The smell got to me before the bin lid was all the way off. Think of a gym bag that spent the whole summer break in a locker. I teach PE, so I know that smell well, and I did not expect to find it in our carport, coming out of our green-and-tan dome tent.
This one is on me. On the Sunday morning we left O'Leno, July 20, the fly was soaked from a 4 a.m. shower and the floor was damp underneath from the dew. Thunder was already grumbling by ten, the kids were done, and I stuffed the fly and the tent body into the same bin and told Dana I'd set it all up in the carport when we got home. Then I spent the week getting ready for my youth baseball camp, the bin went under the shelf in the storage room, and nobody thought about it again until I went looking for the lantern ten days later.
What ten days in a hot bin did
We set the tent up in the carport that evening to see the damage. Here's what we found:
- About a dozen black speckles on the inside of the green rain fly, all along the edge where it had been folded over on itself.
- A gray, smudgy patch about the size of my hand on the tan floor near the door, where the wettest part of the fly had been pressed against it.
- Mesh, poles and seam tape all fine, as far as I could tell.
That tent cost $219 in January and has 16 nights of camping on it, plus backyard tests and Maya's birthday campout. I was annoyed with myself in the specific way you get annoyed when the fix was free and you just didn't do it.
How we cleaned it
I'm not a gear expert, so I read the care tag first, which turned out to be the most useful thing I did all weekend. It said mild soap, cool or lukewarm water, no bleach, no washing machine, no dryer. Here's what we did:
- Pulled the Pilot out onto the driveway so the tent could stand in the carport, out of the afternoon storms.
- Brushed the dry spots with a soft dish brush, outside and downwind of everybody.
- Sponged the spots and the rest of the fly with lukewarm water and a small squeeze of mild soap, then rinsed with a spray bottle of plain water. Nico was in charge of the spray bottle, which meant I also got rinsed.
- Went back over the worst spots with a weak mix of white vinegar and water, about one part to four, left it a few minutes and rinsed again.
- Let it dry standing, with the floor corners propped up on two camp chairs so air could get underneath.
The smell was gone after the first wash. The spots faded a lot but didn't disappear, and the patch on the floor is still a faint gray shadow. I honestly can't tell you whether the vinegar did anything the soap didn't. I found people arguing both ways and the tag only mentions soap, so next time I'd probably skip it.
Drying in August is the hard part
Washing took an hour. Drying took two days. On Saturday afternoon the dew point was 76 and the carport felt like the inside of a dishwasher, and a 3 p.m. storm pushed a fine mist in through the open side. A tent doesn't dry in that air just by standing there.
What finally did it was moving air. We ran both Ryobi fans, the little clamp fan hooked to a shelf and the new bridge fan on the floor pointed up under the fly, swapping batteries from the yard tools as they ran down. The hum of those two fans was the soundtrack of our weekend. By Monday morning, about 48 hours in, the fly felt dry everywhere, including the seams, which are always the last to go. I left it up one more night anyway.
The drying rule we follow now
Dana and I agreed on a rule short enough that I can't forget it: wet in the car means up in the carport the same night. No exceptions for being tired or for having a camp to run. A few smaller habits came along with it:
- The fly gets packed in an old mesh laundry bag from the house, so it never sits pressed against the floor.
- A microfiber towel rides in the tent bin to wipe the worst of the water off before we roll anything.
- Nothing goes back in a bin until it has spent a full day dry with a fan on it.
None of this cost a dollar, which is the part that stings. One evening of running fans in July would have saved a weekend of scrubbing and a tent floor that will now always have a little gray ghost by the door.
Our next trip is Labor Day weekend at Pennekamp, and the tent bin now has a sticky note on the lid in Dana's handwriting. It says "DRY?" The question mark is for me.
