But where are the puptents?
As our family ages (note I did not say matures, but that’s for another context), summer vacation plans are much harder to “nail down”, or “peg down” in tenting terms. We haven’t always camped, but the past decade has involved a series of tents. Always two as a base calculation, with other scenarios having depended on the time and place. And, tents do not age well (nor do they mature well). Although we try to choose the optimum sun-window for our dates, the biggest enemy of a tent, next to puppy dogs, is sunshine. Remember the hole in the ozone layer? It’s real.
So here we are, weeks away from vacation and still unsure if we need to buy a new tent. We probably do, we probably will, but I am unsure. We’ve gone shopping, and I now know that technology rules. Ribs made of DAC aluminum, or was it DAF (the girl wasn’t sure either). Ripstop nylon. You mean a puppy dog won’t rip it? I didn’t think so. here’s even a line of puppy tents available, if your mutt is tiny. But where are the puptents of yesteryear? The ones that lasted for years and cost no more than a good meal in a restaurant. The new high-tech tents are worth more than a monthly mortgage payment, and don’t even come with a yard!
We’ll probably do as we’ve done before, buying the sale-priced model at Latulippe, but there has to be a better way.
