Ranger Review: Wenzel Ivanhoe 6 at High Cliff State Park
Campground Review
High Cliff is a generally wooded and shaded campground on a cliff overlooking Lake Winnebago. The sites are average to above average size, with a good mix of electric and non-electric sites. We are tent campers and the ground was pretty flat and there was a good spot for our tents in our site. Our site was nice and spacious with a good fire-ring that had a grate that rotated. Typically I use an adjustable tripod grill, but since was a rainy weekend, it was nice to be able to not have to get that out. The one thing about our site(and the campground in general) in the rain was the mud. Since it is heavily shaded there isn't really any grass, so the ring forest floor soil turns mucky and muddy.
There is one main flush toilet/shower building in the campground, and a bunch of pit toilet buildings. The pit toilet buildings had some issues with the lights in some of them, but the shower/flush building was mostly clean and not too far away. There is also a really nice playground nearby.
Within the park are plenty of hiking/biking trails, a lookout tower, and there is beach access. The beach/water is definitely swimmable, but this isn't the most beautiful beach for swimming. When we were here, it was cool and rainy, so the most we did was put our feet in the water. There isn't much sand, but there are large grassy areas.
The weekend we were there a local theater group happened to be performing a minimal version of Romeo and Juliet. It was awesome.
Product Review
As a Ranger for The Dyrt, I get products to test from time to time, this time I got to test the Wenzel Ivanhoe 6 tent.
I've owned a bunch of tents throughout the years, but mostly they were small backpacking size tents. We have use a large 8-person Cabella's tent for the past 9 years for car camping, but it is time-consuming to set-up, so we thought the Wenzel Ivanhoe 6 would be a nice complement tent for us.
The Ivanhoe is part of Wenzel's "Tribute" collection, with a retro-inspired design. The Ivanhoe reminds me of my parents' old canvas tent. The Ivanhoe is a single-walled house-shaped tent made of weather-treated polyester and taped seams. It held up really well in the rainy weather we had camping and there was just one small area that the seam tape failed: a"troubleshooting" tag that hangs down inside the tent.
What I like:
The single pole design is simple and quick to setup
There is good airflow with the large screens on the doors and the two side windows; The rear vent is a nice touch
It has a great look and it well made
It actually fits in the bag it came in
What I don't like
The top peak vents don't really work
There was a slight leak by the tag (I'll use some seam-sealer to fix this for the future)
Since it isn't freestanding, there are a lot of guy lines that are easy to trip over in the dark
For a sub-$200 tent, this tent is awesome. It's easy to set up and looks great. It is a simple design that is spacious and comfortable for 3-4 people. It did great in rainy weather. I definitely recommend this tent for for those looking for a car camping tent around this size and want to spend less than $200.