Swiss Gear?? 14x14' Camp Cottage Tent

A Great Family Tent

9/1/2009

I bought this tent at the last minute, based more than anything else on price and center height. My, what an amazing deal.
Spacious doesn't begin to describe it. I and my two daughters, ages 10 and 12, took it camping without even taking it out of the box, because it arrived the day before a big, long planned camping trip with other branches of the family. (The tent I thought I already had turned up missing from where it had been stored.)
The tent is, of course, pretty heavy, but not impossibly so. I'm a non-hardbody 45 year old woman, and I loaded it onto our roof racks and carried it up and down the stairs of out apartment complex without heavy straining. (I know, backpackers would probably cringe at that definition of "not heavy", but we are drive-up campers, and I doubt I'll ever carry this thing more than a few hundred feet.) I had a double air mattress for myself, and the two girls shared a queen. Miles of space left over.
The only complication came when I found that the tent apparently included NO directions for set-up. Even so, after laying it out and examining the pieces, we were able to assemble it. Probably took us about 30-40 minutes, and I know the next time it will be more like 15. We did eventually find the assembly instructions. They are sewn into the INTERIOR of the tent. No, not much help to put them in a place you will only see after the tent is more than halfway set up, but as I said, it was not hard to figure out even without them. The tent was well-ventilated, remained standing solid after 8 days, and gave us enough room to never have to climb over our stuff. It came down and fit easily back into its case, too.
I can't speak to weather issues, as we only camp in the summer, in the NorCal area, so I've never had to deal with extremes in temperature, or heavy rain. But for mild weather, and coming in priced at less than $100 (including shipping!) for a family sized Swiss Gear tent... I can't possibly hope for more.

nice tent

8/18/2009

The tent has a lot of room. The only problem is the stakes do not hold the tent up well . The tent is so tall that you really need longer and stronger stakes.We took it to the river it had a hard time staying up. The stakes keep coming out of the ground.

Great buy

8/17/2009

This is a great tent for the money. It is octagon shaped & has a lot of room. There is only one big room. I am 6' and can stand up in the center area. I camped with this tent for 6 days. The first night there was a trenchial down pour& it rained for more than 5 hours, the worst weather I have ever been in in a tent. There was two other families that was with us and one of their tents colapsed & others in the camp ground had tents that fell or blew over. But this Swiss gear tent held good it did leak a few drops around the bottom sides of all 5 windows. This was very hard rain for 5 hours & after there was 10 small puddles of water around the sides of the inside of the tent. Over all I think this is a good tent and normaly will not leak but next time I will spray some kind of rain guard around all of the seams of the windows or scotch guard.

Nice looking and roomy tent.

8/1/2009

I am a woman and I was able to set this tent up by myself. It's nice, roomy and bright. The color is more rust than an orange shade as the photo portrays. It is very nice looking and assebly is easy.