HeadleyEbner704

My family really wanted to go camping last summer and decided we would go to Cape Henlopen so we could camp, visit the beach and fish all at the same place. Our children also really enjoy the hiking trails located throughout the park, which is ideal when they are tired of the boardwalk. Since it was off-season, we had the ability to get a camping site right away. We packed our camping gear, some hiking and fishing stuff and we were on our way. When we finally got there, we were amazed when we opened our camping tent to see massive holes that were in it. All of us asked ourselves how this could possibly happen till we realized we allowed our next-door neighbors to borrow our tent and they must have gotten caught in a storm one night. We, however, did not want to turn around and head home but we could not find a store that sold outdoors tents in Delaware that was within a 20-mile radius. It was then that we knew we needed to get imaginative.

Thankfully, we had brought  a number of poly tarps for fishing and camping. With a  great deal of  resourcefulness and patience we began gathering branches, rocks and everything we  might salvage from our old  camping tent. It was then we took inventory of each and every poly tarp we brought to the beach. My husband had  thankfully brought every tarp he bought when our hardware store had poly tarps for sale. We had plenty of materials to make a  camping tent and then some. While we knew it wasn't going to be the most  appealing  camping tent in the world, my  household was happy that we were still camping.

We started by setting two blue poly tarps on the ground to make sure we did not get any dirt or sand in our sleeping bags. Then we attached them to a brown poly tarp, and a canvas tarp using rubber tarp straps. We then protected the blue poly tarps to the ground with rocks and pegs that we still had from our old camping tent (not every little thing can be as nice as we had wanted). Finally we covered the whole thing with waterproof canvas tarps to keep the rain out. It wasn't pretty but it was dependable and we could easily use it for a week after we used the rods and pegs from our old tent and some tough branches from around the camping spot. Then the storm came. I have never seen my husband fix anything as quickly as he did when he threw duct tape on every blue poly tarp, hay tarp and rubber tarp strap after he heard thunder in the distance. Somehow he managed to secure every nook and cranny in the outdoor tents to make certain not even a drop of water could come into the tent. The next day we looked around us and saw that everybody else in the park had actually retreated to their vehicles after their camping tents had flooded that night. Our poly tarp tent, branches, duct tape and all, had stood victorious among the camp. canvas tarp