T is for Tent

After perusing through my old blog posts, I noticed that I failed to give the story of finding our monster of a tent, which I promised in C is for Camping.

Last summer (2011), Josh and I were in desperate need of a tent. We were determined to not have to borrow any camping gear for Family Camp, so we researched the crap out of any and all camping gear to find the best deals possible. The only thing we veered from our research on was The Tent. Once you read the story, you'll understand why The Tent has a capital "T."

We don't go to Cabela's often because it is a little spendy for our budget, plus it's not super close to where we live. But, the weekend we went up to Seattle for Josh's graduation* we stopped at Cabela's on the way home. At Cabela's, they have a "Bargain Room" which contains returned items, display items, clearance items, etc. We though to ourselves "Hmm, maybe there'll be a good deal on a tent!" Believe me, there was a good deal on a Tent. We found one that was rolled up and held together with packing tape. Sounds kind of ghetto, but the tag said there were no rips or tears and that the poles were all there. We wanted to know what the Tent looked like, so we asked one of the workers if she could look it up online for us. The tent she looked up (based on the number on the tag) was a pretty decent sized tent, that normally costs about $180. So for $80, we figured it was a great deal, and bought it. Unfortunately, I can't find a picture of that tent she showed us now...

The next day we were at my parents' house celebrating Father's Day. They have a big backyard, the Tent was still in our trunk, and we decided to try setting it up so we weren't surprised when we took it camping. We also wanted to see the actual size and show off our amazing deal to my family. To our surprise, the Tent looked HUGE when we layed it out in the grass. My older brother, Preston, was laughing about how big it was and was telling us he didn't think our Tent was the one we thought.

I should have believed Preston.

I was convinced he was wrong...until we got it put up. That thing is 14 feet by 14 feet, and so tall that my 6'3" husband can't even reach the top when he stands reaching as high as he can. Here's the Tent on the Cabela's site. If you can't tell by the pictures how big it really is, here is a picture of the three of us standing inside. Together.

Josh and Lily showing it off:

I'm almost a little embarrassed at how big it is:

Sorry I doubted you, Preston.

And if you looked at it on the Cabela's site, you'll notice the Tent is normally $239.99. I'd say we got a pretty darn good deal on that Tent, although for as long as we have the Tent, we'll have to make sure that we have a camping site sufficient enough to fit the big blue monster.

We were able to put a queen sized air mattress, a full sized air mattress, and 3 duffel bags...with plenty of room to spare. If it had rained, we would have been able to put our camp chairs in there, too, and play some games or something. Or, if we had more people, we probably could have fit at least another queen size air mattress in there too.

Now do you understand why we got the comments on the size of our tent?


*Josh's graduation was way cooler than mine. It was a dinner graduation, where we got a free steak dinner. You could actually choose from steak, fish, or vegetarian. Of course I chose steak, not knowing that the name tag I would wear the entire time would have a picture of a steak showing everyone there that I'm a red meat eating kind of girl. But even cooler than the free delicious dinner, was a free hotel room. It was actually really nice, so we made a little mini vacay out of it :). And even more cool than that was Josh was chosen as Student of the Year for plumbing. He got a special framed certificate, extra pins on his name tag, and a gift card to....I can't remember, but some place where he could buy more tools. Do you know what I got at mine? A flash drive and a flash light. And we used those lights during the "Passing of the Light of Knowledge" ceremony during our graduation. We turned them on and waved them above our heads. Awesome right? The best part of my graduation? The BBQ we had on the roof of my friend, Tonya's apartment in Seattle. It's literally about a mile from Safeco field, and it has the most amazing view of the field and lots of Seattle.