LeonanieMontague764

My family really wanted to go camping last summer and decided we would go to Cape Henlopen so we might 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 perfect when they are tired of the boardwalk. Since it was off-season, we were able to get a camping site right away. We packed our camping gear, some hiking and fishing things and we were on our way. When we finally got there, we were shocked when we opened our camping tent to see huge holes that were in it. All of us questioned how this might 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 couldn’t find a shop that sold tents in Delaware that was within a 20-mile radius. It was then that we knew we needed to get innovative. Luckily, we had brought several poly tarps for fishing and camping. With a great deal of resourcefulness and persistence we began gathering branches, rocks and everything we could salvage from our old 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 shop had poly tarps for sale. We had plenty of materials to make a tent and then some. While we knew it wasn't going to be the most appealing tent in the world, my family was happy that we were still camping. We started by laying down 2 blue poly tarps on the ground to make sure we did not get any dirt or sand in our sleeping bags. Then we connected 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 stable and we could easily use it for a week after we used the rods and pegs from our old camping tent and some strong branches from around the camping spot. Then the storm came. I have never ever 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 protect every nook and cranny in the tent 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 retreated to their vehicles after their tents had flooded that night. Our poly tarp camping tent, branches, duct tape and all, had stood victorious amongst the camp. site preview