What to look for when buying a tent.

So if you ever been shopping for a tent you know there are a lot of makes and models to choose from out there. If you are like me, you are looking for the most bang for your buck. So picking a size is the easy part. You can judge how much room you are going to be comfortable with by looking at the dimensions and person capacity the tent is rated for(2-person,4-man,6-person ,etc). Once you decide that,it's time to look at the tents design. Being out here in the Ozarks where the weather can change rather quickly sometimes makes the tents rainfly the most important component to look at when shopping for one.

Notice the rainfly only covers the top half of the tent?

Now notice that the rainfly covers this one from top to bottom?

As you can see from the two examples they are relatively the same tent other than the rainflys. Rainflys give tents a rating system for the different seasons of the year. A tent with a rainfly that covers it from top to bottom is considered a "4 season" tent. This basically means that it will protect you and your bed roll from any weather mother nature will throw at you all year long. I have made the mistake in my early camping years buying tents with partial rainflys. I soon found out they don't hold up in a Missouri thunderstorm. Everything got soaked!