Well, my wife and I have notched our first experience in hammock camping. I guess we should call it hybrid camping since we also set up a tent as a back-up. We went with our three children (10, 8, & 4) and my wife's sister and her family (husband & 5 kids).
We set up our hammocks bunk bed style. We are easing into hammock camping so we bought an inexpensive tarp from Walmart. I made a continuous ridge line using the set-up instructions from theultimatehang.com. I set the tarp up as a rectangle. We bought a Therma rest Classic CCF pad and also used an exercise mat we already owned. Some friends let us borrow a couple of good sleeping bags as both of our bags were ones we've had since we were kids in the 80's. We put the pads in the hammocks and laid the sleeping bags on top and then we both had an extra blanket. It was down into the low 30's last night and our biggest concern was keeping warm.
We both slept in our clothes and outer gear. We both were nice and warm and comfortable. My wife slept in the top hammock and I slept in the lower one (just in case I completely goofed, she would squish me instead of the other way around). We both slept well for a little while. At one point in the night, I heeded the call of nature which woke my wife up. While she was warm and comfortable, she began to experience a little bit of claustrophobia from the tarp sagging a little and being bundled up so much. She tried to fight it but bailed into the tent. I continued to sleep in my hammock but then our youngest daughter woke up crying (this was her first night sleeping in a tent) so I bailed and joined them in the tent on an air mattress with my wife and youngest.
So, as we debriefed this morning, we decided we need to experiment more with hanging the tarp higher up from the top hammock so there is more visibility and headroom. I should have picked out trees that were a little further apart as well; this would have given us more flexibility with how we hung the tarp (our tarp is a 8x10 and that is a lot bigger when you are trying to hang it than when you are standing in a store aisle). We were probably over bundled but it was our first night sleeping out in this cold of weather (we've been running our air conditioners in Alabama for the past few weeks).
Our biggest takeaway was why everyone here likes sleeping in hammocks. It was way more comfortable sleeping in the hammock over the air mattress. We were using the same sleeping bags in both places and the hammocks were by far more comfortable. So we will continue with hammock camping and now get the kids involved. As it goes from winter to spring, we are going to hit the woods more often and experiment with making some of our own gear (like bug nets) and buying some things (like good sleeping bags) for everyone.
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