First time camping in a looong time. Took the wife and two girls (4.5 and 7). I saved around $15 and got a used/seconds and it arrived in brand new condition - never out of the box. Took me ~20 minutes to set up the first time. If you know the grey rod is for the patio and the rod with rubber ends is for the rain fly, it will go much faster. The other two rods are the same and for the main cabin of the tent.
We did two nights in the tent. Night one, I slept on the porch with the dog and it was great. Mid October, cool night with zero dew. night two we took the dog home and all slept in the main cabin because it rained like heck for 1.5 hours in the middle of the night. I expected the porch to get a soaking which it did but my shoes, which I placed up close to the tent, stayed dry. The interior of the cabin took on maybe two tablespoons of water which was amazing given how hard it rained. We had a double air mattress, a twin air mattress, and me on thin Termarest. I was up against the side and never got wet.
I set it up so the front/porch was facing a slight uphill. In the future, if I know its going to rain, I would set it up with the front facing down any slope. There is a ~2 inch mesh rim the connects the porch floor to the porch screen. I imagine this is to let the water easily drain from the porch floor. There are holes at each of the corners where the porch floor connects to the main cabin but they only work well if you tent is the right slope going back and to one of those sides...much easier to accomplish a porch drain by facing the tent down the slope.
Let it rain, let it rain, let it rain....
First time camping in a looong time. Took the wife and two girls (4.5 and 7). I saved around $15 and got a used/seconds and it arrived in brand new condition - never out of the box. Took me ~20 minutes to set up the first time. If you know the grey rod is for the patio and the rod with rubber ends is for the rain fly, it will go much faster. The other two rods are the same and for the main cabin of the tent. We did two nights in the tent. Night one, I slept on the porch with the dog and it was great. Mid October, cool night with zero dew. night two we took the dog home and all slept in the main cabin because it rained like heck for 1.5 hours in the middle of the night. I expected the porch to get a soaking which it did but my shoes, which I placed up close to the tent, stayed dry. The interior of the cabin took on maybe two tablespoons of water which was amazing given how hard it rained. We had a double air mattress, a twin air mattress, and me on thin Termarest. I was up against the side and never got wet. I set it up so the front/porch was facing a slight uphill. In the future, if I know its going to rain, I would set it up with the front facing down any slope. There is a ~2 inch mesh rim the connects the porch floor to the porch screen. I imagine this is to let the water easily drain from the porch floor. There are holes at each of the corners where the porch floor connects to the main cabin but they only work well if you tent is the right slope going back and to one of those sides...much easier to accomplish a porch drain by facing the tent down the slope.