AllisonSouders461

My family really wanted to go camping last summer and decided we would go to Cape Henlopen so we could camp, go to 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. Because 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 arrived, we were shocked when we opened our camping tent to see huge holes that were in it. All of us asked ourselves how this can happen till we realized we allowed our neighbors to borrow our camping tent and they must have gotten caught in a storm one night. We, however, did not wish to turn around and head home but we could not find a shop that sold outdoors tents in Delaware that was within a 20-mile radius. It was then that we knew we needed to get creative. Luckily, we had brought a number of poly tarps for fishing and camping. With a lot of resourcefulness and persistence we began collecting branches, rocks and everything we could possibly salvage from our old tent. It was then we took stock of each and every poly tarp we brought to the beach. My husband had fortunately 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 attractive camping tent in the world, my household was happy that we were still camping. We began 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 affixed 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 everything can be as good as we had wanted). Finally we covered the entire thing with waterproof canvas tarps to keep the rain out. It wasn't pretty but it was dependable and we can easily use it for a week after we used the rods and pegs from our old outdoor tent and some sturdy branches from around the camping spot. Then the storm came. I have never ever seen my husband fix anything as rapidly 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 tent to see to it not even a drop of water could come into the outdoor tent. The next day we looked around us and saw that everybody else in the park had actually retreated to their cars after their outdoors tents had actually flooded that night. Our poly tarp tent, branches, duct tape and all, had stood victorious amongst the camp. check this out