enough from the house that it actually feels like ... well, like camping out.

So now it's been deployed outdoors (as opposed to folded in a storage bag) for a total of about a year, and it's been a very reliable piece of gear. It's developed a couple of small tears that could (and should) be easily repaired, but otherwise it's in fine shape. I mean, it's a $25 tent and the zippers are all still in good shape despite, conservatively estimated, 250 openings and closings. I've had tents that didn't make it a week without a pranged zipper or busted fiberglass pole.

If you're looking for a cheap tent that's a great deal at the price, I heartily recommend Ozark Trail products.  This one has been through heat, cold, wind, rain, snow, sleet -- pretty much everything except fire -- and it's still in usable condition.

That said, I've been thinking about getting a new tent for a long time. I've been thinking about getting a bigger tent for a long time, too. Not just for "back yard tent living," but because I'm hoping to finally get the family into camping way out beyond the back yard. I finally found the deal I couldn't refuse, and it's on the way from The Sportsman's Guide:

If my math skills aren't completely out of whack ("pie are square ... no, pie are round; cornbread are square"), a 10-foot diameter means a 5-foot radius, which in turn means close to 80 square feet of floor space. I've seen smaller apartments. Not to mention I'll be able to stand up in it.

Sorry, Kent, it's not a real tipi -- it's just got one pole, running up the center, which would be a problem for someone who wanted to put e.g. a queen-size air mattress down. But I don't need a queen-size mattress (when I sleep in a tent it's on a thin foam backpacking mat), and real tipis of reasonable quality are a bit out of my price range at the moment.

At 14 pounds or so, it's prospectively portable as part of a backpack scenario (at least my kind of backpack scenario; I used to carry a rifle, ammo and anywhere from 25-75 pounds of mortar stuff in addition to a pack full of "the daily life stuff," remember?).

Obviously a real review will have to wait until I've put it through its paces, but the specs look very promising -- allegedly factory-sealed seams, polyurethane waterproof coating, etc. I look forward to its arrival.

OK, Spring is Officially Here

Someone asked me the other day if I'm still sleeping in the tent. Yup! I allow myself one night per month inside, and my back always regrets it.

Anyway, this last week the mummy bag (rated for either zero or ten degrees fahrenheit, not sure which) got washed, hung up to air dry, and crammed into its attached stuff stack. Most nights now are just too warm for it, even completely unzipped. Switched to a worn, reliable old summer "temperate climate" bag, with blankets still on standby in case it gets nippy.

Haven't decided yet whether or not I want to re-site the tent for the summer, but I'm leaning against it. Got everything pretty much the way I want it, including almost perfect rain resistance even without the tarp lean-to (that came down some time ago, once the coldest winter winds eased up). We've had some real frog-stranglers already in the last month or so, and never more than a smidgen of dampness inside the thing.

Then again, something larger might be fun. Or that cardboard geodesic I was thinking of building ...

A Little Brisk Out

The weather forecast: "[S]now flurries ending with partial cloudiness and windy conditions continuing overnight. Low 17F. Winds NNW at 20 to 30 mph."

My forecast: Guess I'll probably zip up the mummy bag tonight. 17 degrees and nobody shooting at you is a walk in the park, as these gentleman would likely attest:







Addendum: Yes,  I slept out. So toasty warm and comfortable in the mummy bag that I slept in, too. Best night of sleep I've had in a week. It was in the low 20s fahrenheit when I crawled out of the bag.

"A Slushy Mix"

That's what the weather people are calling this:

34 degrees, feels like 28. That dark blob in the middle of the picture is my tent, to which I shall repair shortly. But first, a nightcap!





Update: The "morning after" pic. It was actually a wonderful night. Slept like a log, warmly. Didn't even bother zipping up the mummy bag.

Tent Living Update

Image via Wikipedia

I started 2012 with the goal of "camping out" every night for the entire year.

I've already had to modify that goal: Last weekend's trip entailed a family hotel stay, and I doubted the innkeepers would tolerate a tent in their backyard (Tamara rejected the idea of everyone staying at a rental tent camp site; can't say I blame her).

So in January, I went 30 for 31 days.

I'm thinking that I should probably allow myself one day a month for such things, sort of in the spirit of people trying to set world records for pole-sitting or roller-coaster-riding or whatever getting five minutes off per day or hour to use the bathroom and whatnot.

Other than that, nothing of note to report, really; just asides:

• I've definitely become acclimated to lower temperatures -- these days, I don't bother zipping up the sleeping bag unless it's below freezing.
• The cheap Ozark Trail tent has been a real champ in terms of weather resistance, especially since I sheltered its north face with a tarp lean-to. Any tent will admit a little moisture if there's stuff pressing against its inside walls, and there's some condensation on cold days, but apart from that the thing has been nicely dry, and surprisingly un-drafty.
• Consequently, I'm kind of planning to just stick with this tent all year (or until disaster of some kind falls upon it) rather than buy or build something else come spring. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. I must admit that the FieldCandy outfits look pretty cool, but they also appear to start at something like 25 times the cost of what I'm using now.
• Based on past summer sleepouts, though, I think I'll try to figure out a reasonable way to mount a fan in front of one of the mesh windows once the temperature creeps up above 80 or so.

Brief "Tent Living" Update

When last we spoke of this, I had slept the better part of two months outdoors, and was taking New Year's Eve off, then planning to get back to it and see if I could manage an uninterrupted year.

So far, so good! But I woke up this morning with snow on the tent, and tonight will be the first big test of "cold AND snowy."

I've slept out down to 13 degrees but dry, and I've slept out 30 degrees but with precipitation.

Tonight it's snowy, 18 degrees, with 8mph winds out of the west/southwest (perfect -- the house shields the tent most fully from exactly that direction).

I don't expect any big problems. Hell, last night I didn't even bother to zip up the sleeping bag.

I'm still trying to decide whether or not to allow myself a break from outside/tent sleeping when I travel. Not that I do that a lot, but I do have a weekend trip in mind soon.

Related articles

• The Obligatory First Post of 2012 (knappster.blogspot.com)

The Obligatory First Post of 2012

Missing the first day of January would be a bad start toward fulfilling my resolution of averaging a blog post a day in 2012, wouldn't it?

Unfortunately, I'm just not seeing that much exciting to blog about today. So I guess I'll just throw out a few trivialities.

The Iowa Republican caucus? Yawn. I won't be surprised if Ron Paul finishes first, second, third or fourth. I won't be surprised if Gingrich finishes second, third or lower, or if Santorum finishes as high as third. I will be surprised if Romney doesn't make at least second place, if Gingrich wins, if Santorum lands first or second place, or if Paul places worse than fourth. As you can tell, none of these surprise/non-surprise markers resolve into real predictions of note. Frankly, I'm already bored to tears with this election. Maybe that will change.

Last night was the first night in nearly two months that I didn't sleep outdoors in a tent (click on the "tent living" label if you're interested in why). New Year celebrations kept me up until the wee hours, and in an altered mental state to boot. Also while it's not quite a "resolution," my intent is to see if I can sleep outdoors every night in 2012, so I figured one last hurrah on an indoor bed made sense at this juncture.

For New Year's Eve family movie night, the first selection was Cowboys and Aliens. Not bad. I didn't expect to like it much, but I always enjoy Daniel Craig. Harrison Ford, Olivia Wilde, Clancy Brown et. al didn't disappoint either. Doesn't go on my "favorites" shelf or anything, but I'd watch it again. After that, we tried Across the Universe. I lost interest maybe a third of the way through. Interesting concept, but just didn't hold together well. We also rented R.E.D., but never got to it.

OK, you can go back to being bored with something else now.

I Love a Rainy Night

Really, I do -- and I went to sleep last night intending for this to be a post about how very, very nice it is to fall asleep outside (but warm and dry) to the pitter-patter of raindrops on the tent.

Then, about 4 in the morning, I startled awake with a sense that the tent had suddenly become smaller ... and it had. The walls were sagging inward. The pitter-patter of rain had changed to a slightly different sound, a cousin of the sound a gourd rattle makes, solid fragments hitting solid surfaces.

SNOW! Huzzah!

I shook the tent some to get the stuff off its surfaces so that it could return to something like normal shape, then unzipped the door and just watched the pretty stuff come down for a bit, before going back to sleep for a couple more hours. Sweet.

When I finally got up and about later, I discovered that the main tent-mis-shaping culprit was accumulation at the base of my tarp lean-to on the north side of the tent. It was getting its share of the snowfall, plus everything that landed on the tarp and slid down, plus some from a small tree overhanging the area. The weight of all this had caused my X-shaped tent-poles to shift position, creating most of inward bow in the tent wall. I probably need to re-engineer that whole mess before we get a more significant snowfall.

Below 20 Degrees (?), Snug as a Bug in a Rug

I'm not sure how cold it got last night, but when I got up at 6:30am and came in, the Intarweb told me it was 20 degrees fahrenheit, and what data I could find retroactively seemed to point to a low in the mid-teens (I didn't think to look at the forecast before going to bed).

Let me put it this way: There was ice on the inside of the tent walls this morning, presumably from breath vapor condensation. But I slept very warmly in my DuoFold® Union Suit and Coleman® mummy bag, under a World War II wool military blanket. Matter of fact, I removed the blanket during the night. I did, however, use an old t-shirt as a sort of "veil" to loosely cover the part of my face the mummy hood leaves exposed (a cold nose is annoying).

I'm still not sure what exact model that mummy bag is (I found it at a thrift store) but I'm still guessing it's either an older model of, or equivalent to, the Coleman® Everglades 20 degree bag. It's definitely a Coleman®. It's 85-inches in length with a built-in stuff sack, and contains 3 pounds, 10 ounces of DuPont® Holofill® insulation, both of which match older "Everglades" descriptions (Coleman® has switched to its own "Coletherm®" insulation recently, and new "Everglades" models say they're good down to 10 degrees instead of 20).

I can't recommend it enough. It's a fine bag. So hey, I might as well do a "mini-review" for those who are considering cold-weather camping.

First warning: Mummy bags are not for the claustrophobic. Getting into and out of one properly takes some time, and when you're in them you are essentially immobilized.

Here's how you get into the bag -- Or how I do, anyway:

- First, lay out and arrange the bag pretty much exactly how you want it to be positioned for the night. For instance, if you are using pillows, make sure the bottom of the hood area is up on the pillow. As we shall see, changing position is not the easiest thing once you're in the bag.

- Next, get in the bag (which obviously must be at least mostly unzipped for you to do), zip it halfway or so, then turn out any lights, etc. -- because in about 10 seconds you're not going to be able to reach out for stuff.

- Lie down on your back. Find the two drawstrings on your left -- one for the chest baffle, one for the hood -- and make sure you know where they are (I lay them across my chest at a downward angle).

- Finish zipping the bag, and attach the little velcro tab under the zipper handle that keeps accidental unzips from happening. One nice feature of this bag is that there's a cloth tube/baffle that lays over the zipper on the inside, protecting you from drafts or contact with cold zipper material.

- It's already a bit snug, but now let's address those drawstrings. First, close the chest baffle by attaching the velcro tabs on the right side. Then cinch up the drawstring for the hood until your head is completely enclosed except for your eyes, nose and mouth (and as little of those as you care to leave exposed -- if you want to veil your face with a piece of cloth in that space, now is the time). Finally, cinch up the chest baffle until it's tight around your shoulder/chest area.

You're done -- and within perhaps five minutes, you'll be comfortably warm. The bag does a great job of sealing in body heat, especially since that chest baffle doesn't let it escape up top.

I'm a fairly big guy, but not wildly obese or anything. When I'm fully in the bag, I have about 4 inches of space in any of three directions (left, right or up) before I'm pushing hard against the bag. If you want to change body position, it's going to take an effort and the bag is going to roll with you. Personally, I'm getting used to sleeping on my back. The immobility is actually a sort of sleep aid for me.

Like I said, don't try this if you're claustrophobic. But I guess if you were claustrophobic, you wouldn't be sleeping in a 7x7 foot, 4 foot high tent anyway, would you?

You don't want to wear a bunch of clothing in this bag. Not only does that further constrict your motion, but it's likely to get you sweaty and defeat the warming mechanism. Pajamas or long underwear, at the most, should be enough.

Getting out of the bag is just a reversal of process -- un-cinch the chest baffle and hood drawstrings, tear the chest baffle velcro loose, reach a finger out to remove the zipper-stop tab, and unzip. It takes a good five minutes to get into the bag properly; maybe a minute to get out, plus whatever time you spend delaying because man, it's cold out there.

At somewhere south of 20 degrees, I was toasty warm and comfortable all night -- so much so that I did a roll in the middle of the night to get the wool blanket off and cool things off a bit. But of course I was also wearing that merino wool Union Suit. I'm interested to see how I fare at full zero degrees. I'm certain that this bag isn't rated for that, but I expect to manage just fine.

Disclosure: Coleman® didn't pay me to write this. Coleman® didn't give me the bag, a discount on the bag, or anything like that. So far as I know, Coleman® doesn't know who I am (but I'll take any free stuff they want to send me!). They've been a reputable name in the camping gear business for decades, and that reputation is, so far as I can tell, well-deserved.

Shelter 2.0

The discussion on that last post me started on thinking more seriously about the next step, which I probably won't take until at least spring (hey, I just got settled in!).

The virtues of a small nylon camping tent are that it's very cheap, very portable, and reasonably easy to set up and take down. Only one of those three virtues (cheapness) is important to me, since I'm not hiking in anywhere and since the installation is semi-permanent.

The primary vice of a small nylon camping tent is that it's not especially wind- or water-resistant. I've treated mine with water resistance stuff, sealed some seams with tape, and put an additional ground cover underneath its built-in floor, and it's performed well under steady, even occasionally heavy, rain since then. It stays dry inside. It's drafty, but hell, it's a tent.

The other day I erected a tarp lean-to on the north side to deflect some wind and precipitation, but it's been neither especially windy nor especially wet since then. The forecast for two inches of accumulated snow yesterday was wrong -- a few flurries, leaving a barely visible dusting on the tent exterior. So that hasn't been put to the test yet.

So anyway, where was I? Oh, yes -- I've probably taken "wind and wet" resistance as far as it can reasonably go, with the exception of lining the interior walls with "emergency blanket" material if that becomes necessary. I'm up against the inherent limitations of a light nylon structure.

So, the next step is graduating up from a light nylon structure to something more durable.

A tipi, as Kent suggests in that other post's comments, would be really cool, but it would also be really tall and I live in a town with ordinances that specify the number of holes per square inch in window screens (no, I'm not kidding). Unless I'm prepared to claim that I'm a Blackfoot medicine man and the thing is my religious obligation, a tipi is probably out. I need a structure that sits low enough -- six feet max, I'd say -- to not be deemed a visual nuisance.

A wickiup would be pretty neat, too, but I'm leaning toward something like a geodesic dome ... and look at the link what arrived in my email this morning to encourage that drift of thought. That's nylon (or some other light fabric), portable and expensive, but I still kind of like the concept.

Enter Instructables!

That is something I can build from free and cheap materials -- some castaway cardboard, some glue or fasteners, some tape for sealing the seams, and lacquer and/or a tarp or plastic covering for additional waterproofing. Since it's a "play dome," one roof triangle is omitted; I'll keep that triangle but make it removable, so that I have a closable skylight. And I'd leave fold-in tabs on the bottom pieces to stake it to the ground through.

It's basically a 2v geodesic dome with a height gain from a base of rectangles. If I configure the 2v dome part of it for an 8-foot diameter (plenty of room to stretch out), I get 4 feet of height. Make the rectangular base 1 foot in height and I'm at five feet; 2-foot rectangles get me to six feet. And I'd have right at 50 square feet of floor space (I think the current tent has 42).

If I want to get really fancy, I can minimize the number of individual pieces, making fewer cuts to produce longer seams so that the attachment points act as reinforcing "ribs" and make it a stronger structure.

I suspect I can build the thing for less than the $25 I spent on the tent, depending on things like whether I want it to be easily to disassemble and reassemble (e.g. using brads instead of staples or glue for fastening the segments together).

I'm excited enough about the possibilities that I may start getting the pieces together now and install it sooner than I say I'm going to.

Tent living -- adventure, endeavor, or ... ?

Brad isn't sure which, but finds it interesting.

I'm not sure which, if either, either.

It's not a philosophical thing. I don't reject modernity or intentionally shun the luxuries of the tech-enhanced life, and while I'm way cognizant of nature's incredible beauty at certain times and in certain places, I feel no great need to "get back to" it on any kind of extended basis.

A lot of my reasons are practical:

I have a bad back -- getting worse, such that I seldom walk without a cane these days -- our bed exacerbates it, and sleeping on the hard ground with a slight head-down slope seems to help. I have diabetes, and that "feet slightly elevated" thing is supposed to mitigate the associated peripheral neuropathy (anecdotally, it seems to).

The rest of the family likes their sleep environment warmer than I like mine. I prefer to keep the house cool and pile on blankets at night; everyone else prefers it at least 68-70 degrees fahrenheit at all times.

I like it reasonably quiet and dark when I'm ready to sleep, and that's not how our household works. Our sleep schedules vary -- in particular, Liam's sleep schedule and the usual circadian rhythm seem to be ships which only pass in the night two or three times a week. The other nights, it's not unusual to hear music, video game noises, or rants about the stupidity of something he just found on the Internet at, say, 3:30am. We tried rigid scheduling and forced bedtimes for quite awhile, but they had no effect. He does have a rhythm. It's just not the usual one. We finally decided to just roll with it.

So: Sleeping outside is healthier, more comfortable, darker and quieter for me. And it doesn't really interfere with anything. I'm ten feet from the door, and near enough a window that a loud tap on it or yell out of it can summon me as needed.

From a recreational standpoint, I've always loved camping. Back in the day, it wasn't unusual for me to throw some stuff in my backpack on Friday right after work, head for the woods, and make it back in time for work Monday morning (having cleaned up in the river pre-dawn that morning before hiking out), once or twice a month. That was usually summer, and I never used a tent and seldom even a sleeping bag -- just a blanket and military "poncho liner."

And of course there were my Marine Corps days. One time I slept (sort of) for eight hours neck-deep in the Cumberland River. I've slept at 10,000 feet above sea level in Yosemite, awakened covered with frost at the Marine Corps' Mountain Warfare Training Center or bathed in sweat on the floor of the Delta Corridor at Marine Corps Base 29 Palms in the Mojave, and wrapped in a poncho in 38 degree rainy tornado weather at Camp Ripley, Minnesota. I lived most of six months under canvas in the Arabian desert. And so on, and so forth.

But, see "bad back" above. These days, I can make it perhaps a hundred feet without a cane before my back tunes up and I start limping. Another hundred feet with or without cane and it feels like my hip is full of ground-up glass. When I go to a large store lately, I usually avail myself of their wheelchair or electric scooter option, and frankly I anticipate buying a wheelchair for home use in the foreseeable future. And no, I'm not morbidly obese or anything like that -- heavier than I want to be at about 230 right now, but the back problem has been getting worse for about 20 years, even when I weighed in at 165 or so, ever since I got hit in the small of the back by a rogue boat trailer.

So anyway, my deep woods backpacking days are probably over, but that doesn't mean I can't sleep out.

The thing that seems to awe Brad a bit is the temperature -- I'm sleeping out in sub-freezing (and anticipate sleeping out in sub-zero) weather.

Honestly, I like cold, or at least cool, weather camping better than midsummer camping. You can always get warmer with more blankets or a fire (or ... ahem ... a companion), but it's hard to cool down when it's a hundred fahrenheit in the shade. Also, summer means mosquitos and other bugs.

My set-up right now is a cheap tent, shielded from the north wind by a tarp lean-to and a large neighboring house perhaps 20 feet away. Within the tent I sleep in (what I think is) a 20-degree mummy bag under a wool blanket (and more blankets available), atop another blanket and a vapor barrier mat, with real pillows. The only part that's not as warm as the house is the air I'm breathing, and I like that part!

And while I've gone ahead with the label, what I'm doing isn't really "tent living." I spend most of my time, apart from actually sleeping, in the house. I only cook outdoors over a fire if I feel like grilling out. The walk from my tent to running water, toilet and hot shower is perhaps 30 seconds.

The best of both worlds!

In a previous post on this topic, I allude to Henry David Thoreau's two year sojourn on Walden Pond. He was a little more isolated than I am (a mile from town), but if I'm not mistaken his aunt did his laundry for him. He wasn't really "roughing it" much, and neither am I. But I do like blogging about it, just to share whatever I learn.

OK, so it's not exactly Walden II ...

... which, btw, wasn't nearly as isolated and backwoodsy as some who haven't read their Thoreau might have you believe ...

But it's still getting more and more fun by the day.

The next two nights will not be the coldest I've spent in the tent.

They will, however, be the first that have accumulating snow in the forecast.

As per an update to my last post on the subject, I found a great thrift store deal on a Coleman^® mummy bag. I haven't hit any hard cold with it yet; it's warm enough that last night I had to open it to cool down.

And the day after that, I found a $65 Duofold^® "union suit" for a little over $5 ($6.97, but it was another thrift store's 25% off day). Picked up a nice stuff bag (which doubles as one of those sling packs, but that's not my use for it) for about $1.50 as well.

For additional north wind and precipitation protection, today I doubled what was left of the old tarp I cut a piece out of for a ground cloth, anchored it to the ground with landscape timbers on the north side of the tent, then ran a sectional pole from an old tent through the other end to "hoop" it over the top center of the tent, and anchored it with two lengths of rope staked out a bit to the south, like so:

Sort of an improvised lean-to wind-break. I'm not confident that it will hold up in heavy wind or under large quantities of frozen water, but I'll adapt it as necessary. I've also got one of those cheap foil "emergency blankets" that I can tack to the inner tent wall for additional insulation if necessary.

Oh, and I bought a cheap rubber "Welcome" mat for outside the door.

The interior is actually getting tidier. Across the north end are my mat, mummy bag, pillows and wool military blanket.

Next to that and to one side of the door, I've replaced my "milk crate bedside table" with a slightly larger waterproof storage box. Additional blankets are in stuff bags inside that, along with books, cold breakfast food, etc.

On the other side of the door, a small trash can and a mini-broom-and-dustpan for housekeeping. And in front of the door, a "welcome" mat sized rag rug.

Book, flashlight, etc. in the cargo loft net, lantern hanging from one cord.

Oh, and I just downloaded Walden to Ye Aulde Tablet. I think I'd like to re-read it out there.

I still haven't figured out where to put a 50" plasma TV in there. Since I don't have one anyway, I don't see that as a real problem.

Moving and Winterizing ...

Like I said, I do not live in a tent ... but I sleep in one a lot. The hard ground seems to be better for my back, elevating my feet is supposed to help with both that and diabetic neuropathy, and I just plain enjoy it. I've slept outside all but a few nights for the last couple of months now.

But, it's getting colder -- below freezing tonight, according to the forecast, with possible snow next week. Soooo ...

Today I moved the tent to a gentler slope. The previous placement wasn't comfortable, as I tended to slide downhill while sleeping. The new placement has a gentler slope, and a more or less body-width plateau across the the back of the tent, so that I can sleep level when I want to.

The new position is also better sheltered from north winds by a wooden fence and a neighboring house, closer to my own door so I don't have to schlep through as many feet of bad weather 'twixt house and tent, and has the door facing south instead of north now.

While I was at it, I cut up an old tarp to create an extra layer of ground cloth. The rest of the tarp is available, if need be, to set up as a lean-to on the north side for even more wind breakage.

I used most of a can of water-proofing spray on the tent a couple of weeks ago, and even though there's been a good bit of rain I've had very little in the way of moisture problems since (I may do some seam-taping for good measure). The new arrangement should be even better -- the base of the tent on the uphill side is flush against a wooden fence footer that should deflect any water flow along the ground, and I also realized the rain fly was not symmetric and that I had it on backward; fixing that reduced rain exposure through a "window" screen.

My sleeping rig is a conventional temperate weather bag -- I'm looking for a good deal on a "mummy" style bag rated for zero fahrenheit and below -- atop a foam rubber mat and a horse blanket, and topped off with a World War II wool GI blanket, one more blanket and an old (not goose-down, unfortunately) quilt. Oh, and a couple of comfy pillows. I figure I'm good down into the teens if necessary.

I've got a battery-powered LED "lantern" and a flashlight (for more focused reading light) hanging from one of the gear loft cords. In the gear loft and on an old milk crate (I'm looking for a small waterproof storage box, or better yet an old military foot locker as a replacement) I keep another flashlight, an electronic cigarette, an alarm clock and some books. I've got a rag rug inside the doorway, and plan to buy a rubber doormat for outside next time I'm out at the cheap stores.

If I can find the right "mummy" bag (or even if not, probably), I think I'm set for my first all-winter sleeping-out attempt. Not "living" outside. I still spend days and evenings in the house. I'm not a hermit, and I'm not really interested in the problems involved with outdoor toilet and shower facilities and such. Been there, done that, for extended periods of time (Saudi Arabia, among other places). I've also camped out for one or two nights at a time in temperatures as low as 20 degrees below zero fahrenheit, but I haven't done so for extended periods, so this will be a new experience.

[Brief Update, 11/29/11: OK, I've slept this arrangement two nights now, in temperatures down to 32 fahrenheit and through periods of steady, sometimes heavy, rain. "Snug as a bug in a rug" -- dry, warm and comfortable. I still want a mummy bag and possibly some cheap "emergency blankets" to hang as extra tent insulation for the next stage of reduced temperatures, but in general I'm very happy with the setup.]

[Thrift Store Bonus Score, 12/01/11: Coleman mummy bag, $11.25 ($14.99, but it was 25% off night). Not sure (I believe it's an older model), but I think it's the equivalent of their Everglades 10-30 fahrenheit bag. I'm still keeping an eye out for a 0 degree bag, but this should do nicely for now.]

I Do Not Live in a Tent ...

... but I often sleep in one, outside, even during the winter. I have back problems, and they seem to be best addressed by sleeping on a hard surface with a slight incline -- like my back yard. Also, I've just always liked camping. Back in my Marine Corps days, I often spent weeks living under canvas, and then went camping in my off-time.

My guess is that close to six months out of the year, depending on weather (I'm pretty good down to single digits fahrenheit, but below zero is a little brisk) I spend part or all of the night sleeping outdoors. The bed in the house is just too soft for comfortable all-night sleeping, although it does get used for other things (IYKWIMAITYD).

Anyway, the previous tent has a couple of years' hard use on it, so a couple of weeks ago I received an early birthday present:



Brief review:

About $25 at Wally-World (Ozark Trail is apparently a store brand). Quite nice!

The last tent almost immediately got a pranged zipper. The zippers on this one are sturdy and seem to be double-stitched around so that stuff doesn't tear.

The last tent required four poles, two for the tent and two skinny flimsy ones, which quickly broke, to arch the rain fly. This one only has the two, very sturdy, main frame poles. Exceptionally easy setup. I went ahead and spent a couple of bucks on heavy-duty pegs instead of using the flimsies that come with cheap tents.

I've already slept out in the thing several nights through hard rain. I never got the last tent properly waterproofed. Haven't had a chance to work this one over with seam sealant and waterproofing spray yet, but it's already more leak- and drip-resistant than the last tent at its best.

The tent has a built-in side pocket and a "gear loft" -- a small net that hangs from four hooks in the ceiling. It could be bigger, but it's sufficient to hold my Android tablet (the tent is parked within range of my wifi router, of course), flashlight, smokes, etc., and I've hung a little LED lantern thingie from the ceiling as well for general lighting.

I always considered the previous tent a temporary thing, but this is looking more like a permanent installation. For obvious reasons I don't plan to store valuable stuff in it, but my sleeping arrangement (vapor barrier mat, sleeping bag, pillows, WWII wool military blanket and an old quilt) leaves plenty of room, I think, for a small trunk or foot locker to store a few books and clothes in, a wind-up alarm clock, little floor rug for sitting and shoes, etc. Once I get those things in place and find a welcome mat and a decent camp stool, I really could almost live there if I wanted to.

Unless, of course, I need to eat or use the bathroom. But I have a cooler I could keep next to it, and it's near my little home-built brick barbecue pit. I will resist the urge to dig an outdoor latrine, though.