New Tent

We went to REI last night and bought a new tent. We used to always borrow tents from our family, back when we lived in the midwest, but we knew once we moved out here that we were going to have to buy one eventually. It was kinda tough deciding what kind to get though. Since everyone and their mom backpacks out here, we thought maybe we should get a tent we can take backpacking (i.e. spend extra money for something lightweight), just in case.

It turns out, REI was having their fourth of July tent sale last night and the best deal there happened to be a backpacking tent. It's an 8-lb, four-person tent (REI brand) and looked pretty tough and mean to us. The only thing was, the light-weight backpacking tents don't have a lotta extra room or headspace, but after mulling it over for a while (and popping in and out of the display tents, which was fun, and going around to look at the mini barbie-sized display tents, which was super fun), we decided in the end that we could deal with limited headspace. Who spends that much time in their tent anyway?

To go with the tent, REI sells "footprints" which are fitted tarps to go under the tent. Apparently there is a "lazy-man's method" for backpacking with a tent - just take the footprint and the rainfly and hope it doesn't rain too hard. I thought that sounded like an interesting idea.

So, we're pretty excited... our first tent! I'm going to set it up in our living room tonight.