Our camping gazebos come with a built-in floor, so you don’t have to worry about your possessions getting wet or dirty. Use a beach tent for a bit of shade when visiting the shore, or use a pop-up tent to quickly set up a kiosk at a company function. Canopy tents and screen houses are great ways to create food preparation areas as well, so consider taking one with you on your next camping trip. Though the Wireless’s fly kept water out of the tent’s interior, it took longer to fully dry once the rain stopped than some others we tested.
The shelter was subjected to some fairly high Wyoming winds this summer, but it stayed upright and in position throughout the trip. Mulberry Mountain also provides a vast array of recreational opportunities during all four seasons. Whether it’s hiking, camping, canoeing, Arkansas ATV / UTV trails, horse trails, hunting, fishing, or just relaxing in the Ozarks, Mulberry Mountain offers the Arkansas vacation experience you are seeking. Reserve your next Arkansas cabin or campsite at Mulberry Mountain in Ozark, Arkansas. It is also important to consider the way in which the tent poles attach to the tent. Many of our picks use grommet attachments, which are more secure and simple to repair than key attachments if anything should break.
After researching 30 six-person tents and testing 15 side by side on a total of five trips, we chose the Kelty Wireless 6 as the best entry-level camping tent for most families. It’s spacious, easy to set up, has weather protection, and is durable, all at an affordable price. The Wireless 6 lacks some of the premium materials found in pricier tents, but it features solid workmanship and should provide dependable, comfortable shelter in most three-season camping situations. Any $75 canopy tent from a big-box store—we’re talking about the common square canopy with four spindly metal legs—can provide shade during midday.
It also comes with a groundsheet (aka footprint) to protect the tent floor. Like our couples’ tent pick, the Wireless 6 is a dome-shaped tent with a tried and true two-pole design. It has an interior footprint of 87 square feet, which sleeps four adults on single pads, or two adults and two or three children, and can accommodate a crib. That wasn’t the tallest we encountered—the Eureka Copper Canyon LX 6 and ozark trail canopy tent the Alps Mountaineering Camp Creek 6 each topped out at 7 feet—but it’s enough space for most adults to maneuver standing up. The tent comes with a full rain fly that adds two vestibules for storage (each 14 square feet), totaling 115 square feet of livable space—which is fairly generous yet still practical for most campsites. And this tent is easy to set up and pack down, especially considering its size.
We set up the REI Screen House Shelter and L.L.Bean’s Woodlands Screen House side by side in the Mojave Desert in 100-degree temps. Fellow campers consistently gravitated toward the REI shelter over the L.L.Bean. Kalee Thompson is an editor covering health, fitness, baby, ozark trail canopy tent and kid gear. She has personally tested a dozen tents and an equal number of hair dryers. Blew the shower down and broke the plastic thing that holds the poles together into 2 pieces. We used a “Luggable Loo” seat over a five-gallon bucket, with a plastic bag inside.
Hang a lantern on the hook at the top of the tent for nighttime use. A water-resistant drawstring bag keeps your toilet paper dry when using your shower tent in multiple ways during a single camping trip. The Ozark Trail Hazel Creek Deluxe Shower Tent is the ideal addition to your camping gear.
A lower roof makes this shelter feel notably smaller than our top pick, but it’s also durably made and ready to pair with a superior rain fly (sold separately). Our favorite canopy tent is a simply designed, comfortable shelter that offers protection from bugs, sun, and rain. Adventure is where memories are made, whether it’s campouts in the back yard with the kids, Saturdays at the river with friends, or a week in the wilderness alone. Ozark Trail helps you and your family create everyday adventures with gear and accessories built with you in mind. From backpacks to tents, they’re rugged, dependable, and priced to be practical.
In early March, we took our second trip to the oceanside Sycamore Canyon Campground (PDF) near Oxnard, California. A later check of the weather at nearby Point Mugu Naval Air Station confirmed top recorded wind gusts of 40 miles per hour. We later used the shelters on group trips at Wheeler Gorge Campground near Ojai, California, and at the La Jolla group campsite at Point Mugu, as well as on a trip to the El Mirage Dry Lake in the Mojave Desert. A canopy tent is a purchase most regular car campers consider after stocking up on the basics. After all, you can find plenty of smaller and less-expensive items to help you fight bugs, guard against the sun, and shrug off rain. Our favorite of the eight canopy tents we tested, the REI Co-op Screen House Shelter ticks all those boxes.
With pentagonal doors and a fly scaffolded by two brow poles—as opposed to the Mineral King 3’s single one—this tent provides excellent shielding from multidirectional wind and rain, providing you follow the setup instructions faithfully. At $500, this modified dome-style tent isn’t cheap, but it represents substantial value. Many tents with similar profiles—such as the Big Agnes Dog House 6—either cost more or require you buy the tent body and attachable vestibule separately. The Wawona doesn’t come with a footprint—few tents this size do—but it’s otherwise all-inclusive, and it is compact considering how much livable space you get. The price also reflects the high quality of the materials, such as the four reinforced aluminum poles, which weigh little yet result in a remarkably strong tent. We tested the Coleman 10 × 10 Instant Screened Canopy and Walmart’s Ozark Trail 10′ × 10′ Instant Screen House during our first round of testing in the winter and spring of 2016.
We’re not looking at tents designed for such specialized activities as mountaineering, backpacking, or winter camping, though some of our recommendations have cross-over potential. Easy to set up and pack away, the Mineral King 3 is a lightweight, ozark trail shower tent two-door tent with a generous footprint and a sturdy dome shape. Like the REI model, the L.L.Bean tent has ample interior pockets, a lantern hook, and a roomy carrying bag, though the bag is of the typical drawstring-sack variety.