Starling Travel

March 4, 2013

One Minute Vacations: A SpringBar Tent, A Canoe and You

Filed under: Boating,Camping,One Minute Vacations,Pennsylvania,Places To Visit,Tents — Laura Moncur @ 10:00 am

There is so much awesome going on in this photo from URTrekking, that you really have to click through to the full-sized image to fully enjoy it.

SpringBar Tent from URTrekking at Starling Travel

From the canoe to the SpringBar tent, this photo is like stepping into a camping trip. It was taken in Marion, Pennsylvania, probably at Bald Eagle State Park. I can just imagine them canoeing on Foster Joseph Sayers Lake.

The next time you are feeling trapped at work, take a moment and really let yourself step into this photograph. Take a deep breath and smell the damp air blowing off the lake. Relax in the chairs or take a nap in the tent. After just a few minutes imagining yourself into this photo, you’ll feel refreshed and ready to tackle the day anew!

February 2, 2012

How To Set Up a Springbar Traveler 5 Tent

Filed under: Camping — Laura Moncur @ 10:00 am

While we were staying in Arizona last month, Mike and I filmed the setup of our Traveler 5 tent from Springbar. I put it all up by myself in about thirty minutes. This video gives you a bunch of tips on how to put up the tent.

Stanley 51-505 Fatmax 16-Oz Curve Claw Graphite Hammer at Amazon.comI talked about the Stanley Fatmax Hammer in this video. It has been a great hammer for pounding in the stakes because the head is bigger.

Kirkham’s are pretty good and have videos that show how to put up the tent, but they are so perfect and skip a lot of the work of putting it up, so I wanted to include the whole story so you could get a good idea of how long it takes to put up.

On another note, it was only the second time I had put the tent up all by myself, so it was a little more difficult than I thought it would be. I was actually quite proud of myself that I got it up in about a half hour. We’ve been really happy with this tent and I’m so glad we bought it!

December 23, 2011

Adding Storage To Your Springbar Tent

Filed under: Camping — Laura Moncur @ 10:00 am

Our Springbar tent is better than our old Hobitat in every way except one: storage. The Hobitat had tons of pockets all over the inside of the tent, so it was a change for us to camp in the Springbar. The tent came with one storage closet, which is a zip-in panel with a bunch of little pockets, and one hamper, which is like a laundry bag.

One is supposed to zip in on one side of the tent and the other on the other side. After having so many pockets in our Hobitat, however, I just couldn’t go to having so few places to put stuff. To solve that problem, I bought one additional closet and one additional hamper. Hanging them, however, was the problem. There are only two inside zippers in the tent, so I had to find a way to hang the additional items.

Here’s how I solved the problem:

New Zipper Springbar Tent

I sewed a zipper onto the bottom of each storage closet so that the hamper could attach to the bottom of it. Here is it with the hamper partially zipped.

Zipped Hamper Springbar Tent

Now, both Mike and I each have a closet and hamper of our own. That is barely enough pockets for the each of us. Here is how it looks all together.

Storage Closet and Hamper Springbar Tent

That additional loop on the bottom of the closet is also something I added. It’s for our toiletries bag. There is a loop on the closet, but when we hung the toiletries bag from it, it covered our pockets. This way, we can hang the bag, but it will hide behind the clothes hamper.

We also had a problem with no loops for our lanterns to hang from, so we added string to the top with a few loops in it. This is such a simple thing to do, but it took us a while before we realized how to add those loops. Springbar had added a spot to tie the string, but we didn’t make the connection until Dan mentioned it to us.

Lantern Loops Springbar Tent

Having that string taut across the ceiling of the tent is good for us because we can hang our wet towels over it to dry. I wouldn’t trust the loops to hold a heavy thing, like those fans that are supposed to cool off your tent, but they are perfectly fine for a small flashlight or our LED lanterns.

When you order your Springbar tent, don’t be disappointed in the amount of storage you have. Order an extra closet and hamper and add zippers to the bottom of each closet. You’ll have plenty of pockets to hold all your stuff.

December 22, 2011

Why I Love My Springbar Tent

Filed under: Camping — Laura Moncur @ 10:00 am

I Love My SpringbarI absolutely love this story about Johnny’s first experience with a Springbar Tent:

We had just set up camp when a new camper arrived at an adjacent site. She was a petite woman, and she was alone. The tent she had dragged out of her van was obviously one of those canvas behemoths, and my wife and I nudged each other knowingly.

Sixty or eighty pounds of canvas. This woman (and for that matter, any unassisted man) was going to have difficulty erecting this monster. I stood proud and tall in my masculinity, and offered to assist our new neighbor. My wife (equally prideful, if a bit less tall and not-at-all masculine) offered to assist.

Our neighbor stopped — briefly — to say “Hi neighbors, no thanks.”

He’s right, my tent weighs ALOT and it’s difficult to carry, but I don’t need to carry it far when I’m car camping. I can get it out of the car and to the site, but, honestly, I struggle with it. The tent really shines when it’s time to put it up, however.

Before I had time to finish a fresh Pete’s Wicked, our neighbor was finished.

Our neighbor had stretched out the bottom of the tent, and driven a dozen or so tent stakes into the ground around the tent perimeter (ten minutes, or half of my beer).

I was a little puzzled by the apparent “misunderstanding” of what I thought should be the order of events, and remained confident we would have to assist.

She then assembled four springy-thingies-like-auto-antennas onto a thicker tubular bar while threading the springy-thingies into loops on what will become the roof of the tent. A serious-sounding “snap” turns the lumpy canvas into a trampoline-taut roof, still lying on the ground (five minutes, or several more good pulls on my beer).

Now mystified, I waited to see more.

Our new camping neighbor assembled tubular pieces into four tent poles. One of them was used to partially erect the tent — raising half of the roof. A second pole raised the rest of the tent with impressive, near-straight walls. The remaining two poles were used, along with the first guy-lines I had seen, to raise the fly over the entrance. (Another five minutes, bringing me up to the last swallow of my beer).

He’s right, I can erect my Springbar tent ALONE in the time it used to take to just get those stupid aluminum poles extended and threaded through the tiny nylon sleeves of my Hobitat. The most time I spend on tent erection is pounding in the ground stakes.

And that’s why I love my Springbar tent.

December 21, 2011

Winter Camping: Get A Springbar Tent

Filed under: Camping — Laura Moncur @ 5:51 pm

Hobitat 6Mike and I camped with our Hobitat 6 tent from REI for five years. We paid over three hundred bucks for the tent and I can safely say that I HATED every minute in it. There were only two nights when I wasn’t miserably cold in that tent, even though we only camped in the summer. The mountains of Utah are just too cold at night for that flimsy thing. To REI’s credit, they seem to have redesigned the Hobitat 6 since we bought it, but I can’t help but feel ripped off.

My Springbar Tent is toasty warm with an electric heaterThis year, we bought a Springbar Traveler 5, which has the same height and floorspace as the Hobitat 6, but it’s FAR warmer. I can open the windows for ventilation on hot days, but in Utah, we have to worry about extreme cold weather more often than too much heat.

Last Thursday, I set up the Springbar in our backyard. That day, it was 26 degrees Fahrenheit. After putting up the tent (it was a one-person job, as opposed to the difficult MESS it was to put up the Hobitat), I put an electric heater in the tent. Within five minutes, the tent was a toasty 74 degrees. I realized that I could camp all winter as long as we have electric hookups at the campsite. All that pining for a trailer so I could camp throughout the winter was a waste of time. I have a tent that allows me to do just that.

As I said, putting up the tent was a piece of cake. The biggest difference is that I have to stake out the tent BEFORE I try to put it up. With the Hobitat, we were supposed to raise the tent first and then stake it down. That’s not possible with the Springbar. In fact, if you can’t stake down the tent properly, you won’t be able to raise it at all. If you’re used to just throwing up your tent and hoping the sleeping bags inside keep it from blowing away, that’s just not an option with the Springbar. Here is a video of how to do it:

I don’t know if you can tell, but that lady is really tall, so she had a bit of an advantage. When it comes time to put up the second half of the tent, it’s a little difficult for me because I’m only 5’2″. I am still able to do it on my own, but it’s a lot more clumsy than shown in that video.

In fact, I wasn’t able to zip on the awning because I’m so short. Mike had to do it the first time we put up the tent and we’ve kept the awning on the tent ever since (rolling it up with the tent instead of removing it). If you watch this video, even that super tall girl has to stretch to reach the zipper. That was the ONLY thing that I couldn’t do myself when putting up this tent.

One thing we loved about the Hobitat was that its bag was big enough to hold it, even after we had used it. I was worried that the Springbar would never fit back into its bag, but if we fold it like this video, it fits just fine, even with the added bulk of the awning still attached.

I haven’t encountered any extreme winds or rain in my Springbar yet, but it’s comforting to know that the tent will stay standing. Here is a video of one of their tents in tornado force winds of 95 MPH.

If you have packed away your camping gear for the winter, think about investing in a canvas tent. You might be able to camp all year with one. Here are some links about the products I talked about:

  • Hobitat 6 at REI: I wouldn’t recommend this tent, even though it has been redesigned. It’s just too thin for the Utah mountains.
  • Springbar Tent Models at Kirkhams: I was able to just walk into their store and buy the tent, but they sell their tents online as well.
  • Kodiak Canvas Flex-Bow 6-Person Canvas Ten at Amazon: If you prefer the lenient return policies of Amazon, you can try out this tent from them. Kodiak Canvas is also a Utah company, but I haven’t tried one of their tents.
  • Lasko Oscillating Ceramic Electric Heater at Amazon: The heater I used was made by Duraflame, but it looks almost exactly like this one and it cost the same.

December 15, 2014

A Better Homemade Awning

Filed under: Camping,Motorhomes and Campers,Teardrops & Tiny Trailers — Laura Moncur @ 8:00 am

I have finally done it. I have made a good awning, that is lightweight, adorable and sturdy in the wind!

A Better Homemade Awning from Starling Travel

Here it is from another angle:

Homemade Awning on a Jayco Tent Trailer from Starling Travel

If you remember, I had some trouble with my awning before. You can read about it here:

I fixed the problem of it falling down in the wind and made it even more portable. Read more to see how: (Continue Reading…)

February 26, 2014

Tent Camping and Kids Up A Tree

Filed under: Camping,Places To Visit — Laura Moncur @ 9:00 am

I adore this photo I found on Flickr today.

Tent Camping and the Kids Up A Tree from Starling Fitness

Keep River National Park is in the Northern Territory of Australia. Here is a map:

Yesterday, I said that RVing gave us a freedom to travel that we didn’t have before, but I was fibbing a bit. We had that freedom of inexpensive travel when we tent camped like the people in this photo. The freedom that the camper gave us was the ability to travel almost all year long. With the tent trailer, we can travel even with temperatures as low as 28 degrees. We could have never done that in a tent because I froze every night the temperatures dipped below 45 degrees and that was in our nice Springbar tent.

I love this picture because the tent has a solar panel and the kids are just climbing the trees like monkeys. I don’t want to go back to tent camping, but I do love seeing a well-pitched tent.

March 30, 2013

My Homemade Awning on a Jayco Tent Trailer

Update 12-14-14

I finally fixed this awning and made it much more sturdy and easy to put up. You can see it here:

Homemade Awning on a Jayco Tent Trailer from Starling Travel


A couple of weeks ago, we went camping down at Sand Hollow State Park in Southern Utah. It was the first time I got to test my homemade awning. It looked GREAT!

Homemade Awning on a Tent Trailer from Starling Travel

Unfortunately, it didn’t hold up well in the wind. Just a short burst of wind sent it toppling down. There are two points of weakness in my design: the connections at the top and the connections at the trailer. On the trailer, the poles (stolen from my Springbar tent) just slide onto this PVC connector.

PVC connector for homemade awning from Starling Travel

They worked great in the garage, but there was no wind there. Even the smallest of wind gusts can pop the pole off this connector, so I need to drill a hole in both the pole and the PVC pipe, and add a pin to keep the poles in place.

At the top of the awning, it is held on with a pin, but the pin just kept popping out of place, so I need a different connection there as well. I did a pretty good job sewing the awning, so I’m proud of that. All I need to work on is the hardware and this puppy with look good AND stay in place.

January 27, 2013

Choosing The Right RV For You: Tent Trailers

Filed under: Camping,Motorhomes and Campers,Teardrops & Tiny Trailers — Laura Moncur @ 10:00 am

Palomino Pony 1988 08-03-12 from Starling TravelIf a teardrop is too small for you, then you should look at a tent trailer next.

Cost

I found our first tent trailer for only $500. It only lasted us three months, but we camped for a total of two weeks in the camper, so it easily cost less than renting a similar trailer would have cost. Our current camper cost us $1000 and was a definite improvement. Buying a tent trailer new reaches the $10,000 range, but even that is less expensive than new travel trailers. Tent trailers can be towed by almost any car, so you don’t need to buy a new tow vehicle.

Storage

Deployed Jayco Tent Trailer in the GarageTent trailers are small enough to roll into a garage in one parking space. I wrote about this before here:

If you don’t have an extra spot in your garage or on your property, then you have to store it in a facility. The cost for storage at those places ranges from $65 – $100 a month.

Mileage

We have chosen tent trailers that are VERY light, with no amenities like onboard water or bathrooms, so we have been able to tow them with the Prius. It only lowered our gas mileage by five miles per gallon. On our latest journey to Quartzsite and back, we averaged 29 mpg with the Prius.

Capacity

Tent trailers beat the teardrop, hands down. You can EASILY sleep six people in our tiny eight foot box tent camper. Some of the larger ones even sleep 7-8 people. If you have a large family, it may be that a tent trailer is your only option.

Comfort

I thought a tent camper would be as cold as a tent, which was the reason we bought the teardrop trailer, but it is warmer. I think part of the reason is the solid roof. It is definitely warmer in the living spaces than on the bunk ends. Additionally, the tent material is WAY thicker than the canvas of my Springbar tent. It appears to be covered with some sort of vinyl coating on the outside and that makes considerable improvements in the cold. There is also plenty of headroom to stand up and couches to sit on when it rains outside.

While a tent trailer is warmer than a tent, it IS colder than being in a teardrop, travel trailer or fifth wheel, especially if you don’t have a heater. Many tent trailers do have propane heaters (and even A/C units), but ours doesn’t. Instead, we use electric heaters and they work beautifully. It was 27 degrees in Las Vegas a couple of weeks ago when we were there and our little heater was able to get it to a toasty 67 degrees in our tent trailer.

Effort

My biggest problem with the tent trailer is the effort to set up and break camp. It’s not as labor intensive or time consuming as a real tent, but it DOES take some time to level out and get the roof up. We can get set up or break camp in about 20-25 minutes, which is about half the time it took us to put up our Springbar and camp kitchen, but WAY more time than it took us to get the teardrop ready.

If you are unfamiliar with the tent trailer setup, here is video describing it:

Restrooms

Some tent trailers even have bathroom facilities, but they are rare and the privacy tends to consist of a thin curtain. Our tiny tent trailer doesn’t have a bathroom, so we have to camp at campgrounds that have some or use our porta-potty tent. I talked about those options on these two posts:

Safety

Honestly, towing a tent trailer has been easier and safer for us than towing the teardrop. It is UNAFFECTED by strong winds and we can see over it out the rear window. It’s so easy to tow that I can’t feel it on the back of our car. Aside from a tent stuffed into the trunk of your car, the tent trailer is the safest option on this list.

Campsite Availability

A tent trailer is small and can fit in any campsite there is available, but paradoxically, we have had instances of trailer bigotry at some campgrounds. I admit that our first tent trailer, the Palomino, should have been called The Duct Tape Palace because it took so much duct tape to keep the tent fabric together, but we’ve also experienced a touch of elitism with our Jayco Eagle, even though it’s in excellent shape.

We’ve had a campground host say that she couldn’t put us in a certain spot because “everyone would see it there.” We’ve NEVER had trouble getting SOME spot with water and electricity, but somehow, certain campgrounds don’t want people to see that they have tent trailers for some reason and I never expected that sort of bigotry.

Weirdness

Tent Camping in Buckskin Mtn State Park AZThere is NOTHING weird about a tent trailer. Even when we drove up in the Duct Tape Palace, no one gave us even a second glance. If you want people to ooh and ah over you and your RV, a tent trailer is NOT the option for you. If you want to camp in obscurity, however, people won’t even notice you and your tent camper.

You may, however, feel like a second class citizen in a tent trailer. That has only happened to me once, at a luxury RV resort. They saw our tiny tent trailer and were going to move us to the back of the campground, but we had made reservations to stay next to my sister, who had arrived a day earlier in her teardrop. They had put her teardrop in a premium site because it looks so cute and cool, but were reluctant to put us next to her in our tent trailer. In the end, we got the premium site, but they really made us feel like we weren’t quite good enough for their fancy RV resort.

You can see other stories of tent trailers feeling like second class citizens here:

Then again, if we had tried to stay at that resort in a real tent, they wouldn’t have let us stay at all. The bigotry we experienced being in a real tent was even worse, so having a tent trailer is definitely a step up for us.

The Walmart Factor

Lots of Tent TrailersI’ve never tried to dry camp in a Walmart parking lot before, but I’ve heard through the grapevine that the managers generally say no to tent trailers. Considering that you can hear everything around you in a tent trailer, a parking lot might not be the ideal location to get some sleep.

The forum users at Popup Portal have varied ideas about popups at a Walmart. Some of them have done it, others say it’s not safe and still others say you might as well find a campground. You can read their opinions here:

Our tent trailer doesn’t have a bathroom, a battery or a propane heater, so a stay at Walmart wouldn’t really be pleasant to us, but each person decides on their own comfort level in situations like these. It really seems to be up to each individual Walmart manager.

Conclusion

We have been happy with our tent trailer, so that’s where we stopped choosing, but there is a whole other world of RVs out there.

Here are links to the other entries in this series:

January 25, 2013

Choosing The Right RV For You: Your Car

Filed under: Camping,Motorhomes and Campers,Teardrops & Tiny Trailers — Laura Moncur @ 10:00 am

Habitents PriusWhether you pack a tent in your car or you actually SLEEP in your vehicle, car camping is the MOST affordable.

Cost

Car camping is cheap in gas mileage, storage and cost of gear. The most expensive tent I ever bought was $400, which is still $100 cheaper than any trailer I’ve bought.

Storage

Rather than filling up your garage, sitting outside in the rain, or costing you a monthly fee, a tent and other camping gear can be stored in a spare closet. You shouldn’t have to pay for separate storage for a tent unless you live in the smallest of apartments.

Mileage

Extra tents and gear have absolutely NO impact on your gas mileage.

Capacity

Habitents PriusIf you want to sleep IN your car, then you’re limited to two or three very cozy people. If you’re willing to sleep in tents, then you can accommodate any size of family. Your limitation is based on how many people you can fit into your vehicle.

Comfort

Camping in a tent can be COLD! Even if you have a four season tent and four season sleeping bags, you are limited to temperatures no lower than 40 degrees. Any lower and you will be truly roughing it. Additionally, it can be HOT! During the day, you will swelter if the temperature is any higher than 95 degrees. Battery powered fans and other DIY kludges can extend your camping temperatures down to 35 degrees and up to 105 degrees. For the most part, your camping time will be restricted to the best weather days if you want true comfort.

Car Tent on a Ford RunaboutIf you are sleeping IN your car, then you can extend your camping season, but then you have no place to change clothes. Additionally, it can be surprisingly uncomfortable to sleep in your car, even with an air mattress. That car roof gets mighty close to your face when you have an air mattress thick enough to make sleeping comfortable.

Effort

Tent Camping is cheaper. I get 40 MPG fully loaded.Putting up a tent, the cots, the air mattresses, unrolling the sleeping bags and setting up the camp kitchen is a time-consuming effort. It only took us about 40-50 minutes to set up or break camp each time, but on a long road trip, that adds up to an hour and a half of hard labor each day.

Restrooms

There are no bathrooms in your car or a tent (of course), so you have to camp at a facility that has some or create your own porta-potty tent yourself. I’ve talked about those options on these two posts:

Safety

Driving a car full of camping equipment only affects the drivability of a car if you fill up the back until you can’t see out the rear window.

Campsite Availability

You can camp at any state or national state park, but many RV campgrounds won’t let you stay in their sites with electricity. When it was cold and we wanted to have an electric heater running in our tent, it was pretty near impossible to get a campground to let us stay at a site with electricity. We were willing to pay more, but they just wouldn’t let us put a tent up on their premium sites. Additionally, we couldn’t stay at any campground that was all cement or gravel because we couldn’t stake down our tent. We needed a 10’X10′ swatch of land to get our tent up (that wasn’t the case for our Hobitat, only our Springbar tent).

Extreme Car CampingIf you are camping IN your car, that is looked upon with wary by some camp hosts. I’ve actually seen a woman at a national park tell a man he had to leave his campsite after his first evening because he was “just sleeping” in his car.

Weirdness

The only time I ever had a stranger talk to me about my tent was on an extremely cold morning after and even colder night. He said, “You musta froze last night.” We were pretty much ignored when we went tent camping.

The Walmart Factor

If you asked permission to put up a tent on the Walmart parking lot, I’m pretty sure the manager would laugh you right out of the store. If, however, you asked if it was alright if you slept in your car, you might be allowed or might also be looked at like you’re a homeless wastrel. Of course, there is always the option of stealth camping if you’re sleeping in your car.

Conclusion

In the end, the cold did us in. It’s particularly frigid in the Utah mountains, even in the summer, so we ended up leaving the car camping behind.

Here are links to the other entries in this series:

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