Nine Lives To Freedom (or something like that): Living in Tents and a Car: How we did it

In order to avoid high oil field housing prices, we lived in several tents, our car and other temporary living sources until we could clear a sufficient road to our land.

The first tent was a Guide Gear 10x10 tee pee. For the most part, while in the tents, we stayed at Sandhills State park in west Texas. With a $75 monthly pass, we paid $7 bucks a night for the campsite which included unlimited electricity and water and use of the toilets and hot showers. Overall, this tent (pictured above and directly below) was spacious and dry. The screened door and widows kept the mosquitoes and most other pests out. Although it handled the high desert night winds well, the tent flapped quite a bit on very active nights. We had some problems with too much sand from time to time but it was easily vacuumed out with a car vac and returned to the dunes. Ultimately, it was a summer storm that took finally took this tent out. We weren't in and should have taken it down. We still have this tent and even though is has a few small tears, it can be easily repaired and put back to work.

I loved the Intex mattress pictured above. It was nice and comfy. It held the air pretty well and only had to touched up every 4 days or so.

Can't quite remember which brand this one was but it didn't last long- about 2 weeks and the desert winds had destroyed it. It would have been great on less windy terrain.

Other than the high winds, the worst thing about tenting in the desert is that most of the tends have this design flaw in which determined flying insets eventually invade through the multiple tiny openings, especially at night when one is trying to read peacefully by lamplight.

The sunrises and sunsets were the best. There are no more beautiful skies than those in west Texas.

My favorite tent- a Korean replica of the European bell tent. We shipped this tent from Korea, prior to our move back to the U.S. Initially, this tent was purchase for temporary shelter on our land while we built our first dome. However, without a driveable road, it was more practical to stake her down at the Sandhills.

Spacious, dry, warm in the winter, cool in the summer and insect free. Love, love, love, this tent! As this was a Korean replica, it was not quite as strong or as well made as the European brands but it was easily repaired and reinforced after a few bad storms.