Weekend family campout with the scouts

[docbrown]

My 3 sons are all in the Trail Life Scouts program, and we had a family campout this past weekend near Lynchburg, TN. I'm still getting my Chameleon hammock dialed in, but it's getting better with each trip. My wife now also has a brand new Antigravity gear hammock and had her first experience with hammock camping this weekend. She and I got a nice spot next to each other between some trees right next to the creek while my kids were camped out in the field with everyone else (about 50 feet away from our spot). It was a bit too cold for my two youngest kids to stay in hammocks, as I don't have underquilts for them yet. My older two spent both nights attached to homemade hammock stands. The 3-person hammock stand performed perfectly, though I'll need to figure out the best way to hang tarps on it next time we pull it out. I also have a homemade tensahedron stand that my kids have taken to calling "the taco stand." (No comment on whether the name has anything to do with mistakes made getting it set up and adjusted the first couple times... )
I also discovered that attaching a tensahedron stand to either the wood supports or the stakes used for the 3-person stand is a distinctly bad idea!

Great weekend overall. My wife rated her comfort level as a "solid C," which is a significant improvement over her experience sleeping on the ground in a tent. Her feet got really cold the second night (it dipped down to the mid 30s) but I just got a set of down socks for her next outing, which will hopefully help a lot.
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[Layne]

That is quite the hanging structure! I wonder if you might find it easier to use one big tarp instead of several individuals?

[tlfillingim]

Cool. Is that rebar for anchors/stakes?


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[docbrown]

For the large stand, I'm using the directions posted here:
http://theultimatehang.com/2013/04/0...hammock-stand/
I did fix the length of all the ropes along the ground at 9.5' and the ropes going from the top of the boards down to the stakes at just over 10' so that everything is even and the boards will all be at approximately 60deg to the ground (the 3D trigonometry took a couple tries to get right!). I am using 2' long rebar stakes rather than the recommended 3' length because Lowes only had 2' and 4' options. Also, material prices were nearly double what they were when the concept was originally posted 8 years ago! But it worked well. Because my stakes were 2' long and I had them hammered most of the way into the ground, I also got small hose clamps and attached them to the top of each stake. That makes it tougher for the O rings to slip off the ends of the stakes.

[docbrown]

One other tip if you decide to make such a structure: Flagging tape on the rebar stakes is super helpful. The stakes are all 14' apart, and when they're first hammered into the ground, especially if you're only leaving a couple inches above the ground, it's very easy for them to blend in and be tough to find until you stub your toes on them.

[docbrown]

The biggest challenge with a single tarp would be water pooling in the center. I'm not sure what the best option would be yet. If I did a single tarp, I would probably intentionally punch a hole in the center and attack a tie-down of some sort there to direct water downwards. The alternative would be a pole in the center to raise that point up a good bit.

[tlfillingim]

For the large stand, I'm using the directions posted here:
http://theultimatehang.com/2013/04/0...hammock-stand/
I did fix the length of all the ropes along the ground at 9.5' and the ropes going from the top of the boards down to the stakes at just over 10' so that everything is even and the boards will all be at approximately 60deg to the ground (the 3D trigonometry took a couple tries to get right!). I am using 2' long rebar stakes rather than the recommended 3' length because Lowes only had 2' and 4' options. Also, material prices were nearly double what they were when the concept was originally posted 8 years ago! But it worked well. Because my stakes were 2' long and I had them hammered most of the way into the ground, I also got small hose clamps and attached them to the top of each stake. That makes it tougher for the O rings to slip off the ends of the stakes.

Nice. Thanks for the link. I have 2 little kids but this might be the future of my backyard.