Grace, a 4th grader in Denise Waters’ class at Norman Rockwell Elementary, asks, “Are you staying in a tent?”
Yes Grace, I am staying in a tent. I have a lightweight one-man tent I bought this year at REI. It is small but comfortable.
When it rains, or looks like it might rain, I simply put on the rain fly. The tent does not resist cross-winds well, so if a cross-wind is strong the tent will lean over on top of me. However, I stay dry even when the tent is on top of me.
The tent is one of the few pieces of equipment I bought for this trip. I already had most of the equipment I needed.
For example, I am using a backpack I already had, and a down sleeping bag good to -20 degrees Fahrenheit (-29 degrees Celsius). I bought both items from REI in 1996 and have used them hundreds of times since.
When I was walking through the Menderes river valley for the first couple weeks of the trip the weather was warmer, so I usually slept on top of the bag. However, now that I’m on the Central Anatolia plateau the nights are cooler, and I love snuggling up into the bag. The nights are still too warm to zip it up though.