"Sometimes I lay out upon the ground and devoured what I could get."

I like tents. It's a weakness. Some people use drugs, I buy tents. I have two backpacking tents, a bivy sack, and three family tents. One of those is a cheap, roomy but very leaky tent from a little-known company (perhaps they confused hydrophobic and hydrophilic), and one is a more expensive, less-roomy, watertight tent made by a well-known mountaineering gear company. I don't use either of them much anymore, because the third family tent is the Coleman Instant Tent.

I don't need to waste words when you can watch the video. Cool, huh? It works like that in real life, too. This particular tent was more of an impulse buy than even I am used to. We were on our way to a big camping trip with the extended family. Stopped at Sam's Club an hour from the campsite for ice and food for the cooler. Buzzed through the camping aisle "just to check". And boom. There it sat, in a beat-up box. The Coleman Instant Tent, in real life. Cheaper than online. Available in store. An INSTANT tent, that could INSTANTLY be mine! I pulled it out and checked it. Still looked factory-rolled. Just the box was beat-up, and that's why they put stuff in boxes. I bought it, having promised my wife that she'd love the space inside. (I had a vague idea about the space inside.)

I could barely fit it in the car. I had to throw the box away and do some major repacking while the family sat stewing in the minivan, the ice began to melt, and a fellow member of Sam's Club mocked me ("You shoulda bought a full-size van." Thanks, pal. Helpful advice). I made it fit.

Set it up in the gathering rain. My 7-year-old and I set it up in two minutes without reading the directions--not bad. Not long after dinner, the heavens opened and we took shelter in the new tent. Noticed...condensation? Nope. Rain. Leaks in the seams, and some seepage through the fabric. Not as much as on Super-Leaky Family Tent #1, but definitely water in my tent via the roof. Well, the more fool I for thinking that because it didn't come with a rainfly, it didn't NEED a rainfly. So, in the dark and stormy night, I was outside rigging a temporary fly with the Amazing Blue Tarp (basically as important to a man as duct tape). It was ugly, as you can sort of see here on the right in the Tent City picture (thanks, Ordinary Time). It was hard to get in and out, because we had to lift the tarp to access the door. But it kept us dry during a very wet trip.

Well, when we got home, we decided that this tent really was the most comfortable of the two usable tents--floor space, headroom, ventilation, ease of setup and entry...it really is a nice tent, aside from the leaking. So I set about making Amazing Blue Tarp Rainfly version 2. I bought a 16'x20' tarp and some adjustable aluminum poles. I scavenged poles from the unsalvageably leaky tent. I used lots of nylon clothesline and duct tape. Here it is:

Pretty sweet, huh? It works, too. The scavenged poles are underneath the fly, inserted into duct tape pockets (the pockets will need frequent maintenance). Two run across the tent and one runs the length from back to the front of the nice big covered porch. Still good ventilation. We took it on the next trip. We set up in the rain, so I put the fly up. As soon as I set it up, the rain stopped and didn't come back all weekend. It works! The one problem is that the fly adds ten minutes to the 1-minute setup time of the tent. Oh well. What does a 1,000% increase matter, really (is that the math)? I have, since these pictures, made it more taut and decreased the footprint of the guylines.

Now, some of you may be wondering why I didn't just seal the seams over the factory tape. I could, and that would probably stop the leaks. But we actually really like having the big old fly out over the door. It's comforting.

One final note. This whole thing has caused me to question the strategy behind building car-camping family tents. Yes, it must look nice, and yes, it must be relatively easy to set up. But why does weight matter? Why not add a waterproof fly? I'm carrying the tent a total of thirty feet, maybe, from the shelf to the car to the tent site. I don't need ultralight materials. I need water protection!