Although you can camp with nothing between you and the stars but your sleeping bag, most people choose to take along a tent. A tent provides shelter from sudden rainstorms and provides a place to safely stash your stuff. Specialized tents allow you to pack the right shelter for your trip, and to accommodate all the members of your group.
Wall Tents
Wall tents are larger tents with tall straight walls and peaked roofs. A wall tent forms a shelter shaped like a little hut. Wall tents have enough room for crowds, and can serve as kitchens, dining rooms or dormitories. You'll need more space to set up a wall tent, and have many supporting poles and stakes, making them more time-consuming to set up. You might choose a wall tent if you plan to stay in camp for several weeks, or even if you need temporary shelter at home. Wall tents are also known as cabin tents.
Dome Tents
Dome tents set up quickly and are easy to move from place to place. Dome tents, shaped like igloos or domes, use shock corded poles instead of straight aluminum poles to form the frame of the tent. A shock cord is a thick elastic cord running through several segments of plastic or aluminum tubing. The cords can be folded or wrapped for storage, but when you stretch it out, the segments of tubing snap together to form a flexible pole that runs through channels on the outside or inside of the tent. These shock-corded poles are out of the way and leave more room in the center of the tent. Dome tents can accommodate a single person or an entire family. A rain fly suspended above the dome keeps rain from leaking in.
A-Frame Tents
A-frame tents rely on metals poles inside the tent to support a canvas or polyester shell. These tents may have low walls 1 or 2 feet tall or the roof may extend all the way to the ground. When children draw pictures or simple triangular tents or "pup tents" they're drawing A-frame tents. A-frame tents set up quickly and the shells folds into a compact package, but most poles break down into only two or three pieces. You can find A-frame tents designed for singles or families. You may also see pole tents referred to as pole tents.
Hoop Tents
Instead of straight poles, hoop tents use curved hoops to stay up. The hoops are integrated in the body of the tent. When you're ready to use the tent, you stretch it out and stake the sides. Tall hoops don't offer much stability, so hoop tents usually only have enough room for one or two people. This compact design makes them popular with backpackers.
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