Trying to shove your kid’s entire lunch into a brown paper bag is the last thing you want to do before rushing out the door. 8 Heads in a Duffel Bag grossed $3,602,884 in the domestic market. Finally, the stuff sack was great. Great for backyard overnights, this simple dome-style tent is for anyone who doesn’t want to spend more than $150 on a tent but also doesn’t want to buy another one next year. Families who regularly pitch their tent in rainy locales need a wind-fighting tent with a good-size vestibule for storing wet shoes and abyss towels gear, as well as a full rain fly for added weather protection. Its fly extends into a huge front vestibule that can store large items like bikes, or even accommodate a table and chairs. Adults over 6 feet tall will be able to walk upright inside this tent-which has almost-vertical walls that can easily accommodate beds, cribs, and cots-as well as in the vestibule. Busy parents will love prepping this on Sunday to pack effortless lunches for the whole family.
These bird and animal beads are so small that you can string together a whole herd! That might seem like an unimportant detail when you are first setting up your tent, but when it’s time to pack away at the end of the weekend-the rainfly soaked from an overnight shower, dirt stuck to the bottom of the body-the excellence of the stuff sack becomes clear. That way you won’t forget it and end up waiting and wondering when the kids will arrive and ultimately end up scrambling when they arrive unannounced. Three fiberglass poles crisscross the ceiling and then connect to six steel poles at each end to form the walls (the tenth pole creates the awning over the doorway). While the strongest winds during testing buffeted the sides of this tent, it bounced back quickly without damaging the fiberglass poles. I tested top picks from NEMO, Big Agnes, Coleman, MSR, Eureka, Kelty, and more in everything from thunderstorms to heavy winds to help you find the best family tent for your next camping adventure. The best 8-person tents were tested over three days in a river valley where heavy winds broke the poles of one tent (and sprung a leak in another).
The MSR Habiscape is one of those family camping tents that doesn’t look like much when you first set it up, but the longer you spend with it, the more it starts to grow on you. It starts with the headspace-plenty enough for this five-foot-five gear writer to stand up in, not just at the center, but also along the sides and at the doors. As a result, the company downscaled production costs just enough to attract a large consumer base. Plus, the 60 square feet of floor space was more than enough to sleep four people. Petit four include glazed, salted and dry. The Base Camp, by contrast, has four full-size aluminum struts woven throughout it, somewhat like a basket, plus an additional brow pole that frames the front entrance and supports the larger of the two vestibules. Like the Mineral King 3, the Tungsten has aluminum poles that are connected at the top (for lightning-quick pitching) and pre-bent, which increases the dome tent’s headroom. The Tungsten 4’s poles are bent at a more acute angle and closer to the ground, which, we discovered, can cause the tent to collapse in windy conditions if you don’t attach the poles to the fly using the Velcro tabs running under the seams.
They don’t let setbacks or mistakes derail their performance. The only downside to this tent is that the 8-person tent requires a second person to complete the setup. This activity requires either a windless day, a school gymnasium, or another large, indoor space to throw a ball in — and we don’t recommend the family room in your house. How did you spend your summers in middle school? The classic image of the French boy is a boy on his way to school wearing a beret and colarless dark-colred smock with short pants. Our other favorite features are the tent’s two wide doors, which you can open halfway from either direction or open fully (you can tuck the doors into “roof pockets” to keep them out of the way), turning the tent into a useful beach tent or sun shade. With pentagonal doors and a fly scaffolded by two brow poles-as opposed to the Mineral King 3’s single one-this tent provides excellent shielding from multidirectional wind and rain, providing you follow the setup instructions faithfully. The Wireless 6 has two large doors and a full rain fly. The North Face Wawona 6 costs $200 more than the Wireless 6, but if you can swing the price, the tent offers a superior combination of livable space, smart design, and durable, high-quality materials (aluminum and heavy-duty polyester and mesh).
