And now

 

 

…the rest of the story.

 

The great tenting experiment.

 

Camping in Colorado was just right, as expected.  The day was warm, but the night was cool.  The cotton flannel sleeping bag on an air mattress was comfortable.  The sleeping bag is light, rated for 40 degrees, so I didn’t have overkill for warmth.  Pure comfort.

 

The Texas experiment was a little different.  I knew it was pretty hot for camping in a tent, but heck, I’ve slept in hot climates before and survived.  It would be a little warm when I went to bed, but how bad could it be?  Really?

 

It was 108 degrees that afternoon when I set up the tent.  I didn’t want the air mattress and sleeping bag to get too hot too soon, so I didn’t put them in the tent right then, I left them in the car.  With all the windows open, there was plenty of airflow in the tent, but the ambient temperature was too hot to go inside, or even stand around outside in the shade, so I got back in the air-conditioned car and killed a few hours driving around, enjoying the scenic canyon, getting out here and there to admire the view or watch some birds, but mostly I stayed air conditioned.  It didn’t drop below 100 degrees until after dark.  I didn’t really need to go to sleep until 10:00, so I stayed in the car until then.  It was 95 degrees.  Still pretty hot, but I didn’t have to cover up, I could just lie there in the open air, so I blew up the air mattress and spread out the sleeping bag.  It didn’t take long to realize that something special was going on.  The air mattress felt like it was radiating heat at about 4,000 degrees.  I thought I was going to have enough separation from it and the hot ground below with that nice cotton flannel sleeping bag, but not so.  Any part of me that was lying on it was burning up.  Any part of me that wasn’t, was sweating off the excess heat.  I pretended to be a rotisserie all night so every part of me got an equal share of abuse, and found if you’re really tired it’s possible to fall asleep when you’re way too hot, but not for very long.  I fell asleep and woke up about a thousand times!

 

So the results of my research reveal that yes, on hot days and warm nights, there is weather that is too hot for tent camping, not from the air temperature inside the tent, but from sleeping on a hot air mattress.  But wait!  There is such a thing as a camping cot.  That would get a person up off the heat of the ground with some ventilation underneath.  With a little different gear, this exercise might have to be repeated…

 

I’ll report back.