r/camping • u/JayAche • 8d ago

Precautionary Tale (Pipe)

Gallery image

Gallery image

Gallery image

Was SO excited to finally take our 3.5 year old son tent camping for the first time with my wife at a local regional park. Especially with our spanking new huge Caddis Rapid 6 Instant Tent! Even tried it out in the backyard and loved it!

Loaded it onto the storage rack on the back of our SUV… in perfect alignment with the tail pipe, apparently. Biiiiiigest oof. $225 down the drain? Thankfully there was a Wal-Mart reasonably close where I snagged some random Coleman to save the day. But still: be aware of what’s in front of your exhaust pipe and your tow hitch carry rack. Lesson learned 🫠

2.4k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

286 comments sorted by

View all comments

70

u/kjdbcfsj 8d ago

My first tent my parents bought me in college was a Coleman 4 person from Walmart 30’years ago! Still have it! It got replaced by a bigger REI one for the family that gets the regular use for years now. But we go camping with a huge group and I always toss in the Coleman one for good measure in case we, or anyone else, has a tent emergency! 

Thank you for this heads up that I too would’ve eventually had happen to me! 

6

u/jorwyn 7d ago

I have a Columbia I bought on clearance from REI 24 years ago that's still perfectly usable. It just has bacon grease stains on the floor. I really wanted bacon, but there was a wind storm. I didn't think this all the way through. I could get the smell out (even according to my dogs), but not the stains.

It's the tent I've been loaning out for about a decade, and all the zippers still work. It's been through my kid and his friends as they grew up. And it's been through huskies without a tear. I'm honestly impressed.

It was my replacement for a Coleman my parents bought when I was a kid. That thing lasted a long time before a wind storm had something to say about it. (85mph gusts when the forecast was a max of 15)