been looking at wall tents for years just never got to it.

well , I went and pulled the trigger on a 12x12 Davis GO-Tent

very similar to a wall tent but designed to be easier for one person to set up the front door is a little smaller and has a connection across the bottom

my 23 year old tent was having zipper issues and tore in a corner. also is not a hot tent , just an old eureka

wanted to go tent rather than trailer because with a tent I can still pull the boat set up base camp and fish
I have an XXL cot so the bigger 12x12 made sense as it really only adds a few more pounds and this can be a tent to pack in on a mule not a tent for backpacking

I didn't get the stove yet , they don't do a stove bundle on the GO tent so the stove can wait for another day the stove jack is already there so just a matter of getting the stove when it gets cold and I want to set up hunting camp.

first trip should be end of the month.

I called and talked with Taylor yesterday the guy who does these videos , he was very helpful in answering my questions.

What is a GO Tent ?

a compromise on a wall tent to make it easier for one person setup. easier to pack as well. a 1-2 person tent in the 10x10 size and a little roomier in the apparently fairly new 12x12 size.

little shorter side walls but still able to stand in a good portion of the tent.

Thanks.
I looked up Davis Tent and didn't find it at first.....then I did come across it. Nice offering by Davis.
I have a 10 x 12 wall tent. Davis refers to it as a cook shack, but I used it as an addition to my 12 x 14 Colorado wall tent, which I sold several years ago.
The 10 x 12 is a good 2 person arrangement, along wirh a goid 6-8' fly extending out front for addtional storage, etc.
I have a 3 dog stove for heat.

GP,

I believe you will be quite happy with the go tent. I spent a good bit of time researching tents a while back before my Idaho adventure. The Go tent was one of my choices, Taylor had some great reviews on it. Davis tents has a stellar reputation in the community. I went with a tent for the same reason you did. I can pull my boat behind the truck and all my camp fits in the bed quite easily. Same with pulling my honda utv on the trailer - camp is right there and the dang cot makes a huge difference to an old, fat guy versus sleeping on the ground.

I went with a 12x12 Kodiak due to having an internal floor and the number of windows. I spent 7 weeks in Idaho last year, 3 in the summer and 4 in fall and ran a teton xxl cot. Plenty of space for just me and two would have been fine. After going to town and buying a broom to keep the dang tent clean I was rethinking the internal floor lol!! But I also bought a rag rug and put in front of the entrance and put my slip ons right inside the tent and kept them there.. Made life much easier and cleaner. I put the camp chef stove in mine, it's serviceable and does what is needed. Coldest I got into was in the 20's at night with snow and the stove worked good enough.. Wouldn't hold a fire all night, but most of the small camp stoves won't. I used a good bag and slept fine after the fire died down.. Was a bit nippy in the morning lol!! I kept a buddy heater near the cot and flipped it on when I woke up and in just a few minutes I was able to get dressed in reasonable comfort.

knowing what I know now i wouldn't take a wood stove for a trip in October, just the buddy heater. A good sleeping bag and a stocking hat will keep you toasty down into the teens and the buddy heater works great. I found the windows and ventilation were more important overall than the heat in my trips.. Tough to take an afternoon nap when it's hot and sticky in the tent lol.. But get the windows open and a battery operated fan going and you can sleep like a baby.

I find camping and fishing/hunting/trapping alone I tend to get up very early and it is quite a chore taking care of everything alone cooking and tending camp. Was far more time consuming than I thought it would be. Naps became a thing!

enjoy your tent and keep us posted on your adventures. No tent camping for this year yet, but next year I have two months slated out west in the Kodiak!!

Im with you on tent vs camper. Way better IMO if you want to stay anyplace outside a campground. To many trips there would be no way to get a camper into. Its not hard to set up a tent camp thats warm dry and comfortable off in some remote place.

Thanks , Larry

I went with the non sewn in floor that way I can fold it back when I want to run a stove.

I have a Rigid fan that will run on the rigid tool batteries or 120ac

a few years ago I started getting electric sites at WI state parks , it is closer to the restroom , often bigger , and I started doing it because my outboard at the time didn't have a alternator so I would charge my trolling motor battery.
then found summer fishing how nice it was to sleep with a fan on those hot nights

my new outboard has a alternator and charges my battery well.

I found a little milk house heater does a great job of reach over from your sleeping bag turn it on and give it 20-30 minutes to take the chill and damp out , so I may keep getting electric sites , it was like 7-10 dollars more a night so not bad.

end of the month is going to be at one of my cousins places not sure which cousin yet , they are both in the same county it will be who has more time to go fishing , it will probably be the retired cousin he was telling me he needs to build more fence and he has had health issues lately. so maybe some fence building and fishing.

This is what I picked up for $500 back in the day off FB. I thought it was Davis but must not be. Someday I will buy new canvas.

as long as it is working no need to drop more money on canvas

they can be patched and repaired so many times as well

there are a bunch of tent makers out there and even more that used to be and went under

Pete,

Best not to have a sewn in floor, IMO. A good tarp that will span the entire floor and creep up the sides on top of the sod cloth is what you want. Less weight in folding your tent up and a good tarp will allow a river to flow under the canvas and not get into the tent. Been there, done that.

Another thing. Spring Valley Lodges, good friends of ours, sells a mat you can place under your woodstove so you can set it on top of the floor without having to peel that flooring back.

https://www.springvalleylodges.com/product-page/spark-mat

We do run a 4-dog woodstove out of our 12x14 modern wall tent and rendezvous tents, but we do something special in the summer with our 12x14. We run air conditioning. We got an apartment size AC and set that on a milk crate outside the tent. Susan carefully cut a flap for the AC to snug into the tent. Then we took it up to Baraboo to Tent & Awning and had them finish the job and put the velcro on.

When we're camped at an electric site we just run a long extension cord to the power. If camped at a primitive site, as pictured below, we run a Honda 2000 generator behind the tent and muffle the sound best as we can. In one state park we frequented often we would wait for a train to go by, then fire it up, and after the train left all one heard from the next site was a faint hum. Mosquitos more than likely.



The combination of a box fan with the AC made things very tolerable for playing cribbage or taking naps in the middle of the hot day. The snap in floor came with this tent when I bought it from Colorado Tent & Awning back in the mid-80s.



Muffled sound . . .





Summer camping at its finest.

Slick set up on that air conditioner.

I think spring valley got their start in Green county just a few miles west of me on county F in the old school.
I didn't know they were still making tents.
UI have thought about the AC , I was thinking those units that have a vent pipe , my oldest has one because they were told they couldn't have a traditional window unit , for risk of it falling 3 stories and hitting some one below.
that vent tube could go right up the stove Jack

is that pool 5A behind the tent by chance , I was there this spring but not camping just launching and fishing.

Indeed, that is where Spring Valley started with a fella by the name of Al Levins. Al made good tents from good canvas for many years for the rendezvous. Each one numbered and logged. Our 12x17 rendezvous tent has a patch above the door with a number, built in the early 90s by Al. When Al's health failed him Jim and Rebecca Fairchild took over the business and it's home is now in Batavia, IL. We've added a 10x12, wedge, and a marquis to the collection built by Jim since.



Now . . . yes, that is Pool 5a. And you do know the campsite, eh? We camped/fished that for many years until some idiot decided to change the river upstream that used to flow out to the main channel . It's now diverted directly downstream and all the backsloughs that used to hold tremendous largemouth bass populations have silted in. We haven't camped back there since. The wingdams out on the main channel still hold good walleye and smallmouth populations, but we miss the backsloughs.

So, now I'm curious. How was the fishing?

first week in June it was slow everywhere. 4, 5, and 5A
mostly pan fish and drum is what we caught.

we were also there last fall the 18-21st I think we were staying down on 6 but made the run up to 5A and bass and northern were not bad.
that was my first time there so I have nothing to compare it to but other pools 6, 7 , 8 , 10 , 11

they are doing a ton of dredging on 4, 5 and 5A this year. the army had their crew boat there there were enough people working on it.

Pete,

There is something very interesting about 6a. I was talking into an older fella who knew the river very well years ago. He said there was a study done once that measured the volume of water flowing into Lake Pepin and the volume flowing out of Lake Pepin. Somewhere some of that water "disappears." But then if you measure the volume of water at the tail end of 6A it comes back to match what was measured at the upstream end of Lake Pepin. He believed there was an underground river that reemerged somewhere near Fountain City.

would not surprise me very much to hear of an underground river that ran from Pepin on 4 to fountain city on 5A it goes deep in a few places through there and we know the driftless supports other underground rivers , why not a river under a river.