Megatent worked out extremely well. It provided an outdoor living room and a hangout area where both of us could sit comfortably, something I don’t have in the van since I originally built it for just one person. We really enjoyed hanging out there.
It also doubled as a garage for several maintenance jobs on my V-Strom, mainly a new back tire, chain, and sprockets. It made sense to do all of these at the same time, since the back wheel had to come off for all these jobs anyway. I also fixed a stuck rear preload adjuster, replaced my five-year-old cargo box with a new one since it was starting to crack, and installed my shiny new Arkansas license plate.
Unfortunately, a heavy overnight rainstorm single-handedly caused the demise of Megatent. The weight of the water was too much for the frames, even the new one, bending and breaking both beyond repair. I salvaged all of the tarps, but the frames are nothing but scrap metal at this point.
It didn’t take long for us to start missing the extra living space. It was clear that pop-up canopies weren’t going to cut it, so I started looking into other options. I remembered that in Quartzsite, the “Q Camp” of the Meet In Q Facebook group had set up a common area under a portable carport. They secured it with extra ropes and anchors than what came with it, and it stood up well to the desert wind and occasional thunderstorm. If a carport could handle that, it could handle Ozark weather. I shopped around and ordered this one from Home Depot.
At 12 feet wide, it’s slightly wider than the pop-ups, while its 20-foot length is identical. It’s also much taller, which is great for me not hitting my head anymore. It has a strong frame of metal tubes and thick tarp material for the roof and walls. It’s well designed. I started putting it together alone, and when it got too big, Melissa and one of her sons helped finish the job.
We left one of the side walls off, partly for easy access from the van and partly because the van and trailer themselves act as the fourth wall. Then we set up ALL of our seating and tables inside, as well as my propane stove/grill. I’ve moved it inside during the rainy weather we’re having right now, but normally it sits next to the van so steam and smoke rise up and don’t collect inside. After trying and failing with a set of solar lights, we got two sets of outdoor LED string lights that I put up around the bottom of the roof. We could get an adapter and extension cord and plug them into the house, but instead, I plug them into one of our power stations. Both strings draw just 15 watts, so even my little Jackery 240 will run them for days on its built-in power inverter. I’ll just recharge it during the day when I occasionally need to.
Please excuse the mess. We’re still tidying up and figuring out how we want everything set up, but you get the idea. The long wall has two mesh windows that open and close for ventilation. There’s also a door in the center, but we leave that closed because there’s nothing but woods behind it. We can roll up a garage door on one end if we want even more ventilation, or even roll up both short ends if we really want nothing more than a roof over our heads. I suspect we’ll leave it as-is, though. We like the privacy. There’s also plenty of room to roll a motorcycle to the far end if/when more maintenance and repairs need to be done on either bike, conveniently close to the trailer where all my tools are.
I do not recommend a carport like this for on-the-go nomad life like I used to live. It’s big, bulky, and takes a lot of work and multiple people to set up and take down. However, I’m not living that kind of life right now, and it pretty much quadruples our usable living space from just the van itself. When we take weekend trips, we’ll leave it behind, then park next to it again when we get back.
My other justification for Megatent 2.0 is that when we build the tiny house, we’ll move the carport up there as a storage shed, motorcycle garage, and/or additional outdoor living space. Eventually, I’d like a solid shed that we can lock up, but I can lock anything I need to inside the trailer for now. It’s well worth the roughly $300 purchase price for the use we’re getting out of it.
Smokey Da Van 