Platform Tents at GS Camp

[laurathistle]

Those of you who sleep in Platform Tents at camp, do you have cots/camp beds/bunks in them?

I am asking because I may have the chance to work at a GS camp this summer and the last time I slept in a Platform Tent at a Girl Guide camp (in the UK) it was in sleeping bags on the floor (of a platform tent). it was terrible! Sleeping on grass would have been better.

There is no way I could do that for 9 weeks!

[Mouse...]

Nope, we have cots with matresses. They are pretty old but luckily they are getting replaced this year. Ouch, sleeping on the floor of one of those would stink!

[laurathistle]

Nope, we have cots with matresses. They are pretty old but luckily they are getting replaced this year. Ouch, sleeping on the floor of one of those would stink!




Thank goodness it was only a Fri night to Sun night camp!

[facade1138]

we have platform tents with cots as well

[Pooka]

We have platform tents with cots and mattresses. They're the devil to set up...

[KiwiCRB]

Haha if I had to sleep on the floor of one of those things I really don't know how I would handle it. We have scorpions and mice and all sorts of fun stuff that run around down there, it isn't even safe to keep shoes on the ground. Two summers ago the mosquitoes were like plague bad so the ranger put up mosquito nets. This year, however, they were definatley manageable so all the mosquito nets did was trap nasty spiders and wasps that I had to get out so we took them down.

[prettysocks]

Not at the camp I'm at now.. but.. 3 years ago.. We had sometimes platform tents.. and they'd sleep on the floor.. Well they brought their own sleeping pads (like a foam pad, or blow-up mattress). And sometimes we just set those stupid army tents up on the grass, and they DID sleep on the grass. That was a fun year.

[Pooka]

Dear lord, Kiwi, if I were at your camp, I wouldn't be able to sleep knowing there are scorpions about! All we get are the occasional mice and racoons wandering through our tents, and that's bad enough.

[laurathistle]

Anyone ever experianced midgies?

[Melk]

we have platform tents and they dont have cots. Luckly you only spend one night in them.

[happy_camper]

No platform tents for us!

[Possuumm]

midgies= the devil....and we have cots w/ mattresses, thankfully

[KiwiCRB]

What is a midgie... if I even want to know.

[Flukie]

Love my tent - love love love. Have never slept in a cabin and can't imagine it. Lol. We have a small number of mosquitoes at the camp I'm currently at, which means half the staff goes without netting and about half (generally the Internationals and those of us that grew up where you HAD to have it it) have it on their beds. Your choice. Majority of our campers have netting on their beds. I have my own poles and net that I bring with me - my benefit though? I have the CITs, so I'm not moving units as much as everyone else!

But there is nothing I love better than floating the tent by putting up all flaps and sleeping at night with a cool breeze, only to wake up in the morning to sunshine shining through the trees.

[KiwiCRB]

But there is nothing I love better than floating the tent by putting up all flaps and sleeping at night with a cool breeze, only to wake up in the morning to sunshine shining through the trees.

I looove sleeping with all the sides of the tent up, if they're down it basically creates a sauna. The only down side is when a storm comes up (and they can come pretty quickly) we have to tie down all the tents or they get pretty torn up and the whole process takes about 10 minutes a tent.

They really are my favorite place to sleep, as long as the girls can handle it. One group I had last summer were scared of coyotes, and thought there were bugs in their nets, or thought their tent was too far away from ours. That was a fun week.

[laurathistle]

What is a midgie... if I even want to know.



A midge (or midgies, pronounced mid gee s in scotland) are a pain! there are smaller then mosquitos and don't carry any disease or anyting, after they bite you they die. They come out when the sun is settingbut in wooded ares they are there all the time. they are just So annoying. if you pick a bit until it bleeds it leaves a bad wee scar too. grrrr. I hate them. I was camping once where there were millions of them and I was wearing a net hat. When took it off inside the tent there were midgies stuck to the outside of the net where my nose and mouth was. Gross!

[Life_Saver]

The Girl Scout Camp I worked at had platform tents. There were 4 cots per tent and yes, they did get a bit hot and they are quite dark inside when the flaps are shut, but that's why I always insisted on making a "Floating Tent", or as some call it a "Skeleton Tent", where you roll up all of the sides. It's really neat and you get a nice breeze when you do that. Camper's don't like it too much because they feel more secure and safe when the sides are down. Weather was always an issue with the tents because we never did know when the rain would come when out flaps were open.

[Trees]

Fluke, if people use mosquito nets with a "small" number of mosquitoes, I can't imagine what it's like at places with large numbers of mosquitoes! I've never even seen a mosquito net. No one at any of my camps has ever used them.

Only half our units have platform tents, and none of the staff do. We sleep outside. Well, we used to; in recent years staff are much more likely to use the provided family-camping type tents (we get mattresses to put on the ground or in the tent) because fewer of our staff is really outdoor-oriented.

[Pooka]

I had never even heard of floating the tent until I read about it last summer on here. I went to camp and made the counselor tent try it. It was awesome-- before it started to rain. :D

Has anyone had any experience putting tents up or taking them down? I hate putting them up, though that's mostly because the cots are hard to move and because it's usually raining-- but taking them down is really fun. If they were tied right when they were put up, you just pull a few strings and zip-- down they go! Finding bats in them only adds to the adventure.

[Life_Saver]

I have helped with setting the tents up in the spring and taking them down when camp is done. It's not that hard to do actually, you hust need about 4 people to help.

And at the camp I worked at just about everyone uses mosquito nets. We sold then at our camp canteen for $10. Every cot had 4 poles tied to them and you just put the net over the poles and tuck it under the matress.

[Flukie]

You are so lucky, Trees! The camp I grew up with, we had to make sure the campers tucked their nets into their beds every morning, or they'd get back at night and have if full of mosquitoes. Campers and staff alike slept under a sheet regardless of heat because if you had an arm or leg against the net over night - you were DONE in the morning. Hehe.

When I came to the camp I'm at currently, they were stretching nets over the poles and explaining how it was silly to use them because they always ripped. We showed them how to tie them to the poles - surprise! They'd never really needed them, so no one had ever thought about doing it that way. :)

The camp in NH I'm at for part of this summer though - I hear the bugs are EVIL. So back to a billion cans of spray for me and my lovely net.


And I love putting up the tents and taking them done - we'll go to camp April 13th to help put up the 48 tents on property. Last summer it took 15 people just over six hours to get all of them up, put together 192 beds, and pull the mattresses out of storage. We've got it down to an assembly line now.

[CD87]

we have cots...i think i would die if i had to sleep on the floor of one of those

[Mouse...]

Hmm... See we have mosquitoe netting up all summer. Sometimes staff will sleep without it but for the most part it stays up.

[laurathistle]

* bump* for benifit of KJM

[Pooka]

Beat me to it, Laura. Heh.

And now, after I've complained about setting up beds and tents and whatnot, I'm still wondering when spring work weekend is. I missed it last year.

[kjm]

thanks laura and pooka!! i didn't even think to look in here before because my camp isn't girl scout. i'm hoping there aren't too many midges and mosquitos where i'm going in maine. they really are the most annoying things ever. i have photos of my friends and i wearing tights over our heads to stop us getting bitten when we were on our duke of ed, as strange as we looked we didn't get a single bite!

[laurathistle]

Don't think they really have midges in the US...they have things that are MUCH MUCH WORSE! tee hee!

[ArtisticEric]

Ok, uhm...mosquitoss in maine arent to bad but when you get there at first they are like "Hey People!" but once it drys out their fine......its normaly a little rainy in maine when camp starts then its fine. but thats normaly how it works...who knows though weather can always change lol.

[c3divers]

we have cots and mattresses. I usually bring an air mattresses also.

[Mouse...]

How would the air mattress work? I'm just curious, sorry. Do you use it on top of the cot or something?

[tigerfan]

This may sound like a simple question, but I've never slept in a platform tent before...when it rains does everything that touches the side get wet? Or are they waterproof?

[Flukie]

Ahh... Awesome question!

All our platform tents have a large rain tarp above them that keeps most of the rain off of the actual canvas. Then you have the actual canvas itself - it's really heavy and is water resistant - if it rains enough, you definitely get damp flaps, but not enough that it gets things inside wet.

That being said, the only issues I've ever had happens when the wind blows really fierce during a storm and we haven't properly storm lashed - then the floor of the tent and things around the edges can get wet because wind is blowing rain right into it. If properly closed down - not a problem!

[Trees]

At my camp in Washington, we had super-heavy canvas that never leaked, in my memory, despite frequent heavy rain. We never tied the flaps up or anything like that--it rained too often, I guess. The tents at another camp were heavy enough to keep off light rain--all we ever had for the most part, and even that was rare--but in the very occasional (say, once every two or three summers) heavy rain, we were DEAD.

[c3divers]

I place the air mattress on top of the skinny mattress that is on the cot. I have a bad back and the air mattress helps me to have a most wonderful sleep!!:)

[Pooka]

If our tents aren't tied down well enough, or if the winds get really vicious, things will get a little wet. Floorboards near the entrance seem to be worst for getting rained on-- don't leave shoes or anything near here.

Even if the actual rain doesn't get in the tent, things can get slightly damp just from all the water in the air. It depends how humid your camp gets. Some people roll up their sleeping bags every morning and keep all their clothes in Rubbermaids to keep them dry, which seems to work.

[KiwiCRB]

Storms that come up suddenly during the middle of the night in platform tents are the BEST, campers are soooo helpful and basically tie the tents down themselves. But not really. Storms during the night are the worst because everyone is half asleep and the girls don't really know how to tie things down anyway. One night there were tornados all around camp and I was in the tent unit, it was pretty intense. We might have moved inside I can't remember. Yaaay West Texas weather!

[armadillo]

We have platform tents and I love them! And I am glad to have found a new phrase -- instead of "rolling all the sides up" as we call it, I can now call it "making a floating tent." It surprises me how many people (especially campers) won't do this -- the humidity here is so horrible! I wake up in a pool of sweat some nights, stuck to the top of my sleeping bag.

We are really lucky, though, in that we don't need mosquito nets. We also have wooden beds (built into the platform floor) with a thin mattress, so there is no setting up of cots. And I think our tents stay up year round, because the camp is pretty heavily used year-round (if they do come down, it's only Dec-March).

I just love platform tents, though. They are so much cooler than cabins. If you tie them up right, it only takes a minute or two to take it down in the rain. I even sometimes leave mine as a floating tent in the rain, as long as it isn't raining too hard, because then the temperature is really nice!

[Smudge]

I usually sleep in a staff cabin but I do like sleeping a the tents especially when they are floated. The last camp I was at had cots am not sure what the camp i am going to this year has.

[roxy]

I love platform tents... funny my first couple weeks as a new staff member (I grew up at camps with cabins) I was freaked out. By the end of the summer I needed a floating tent. The whole next summer we floated it as well. Now I'm back at my childhood camp with cabins and I hate it (well not totally) but I want a floating tent!!!

Here's something random... I was talking to one of my university friends who worked at a boy scout camp near Ottawa, ON. She said that they used to splash buckets of water over the rain flaps and apparently it sucked all the hot air out of the tent and brought in cool air. I'm not sure if they are different from the tents typically used by US girl scout camps... but does anyone know if this works?

[carrottop]

I still find myself going around the tents at bed time with a big broom trying to get all the spiders out to stop the kids screaming. No matter how many times you try and tell them that the spiders will eat the mosquito's so are actually good!! Although one night last summer me and my fellow counselor got to one tent with our broom for spider sweeping, where a 9 yr old camper was quite literally holding the tent up....somehow the kids had managed to dis-lodge the centre board and the main pole at the front had slid in diagonally! With some extra ad-staff help and a few nails we soon fixed it! No idea what the kids did to it in the first place!
I enjoy staff week at camp though...we get to live as campers in the platform tents on cots! :)

[Smudge]

I know what you mean carrottop I had the same prob - i would just tell the girls that I couldn't come into the tent on my own (cos they usually came when my co-counsellor was in the bathroom or something). I would give them the broom and tell them to do it themselves - which worked most of the time. Except for one occaision in whisoering pines (i think it was there) and they managed to dislodge the spider from where it was and knock it onto the campers bed - it was the biggest spider I had ever seen and I had to leave the tent and leave dealing with it to the assist waterfront director who was in the unit with me that night.

I liked it when we went into the tents during pre-camp too.

[duster]

I love platform tents and most of the units just got new cots and they are very comfortable. I was just there on an overnight and had the best sleep I've had in a wile. When it rains at night the sound of the rain hitting the tarp is relaxing

[Angel_Jenny]

Not been in one but seen the photos and our partner camp has some I noticed last year at staff training but we stayed in cabins with no electricity!! Im glad all the cabins at my camp have electric because Im so not good in the dark :D

[Smudge]

head lamps are a great invention. After 4 years of camp have finally invested in one cos I got fed up of, when in a tent reading on my side with my flash light balanced on the leg of my specs.

A couple of years a go our staff cabin sprang a leak and me and my co-counsellor moved into a tent while they fixed it and we woke up in the morning and my co. was freaked out cos there were 2 hugh, beautiful dragonflys sleeping on the tent roof directly above her cos we hadn't closed the tent flaps.

[Tootsie]

We also have cots in each of our platform tents, but we are going to be getting rid of the tents all together. We are going to build these cute little dollhouses instead, just to be different!

[sarahuk]

Wow! I don't know what my camp is like for electricity I hope there is some, I'm not very good with the dark either!!! I wouldn't mind staying in a doll house though :) I can't believe I am going so soon! Im getting scared now!

[Smudge]

At my last camp they didn't ahve electricty in the staff cabins my first year (well they had sockets but no electric lights) so the camp provided electric laterns that we ahd to return to be charged every morning and then pick up at night time.

[Flukie]

Wow, that's interesting Tootsie! Around here, we like our tents a lot more than cabins, it seems, because they last longer, aren't covered in graffiti as much, and are airier. I have yet to sleep in a cabin - this summer will be the first time I've worked at a camp with them!

[Smudge]

Really - cabins do have their advantages - for the campers they can get away with being more noisey and for the staff they dont have to listen to the noise. I like camping where the staff have a cabin but the campers have tents cos being away from home for so long, and not being able to go home it is nice to have a little shed that you can call home.

[happy_camper]

I've never been to a camp with platform tents! Our sister camp's cabins are pretty rustic, but my camp's are more like dorm rooms than cabins! It's nice for the little kids because if it is their first time away from home, our cabins are more homey for them and I think for them it makes the transition easier.