These Burning Man-Approved Canvas Tents For Shoulder Season Car Camping Can Handle Any Weather

Whether you're on a solo camping trip deep in the wild or staying with the family in America's best-ranked campground, there's lots of great gear you can grab to level up your outdoor adventure. Naturally, one of the most important things is to have a high-quality tent; there's nothing worse than going out during a downpour and returning to find a waterlogged floor and soggy underwear. Tents built from cheap synthetic materials are often budget-friendly and lightweight, but they don't always hold up the best. In adverse conditions, canvas tents, while a bit more expensive, are worth their weight in gold.

Kodiak is one of the top brands in the canvas tent market. It manufactures a wide range of canvas tents, including its Flex-Bow tents that sleep up to eight people, and stove-ready canvas cabins that are more like portable homes and can comfortably sleep 10. The bulky size of Kodiak's tents means they're better suited to car camping than backpacking — even its two-person tent weighs 30 pounds (including poles and stakes) — but the functional benefits are manifold.

The extra weight of canvas tents makes them more stable and better insulated, both of which you'll be glad of during shoulder season. They're renowned for their breathability — vital during sunny afternoons — and are adept at preventing condensation. Canvas is also naturally water resistant, so you don't need to worry about coating the tent in polyurethane to keep the rain or snow out.

Kodiak's flex-bow tents range from $449 to $899; its canvas cabins go up to $1,399. But despite the high costs, there are many glowing appraisals of Kodiak tents online. In a section of the Kodiak website called Love Letters, consumers have praised the tents for withstanding bear scratches, remaining water resistant during storms, surviving gale-force winds, as well as for attributes like warmth, comfort, durability, and spaciousness. One reviewer even mentioned his Kodiak braved a 10-hour whiteout during Burning Man, with effectively no playa dust making it through the pores.

Kodiak's tents have also garnered plenty of positive reviews in forums and elsewhere online. One of the main negatives is that because canvas retains moisture, you need to dry the tent out, which can be difficult if you don't have access to a large, dry space. But this is a minor issue in the grand scheme of things. If you're a serious, all-weather camper, Kodiak's range is hard to beat.