Pop up camping tents are becoming more popular with casual campers and now even accepted by the experts.  Add a cot and you’re almost glamping!  A pop up camping tent on a cot provides convenience plus the luxury of being off the ground.  Camping on cots in army-style, open-air, canvas platform tents is the norm at most Scouting America summer camps.  However, what size should the tent be relative to the cot?

Some folks don’t like the fact that the SansBug hangs over a cot.  The SansBug one person tents have to be bigger than a cot to prevent you from touching the netting and being bit!  An average adult changes position about every 20 minutes when sleeping.  That number will go up with discomfort, unfamiliar surroundings, and anxiety… which is expected at summer camp, especially for a first-time camper.  When you change position, your limbs are bound to touch the netting if it is too close.  A camping tent that fits perfectly on a cot will force you to either sleep in only one position, or wake up with some nasty bites!

So the overhang over the cot is a good thing – the farther the netting is away from you the better.  Being larger does not impact the ability to use it on a cot.  Moreover, you don’t need to secure it to the cot. When you’re not inside, just the weight of your sleeping bag is sufficient to make it stay on the cot.

Seen and read on Amazon: “Purchased this tent for use at a 30 day military training exercise in Death Valley, CA… This pop up camping tent is wider that the standard military cot which is a benefit because it allows you to store items safely without rolling over on them while sleeping.”

Scott Newman, a Scouting leader, and who is a long time user – and fan – of the SansBug has this to say:

“The thinner models may satisfy the type A personalities when they look at a camping tent fitting on the cot, but I feel the thinner ones make me feel a little claustrophobic. Plus, on hot summer nights (and we are getting some scorchers), I can push my sleeping bag off the edge of the cot and it stays in the SansBug so when it drops to 64 degrees at 2:00 AM, I can still reach it and pull it back up.”

“The narrow tents may look like they fit the cot better but can be claustrophobic and don’t hold the clean change of clothes and gear a Scout often needs when they wake up.  I, personally, feel the thinner tents are like the difference between a regular sleeping bag and a mummy bag – too claustrophobic.”

Seen and read: Lifehacks to make summer camp more comfortable.  Here are a couple of pictures from Camp Scouthaven in Freedom, NY which is about an hour from Buffalo.  Folks coming back to Scouting after 30 years as Scout Leaders say the pop up mosquito nets on cots are a gamechanger as they still have flashbacks of 400+ daddy long legs on top of them!

Mirror mirror on the wall

Who has the tidiest tent of all?

To be fair, one of them seems to have less gear.  Nonetheless, an additional advantage of pop up mosquito nets is that you can keep the extra gear in it during the daytime leaving your tent organized, neat and tidy!

Camp Scouthaven, part of the Great Falls Council, is one of the oldest scout summer camps and is nationally accredited.  During the summer, it offers camping for both Cubs and Scouts.  It is located in the Enchanted Mountains on the shores of Crystal Lake and is open year-round.  The main campground is flat and open and the lake is calm so beginners can learn how to swim and paddle.

Seen and read in the Goshen Scout Reservation rules:

You can swat a skeeter but since ALL spiders are supposed to be left alone, having your own mosquito tent may just convince a reluctant kid to actually look forward to attending Goshen!

Goshen Scout Reservation is located on 4000+ acres around Lake Merriweather in Virginia.  There are five camps built around the 450 acre lake:

1. Camp Baird is the base camp for the Lenhok’sin High Adventure program which offers a 5-day backpacking and canoeing trek
2. Camp Bowman was the first to be built at Goshen scout Reservation and one of the few patrol cooking camps on the east coast
3. Camp Marriott offers an extensive aquatics program
4. Camp Olmsted is the largest camp and the only one offering tech related merit badges
5. Camp Ross for Webelos

Since the SansBug is for casual campers who drive to the campsite, it won’t work for backpacking.  So the pics above are from one of the three resident Scout camps. Also, it seems the platform tents are not as wide as Camp Rodney, so it may be a good idea to rotate the cots perpendicularly so that the slope of the SansBug aligns with the slope of the canvas tent, like at Camp Sequassen.  Here are pics of the 1 person mosquito tents on cots at other summer camps.

The SansBug pop up screen tent for use as a reptile enclosure is a much cheaper alternative to a small heavy glass tank prone to cracking.  It has fiberglass poles which are lighter than the steel rods (which can also rust) in a grow tent.

Bearded dragons taking refuge inside a SansBug to protect them from toxic bugs and humans!

The SansBug has also been used as a giant insect terrarium to house monarch butterfly caterpillars, a bird tent, a bonding tent for sugargliders, and as a catio for cats and kittens.  Since the SansBug is mostly mesh, it provides a 360 degree viewing window compared to the tiny ones which the grow tents have.  Your pets can enjoy the fresh air and bask in the sun in their reptile enclosure tent!

Choose between the 1-person, 2-person and 3-person sizes.

And then there are other dragons you wouldn’t want to spend the night with!  Seen and read… no telling what you’ll find on top of your SansBug when you wake up!

“A few photos from Scout Summer Camp Ransburg in Bloomington, Indiana.

Even a malaria expert needs protection from mosquitoes in Africa.  Dr. Amy Bei, a Harvard-trained, Yale professor who speaks a gazillion languages spends her time between Dakar, Senegal and New Haven, CT.  When she’s not fighting malaria, she grows and roasts her own coffee in Senegal, knits and weaves, and is working on her pilot license so she can fly bush planes and land on water.

Here’s an email from her regarding her experience with the SansBug mosquito net tent:

Amy Kristine Bei, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor | Department of Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases

Here’s another team working in the villages of Senegal:

Researchers from Stanford University recently took the SansBug mosquito net tents to Senegal for a project on early language acquisition by children living in rural villages.  Here’s a picture of two of their fieldwork team members who appreciated having the tents: “Sorry the room is not quite as orderly as in other pictures on your website, but this is the reality of spending 6 weeks in villages with two folding chairs and no electricity!”

It’s that time of the year when the earth springs into life again… but this year there is expected to be a little more activity.  A dozen states from NY to IL and south to GA will see billions of cicadas emerge this month or next after spending 17 years underground.  They will mate, lay eggs and die and the nymphs will hatch and burrow underground to repeat the cycle in 2038.  Unlike mosquitoes, cicadas are pretty much harmless but their buzzing mating calls are as loud as a lawnmower or a motorcycle!  Regardless of the increased traffic, the main culprit to watch out for is still the mosquito.  After a relatively mild winter, there are expected to be more mosquitoes this summer and an increase in West Nile virus cases this year.  Which is why it makes sense to protect you and your kids with a mosquito net tent – a totally enclosed bug tent with a floor.  The open-air platform tents at summer camp are just that – open to all kinds of bugs and mosquito nets draped over PVC frames do little to thwart the pesky skeeters which still manage to sneak in through the gaps between the floorboards.

Seen and read:

The canvas wall tents at Camp Rodney and Curtis S. Read Scout Reservation are wide enough so there is ample space between the cots.

But if the wall tents are narrow like at Camp Sequassen or Resica Falls Scout Reservation, simply turn the cots sideways so you’ll optimize the space by aligning the slope of the tent with that of the SansBug screen tent.

Since the SansBug mosquito net tent is freestanding, it beats trying to figure out how to suspend a mosquito net inside a wall tent.  There usually aren’t any grommets or tie-offs inside canvas wall tents.  Therefore most folks lash PVC pipes to the cot and drape mosquito netting over it.  However, it is almost impossible to make sure there are no gaps between the netting and the floor every time you get in and out of bed… especially if it is dark.  Also, since most platform tents have gaps between the planks on the floor to prevent water pooling when it rains, there will always be space for mosquitoes to come in.  One mosquito can keep you up and make your night miserable.  The SansBug screen tent has a sewn-in floor so it is totally enclosed… you’ll sleep like a baby and you’ll be alert and focused to learn new skills the next day!

And, hey, if the weather is nice… just pop up a village of SansBug bug tents like this troop did at Kerr Scout Ranch.

So don’t forget to add the SansBug to your scout summer camp packing list!

Seen and Read:

We’re thrilled that the SansBug mesh tent is being used as a giant insect terrarium to house monarch butterfly caterpillars.  Much larger than butterfly cages specifically made for the purpose, the smallest SansBug bug tent can house more than a dozen milkweed plants.

Monarch butterflies with their familiar orange and black pattern are known for their annual migration where some of them travel more than 3000 miles!  Considering the butterfly weighs only about half a gram, that’s mind blowing!

Monarchs in Eastern North America overwinter in central Mexico while those in Western North America overwinter in the southern California coast.  Eastern monarchs fly south along different routes, but merge together in Central Texas and fly along the same route to Mexico.  It’s amazing that they overwinter in the same 11 or 12 mountain sites, often the exact same trees, even though they’ve never been there before!

The epic migration south is done by the same super generation which lives up to 8 times longer than their parents and grandparents.  The return journey north to US and Canada is done in 3 or 4 generations.

Western monarchs have seen numbers dwindle by more than 99% in the last 30 years.  Eastern monarch numbers have gone down by about 80%.  The number one reason for their decline is the reduction of milkweed, a wildflower, which is the only food the caterpillars will eat.  Milkweed has been decimated because of indiscriminate spraying of herbicides across genetically modified corn and soybean fields and mowing along road sides.

Lately, there has been a growing call to reverse this population decline by encouraging people to plant native milkweed in their yards and cities.  And since survival rates are only 5% in the wild because of ants, spiders and other predators, the SansBug bug tent provides a safe rearing tent to increase that to more than 80%!  While rearing tents will not reverse the population decline, they are a great tool to learn and observe the amazing metamorphosis from egg to adult.