The Wawona doesn’t come with a footprint—few tents this size do—but it’s otherwise all-inclusive, and it is compact considering how much livable space you get. The price also reflects the high quality of the materials, such as the four reinforced aluminum poles, which weigh little yet result in a remarkably strong tent. Car campers who plan to brave miserable weather will appreciate the extra strength and protection of the REI Co-op Base ozark trail canopy tent Camp 4 Tent. The main bodies of our other picks are structured with two main poles with added support from smaller brow poles. The Base Camp, by contrast, has four full-size aluminum struts woven throughout it, somewhat like a basket, plus an additional brow pole that frames the front entrance and supports the larger of the two vestibules. The Base Camp also offers more privacy compared with our other picks—with or without the rain fly.
It’s the perfect choice for three-season multipurpose camping. Super spacious and received many compliments from other campers. We are a family of 6 and we fit 3 queen beds and there was space for 4. The closets stored all of our gear without having things on the floor and the space between them fit a projector screen perfectly. The rainfly provided sufficient coverage, and there were a reasonable number of windows and doors, which also helps to prevent water incursion. There were even some different style stakes provided which hold better in soft ground (like we had around our testing site), a detail I appreciated.
Keep this tent in your arsenal for when you know there will be clear skies on your camping weekend. It was very difficult to roll the tent back into its original shape to return to store. I’ve read many people have had the same problems and went to army surplus to buy a bigger durable storage bag.These are the two QUEEN Mattress I received with my bundle order. I did not open these boxes because they too needed to be returned with the tent. The Ozark 9 person cabin can fit two Queen Mattresses comfortably.
When heavy trade winds buffeted our Oahu-coast testing site, we pitched each tent in full face of the blast. We then rotated the tents looking for structural weaknesses, and we tested their guy lines and tabs to see which tents had the best and most intuitive design for withstanding wind. You can also set up the tent without the fly while retaining some privacy, since the tent body has a high polyester wall on one side. If you expect there to be limitations to how much space you’ll have to set up your tent, it’s better to opt for something smaller. None of these came close to fitting on a standard tent pad, which is increasingly a requirement at the most popular campgrounds. The Base Camp tents include a low side vent and multiple stuff pockets on the walls and ceiling, which are made of 75D polyester treated with 1500mm of polyurethane waterproofing.
But all our testers, including our tallest panelists, gravitated toward this tent.
From there you bend down each end and connect the poles that form the side walls to the floor. In practice this took more elbow grease than I was expecting, to the point that I worried the fiberglass poles would break (they did not). We’ve tested (and recommended) Eureka tents in past versions of this guide. In October 2023, Eureka’s parent company, Johnson Outdoors, announced that it was discontinuing the Eureka brand.
The North Face’s color-coded poles make this process easy to navigate. (We were stubborn and didn’t look at the instructions.) Once you identify the front and back, the process is straightforward. The fly goes up and over the tent body, covering only the upper half of the mesh dome, and then forms the glorious vestibule with the aid of a third pole. Use the extra stakes and guy-lines provided to stabilize the vestibule as much as you need. At $500, this modified dome-style tent isn’t cheap, but it represents substantial value. Many tents with similar profiles—such as the Big Agnes Dog House 6—either cost more or require you buy the tent body and attachable vestibule separately.
The inside was nice and spacious and I appreciated the blue ambience on what was otherwise a strangely dark and gloomy day for late May. I arrived at the group site Friday midday to get everything set up. During that initial phase, I considered how intuitive (or not) the tents were to assemble, durability of the component parts, and the size and shape of the footprint. It is also important to consider the way in which the tent poles attach to the tent.