Tonight I’ll be sleeping on the ground. Well, not directly on the dirt, there will be a few layers of canvas and plastic between me and the ground, but for all intents and purposes…

Tonight is the first of several Cub Scout camping trips over the next couple months. So I will be getting pretty intimate with the inside of my Coleman 4 person quick-setup tent.

Actually, I’m not coplaining. Really, I’m not. I only camped a handful of times as a kid, so getting out there with the kids and their friends usually ends up being pretty fun. And I’m not one of those family condo tent people. I don’t get it. I’d rather have a handful of small tents than one of those massive 12 people things.

In part, I find the promise of the mega-tents a little… lacking. They advertise the separate rooms, ceiling hooks for lanterns, and some even have power supplies and such. I’m surprised they don’t have cordless roman shades and intergrated flat screens with satellite service.

Additionally, I can set up my little tent in about 5 minutes. I could easily set four of them up in a half hour. No problem. In fact, if the kids actually help we can probably shave that down. But when I watch the family tents going up, it seems to take forever and I hear a lot of muffled cursing. So I’m keeping it simple.