ChasingOurTrunks
Well-known member
Hi folks,
We've recently acquired ourselves a new "Summer Home" in the form of a Go Overland Canada Expedition XL tent. We've only got 6 nights in it so far, but I wanted to share a bit about our really positive experience with this tent.
Part 1: (Forum Word Count doesn't like longer threads)
Our Experience: We got our first RTT in 2011-ish; a Tepui Kukenam. That lasted us until 2017 when we wanted something a bit bigger to accommodate our growing family, but our budget was tight so we picked up a Smittybilt Overlander XL. That tent lasted us until this winter. Our typical use case is to do most weekends out in the tents, and typically we spend 4 to 6 weeks per year on a single longer trip. Additionally, when I've travelled for work I generally will skip the hotel and use the roof tent instead. All told, my napkin math suggests we've got at least 400 nights in roof tents, maybe as many as 600 - we've never properly kept track but looking back over our various trips and adventures and this seems to be about right. I bring this up only because we know what we like and don't like in a tent, and have a good bit of familiarity with them. It was finally time to upgrade and the tax return came in at the same time, and so after a lot of research we decided to go with the Go Overland Canada Expedition XL.
Our previous Tepui tent somewhere in the Northwest Territories, and our Smittybilt XL somewhere in British Columbia.
Go Overland Canada: We are not in any way affiliated with this brand and we paid full sticker price for our tent. This is a Canadian company, though like every other tent manufacturer the tents appear to be made overseas and shipped throughout Canada. You can see the model of tent we bought at this link: https://gooverland.ca/products/xpeditionxl
Why did we choose it?: There were a lot of factors that contributed to our choice but the highlights are:
Ultimately we settled into three models: the iKamper, the 23Zero Armadillo, and the newcomer - the Expedition XL. What ultimately swayed us to the XL was the Canadian availability, the fabric quality, and the inclusion of a few extra accessories.
First Impressions: Ordering was simple and easy and also gave us a chance to test the customer service; I had my old address saved in my Shop account (the payment provider that Go Overland uses), and when I first entered my CC info with the correct address it got flagged as a fraud alert by my CC company. I quickly cleared that up and reprocessed the transaction but didn't reset my address, and so within a few moments I got my shipping confirmation that showed my tent was going to be dispatched to the wrong part of the country. This was 100% an attention to detail issue on my part, but GoOverland was very easy to get in touch with. I emailed them, and then noticed that they had a WhatsApp contact on their page so I used that too. They were super responsive and helpful, and got the address corrected.
When it arrived, it was extremely well packaged and the quality of the tent was clear as soon as we opened the box. As I mentioned above we live in an RV and so we actually had to get the tent delivered to a local UPS store - which is outside of what they'd typically take but they were willing to do us a favour - but since the only vehicle we have is our Overlanding vehicle, the only way to get this tent home was to install it. The tent went on fairly easily. The hardware is good quality and attachment bolts used knobs instead of nuts so no special tools were required. We did take a little rip out of the weather stripping when installing it because it scraped on a sharp bit of our cap, but that was our error and it was minor. Installation took about 15 minutes.
What was in the box: The tent (surprise!), a winter insulation kit including window inserts, the awning poles, a ladder cover, two roof bars (you can put a roof load on the Expedition XL, like a kayak) and shoe bags. It also came with awning tie-outs and a tent-peg hammer. Basically everything you'd need to mount it and go camping was included. It also included an extra support pole that will "peak" the roof a bit if you are out in the snow to prevent too much weight but is otherwise unnecessary - a really neat idea.
View attachment IMG_4668.jpeg
We've recently acquired ourselves a new "Summer Home" in the form of a Go Overland Canada Expedition XL tent. We've only got 6 nights in it so far, but I wanted to share a bit about our really positive experience with this tent.
Part 1: (Forum Word Count doesn't like longer threads)
Our Experience: We got our first RTT in 2011-ish; a Tepui Kukenam. That lasted us until 2017 when we wanted something a bit bigger to accommodate our growing family, but our budget was tight so we picked up a Smittybilt Overlander XL. That tent lasted us until this winter. Our typical use case is to do most weekends out in the tents, and typically we spend 4 to 6 weeks per year on a single longer trip. Additionally, when I've travelled for work I generally will skip the hotel and use the roof tent instead. All told, my napkin math suggests we've got at least 400 nights in roof tents, maybe as many as 600 - we've never properly kept track but looking back over our various trips and adventures and this seems to be about right. I bring this up only because we know what we like and don't like in a tent, and have a good bit of familiarity with them. It was finally time to upgrade and the tax return came in at the same time, and so after a lot of research we decided to go with the Go Overland Canada Expedition XL.
Our previous Tepui tent somewhere in the Northwest Territories, and our Smittybilt XL somewhere in British Columbia.
Go Overland Canada: We are not in any way affiliated with this brand and we paid full sticker price for our tent. This is a Canadian company, though like every other tent manufacturer the tents appear to be made overseas and shipped throughout Canada. You can see the model of tent we bought at this link: https://gooverland.ca/products/xpeditionxl
Why did we choose it?: There were a lot of factors that contributed to our choice but the highlights are:
- Size. We are a family of 3, with a dog and a cat, and we want all of us up in the tent. That meant we could have gotten away with a 'queen sized' tent, but we wanted a bit of extra space for those rainy days and for comfort as our little one gets older. So, we wanted at least a "king sized" tent that would be a direct size replacement for the SmittybiltXL.
- Hard Shell: We live in a very damp climate, and both zippers and velcros that hold soft shell covers in place have some level of water ingress, especially at highway speeds. For us, it starts raining in October and doesn't end until May, and we do not have a garage (we live in an RV full time) and so we didn't have a space to open the tent and dry it when it got accidentally wet; that was the death of our previous tent as it went moldy despite our moderate efforts to prevent it. We also have found that the soft covers are not super durable for our use case - we had to replace the Tepui one due to rips, and our Smittybilt cover was patched with tape.
- Quick pitch: The soft cover clamshell tents are fine, but we wanted something that was just a bit more simple and quick to pitch and stow.
- We wanted a tent that represented value more than cheapness; the stated weights of the fabric, the included accessories, and the design elements all played into this decision. For instance, a $3500 tent that you can purchase a winter insulation kit and awning for $500 a piece is not as good a deal as a $4300 tent that includes these things.
Ultimately we settled into three models: the iKamper, the 23Zero Armadillo, and the newcomer - the Expedition XL. What ultimately swayed us to the XL was the Canadian availability, the fabric quality, and the inclusion of a few extra accessories.
First Impressions: Ordering was simple and easy and also gave us a chance to test the customer service; I had my old address saved in my Shop account (the payment provider that Go Overland uses), and when I first entered my CC info with the correct address it got flagged as a fraud alert by my CC company. I quickly cleared that up and reprocessed the transaction but didn't reset my address, and so within a few moments I got my shipping confirmation that showed my tent was going to be dispatched to the wrong part of the country. This was 100% an attention to detail issue on my part, but GoOverland was very easy to get in touch with. I emailed them, and then noticed that they had a WhatsApp contact on their page so I used that too. They were super responsive and helpful, and got the address corrected.
When it arrived, it was extremely well packaged and the quality of the tent was clear as soon as we opened the box. As I mentioned above we live in an RV and so we actually had to get the tent delivered to a local UPS store - which is outside of what they'd typically take but they were willing to do us a favour - but since the only vehicle we have is our Overlanding vehicle, the only way to get this tent home was to install it. The tent went on fairly easily. The hardware is good quality and attachment bolts used knobs instead of nuts so no special tools were required. We did take a little rip out of the weather stripping when installing it because it scraped on a sharp bit of our cap, but that was our error and it was minor. Installation took about 15 minutes.
What was in the box: The tent (surprise!), a winter insulation kit including window inserts, the awning poles, a ladder cover, two roof bars (you can put a roof load on the Expedition XL, like a kayak) and shoe bags. It also came with awning tie-outs and a tent-peg hammer. Basically everything you'd need to mount it and go camping was included. It also included an extra support pole that will "peak" the roof a bit if you are out in the snow to prevent too much weight but is otherwise unnecessary - a really neat idea.
View attachment IMG_4668.jpeg
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