Starting out with the Expedition
I received my Expeditions yesterday, 1 for me and 1 for my son. I set mine up this morning with the 10x8 fly and laid in it for a while. It seems pretty comfortable. My son and I will sleep in them tonight for the first time using the inexpensive Walmart blue pad. These are our first hammocks so we are really looking forward to backpacking with them.
Enjoyed our first night out
My son and I slept in the hammocks last night for the first time in our backyard. We live in North Carolina just outside Charlotte and had a fantastic opportunity to test the weatherproofness as we had rain all night from Tropical Storm/Depression Barry.
We both slept great and learned a few things. I learned that because I am heavier than my son that I didn't have my hammock up high enough. Towards the morning I would occasionally bump my hip bone on the ground when moving around. As long as I was still, everything was fine. I suspect the nylon webbing stretched quite a bit because upon examination in the morning, all knots were fine and nothing had slipped down the tree. I was tempted in early hours to get up and tighten the webbing to the tree, but with the constant rain, I decided to just not move around too much. I have ordered some 1" polypropo webbing and descending rings and look forward to trying that.
The other thing we learned is that after about 8 or nine hours of constant rain, the flys started to leak. I was wakened by an occasional mist as a drop would fall and hit the bug screen. I normally get up at 4:00 so I got up and went into the house with my sleeping bag only just barely damp. Almost as if I had slept under the stars and had a heavy morning dew. Not too bad. Right now we both use synthetic mummy bags so it was not a problem. My son on the other hand continued to sleep on through the early morning until I woke him up at 7:30 as he was starting to get wet (even though he did not know it).
I am hoping a can of spray water repellent will solve that problem. Overall we both really enjoyed our sleep and we really look forward to doing some local backpacking in the Uwharrie Forest and spend a few nights sleeping in the wilderness.