Our Vango Airbeam Kela III tent arrived last week and today was the day for the practice run to set it up. The Airbeam technology is slick as you don’t have any poles involved.
It is also a driveaway awning which means when we want to take our van away from camp we just detach a portion of the tent and away we go – while the tent stands on its own. In the photo above this is actually the backside, which will attach to the side of our van.
Of course we thought we didn’t need to read the directions and just go ahead and put the tent up – no problem. Wrong. I can never understand reading directions anyways. But what we should have done FIRST was to watch a how-to video on pitching it.
But alas, this is why they call it a practice run, right? And we could have saved ourselves a lot of work had we watched the video first. But now we know that next time, when at camp, it will go much smoother.
And the good news is we made it through without any big argument…and a cicada that decided to crawl up my leg. eeeks! I guess it thought I was a tree and was hanging out on my “limb.” haha! 🙂 And a baby frog hopped into the tent also as we were setting up.
All this in our front lawn! Perhaps it is getting us ready for when we are out in the “big woods.”
The excitement is building and last night we decided we will venture out on a short jaunt the week following Labor Day. The Vamper won’t be done with a kitchen, but a stove/oven is on order which we will use in the tent. And by venturing out we can then get a feel as to how we will move about in our van and how to plan for the kitchen area inside.
Today, John is building his bed, which will run the length of the van, while my bed, which is already built, runs horizontally over the wheel base. He is amazingly creative with space too, which makes me a happy camper. John showed me a space where there will be two extra drawers that weren’t in the plan as of last week. Woo hoo!
So the tent is rolled back up and actually made it back into into the carry bag without too much trouble, sweat or tears…and I’m happy to say I did it all by myself.
Past posts for Have Van Will Travel Journal
The Adventure Has Begun. New Home on Wheels. Who’d of Thunk?
Inspector Approves of Phase One Conversion
Slow and Steady Wins the Race (video)
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