Kelty Waypoint Car Awning - 11' Long x 13' 9" Wide - Olive Drab and Dark Gray

Video Transcript for Kelty Waypoint Car Awning Review

Hi everyone, it's Evangeline here at etrailer. And today, we're gonna be taking a look at our Kelty Waypoint tarp. This is a simple to install, almost-universal car awning right here at etrailer. So this awning is 11 feet by 13 feet and nine inches, but it's not a square or rectangular awning. You can see how we have our different corners, our different edges. This provides a lot more space than your traditional square awnings.

So the color we have here is dark teal and orange, which is my personal favorite. But you can also get it in a more low-key color, which is olive drab and dark gray. So we have a bunch of different awnings here at etrailer, and they come in different shapes, different sizes, and for different purposes. A lot of our awnings are mounted to the side of the vehicle and you can carry them as you go and very quickly just roll them out, and you suddenly have a shade. Now the downside to those awnings is since they are more permanently mounted, you usually need to have a roof rack or crossbars or rails in order to mount that awning.

What this does is this mounts to your wheels and to the back of your vehicle. So as long as you're in a park position, you don't need to do anything else or have anything else other than the awning, you can just get it set up just like that. Another similar awning we have here at etrailer is the Rightline Gear tailgate awning, and that's different too. It's a universal awning, which attaches to cars that have a hatch or ideally for your vehicles that are SUVs. So for this, whether you have a hatch, whether you have a truck, or if you just have a vehicle with a roof rack, you can just mount that up there and you don't have to open your hatch.

So you can keep your vehicle close and nothing gets inside as you have this awning mounted to your wheels and to the top of your vehicle. But you can also see here on the inside of our awning how we have plenty of room behind our vehicle. So we even have our bike rack mounted, and I didn't have to take it off in order to mount this awning, I could keep it right there. Also, while you don't have to have your hatch open and you can keep your car closed, you can open it if you need to, even with the awning on, since it's not directly mounted to the door. So as you can see here, if you just need to grab something real quick from your trunk, you can still do so.

So I actually invited some of my friends over since they we're on break. So this is Dave and this is Jonathan. They are usually in your install videos that you'll see here at etrailer, but you can see how this is plenty of room for multiple people. If you have your friends, if you have your family, with this awning, there's definitely enough room for all of you. So we've hung out here for a while. We've had some of our refreshments. You wanted some water, JonathanOh, thank you. What do you guys feel about this awning How did you like the whole experienceIt definitely provides some shade. I like there's enough room for a few people under here. We've got about four of us with the cameraman over there. So it's cool that we're all able to get a little bit of shade, especially if you're out, hanging out at some parties and stuff out in the sun all day and heat, come over here, relax a little bit, and get back out there. I mean, in the sun right now, it's probably low 70s, but here under the shade, it feels perfect. Yeah, how do you feel about the wind and the breeze Do you still think you get a good enough breeze, but not the heatOh yeah, for sure, for sure. Getting enough of a breeze that it feels nice and comfortable, but not like I'm gonna be blown away. So the pole itself is about 96 inches tall or about eight feet. So depending on your vehicle's height, you'll definitely get a lot of room, especially towards where that main pole is. So whether you're short like me or tall like Dave over here, you definitely have enough room to have a lot of fun. What we have here is really your awning material, where it is a nice, lightweight, but also sturdy material. What I always look at is the way things are sewn. So we have plenty of seams over here. You can see how everything just makes for a nice, smooth, but also sturdy seam, and it doesn't look like it's gonna come apart anytime soon. What I'm curious about is how water-resistant is this thing is this. Let's say a quick rain shower kicks up, and it does take awhile for you to tear down this awning. So how well does it hold up to water So just from that quick water test, if I feel underneath, my hand is not wet. So the water did not seep through. And you can see how it just beads up on top of the material and then pops right back off. So you can see here how much I really enjoyed our car awning with it all set up, it's a pretty large tarp. We have a flat floor area of about 120 square feet. Now of course, that will change a little bit, depending on where you drove your stakes down and how you have it set up, but it is a good sized tarp. Now let's take a look at first or I guess second, the install process, starting from when it's in the compact position. So here's our tarp. You can see the way it is stored inside our nice canvas bag. This all shows the color the tarp that's gonna be inside. We have this strap on each edge, so you can just carry it like this if you're out and ready to go camping. And now we're gonna open it up. It has an easy-to-pull zipper right over here, Opens up all the way to the edge, which I appreciate. And then here, we have our tarp. So it's wrapped with this ribbon, so let's just undo that ribbon. So we have our guylines. Those are already on the tarp itself, so that's good. I don't have to set that up just yet. Let's spread this all out. We got a decent size here. All right, so now I have it out with our tent stakes weighing it down and the straps are facing the vehicle while the guylines are facing away from the vehicle. So this end is gonna go up and over the vehicle and then tightened down to the wheel spokes. So what I'm doing first is just losing the straps so that's ready to go. So bringing our strap over to our wheel, I'm just gonna feed this through one of the spokes. Now I'm pretty sure you can just feed it around the spoke itself and use that to secure it, but I'm just gonna go ahead and fit it around the entire tire, mainly because I have the space to do so with this tire around the brakes. Then just slightly tighten that down, just make sure you don't over-tighten your straps. All right, now I'll do the same thing on the other side. And now it's time to set up the pole. So taking the main pole out of its own bag is secured by this rubber band, so we're just gonna go and set this up. It looks like everything has its own little place to go. Notice how the tension cord is actually a tension wire. So that's kind of nice to see because then you have an extra stability there. Now that we have the pole set up, we're then going to find the center grommet. So you just follow the center seam and you'll see this round grommet and that's where your pole goes. So this goes right through there, now pull the pole up. And away from your vehicle, now try to get it centered though, that's where your center seam is for. And at this point, this is when I'm gonna get a second person to help me out as I put all my guylines down. Now if you notice that the center of your tarp seems to be lifting up too much and away from your vehicle, that's when you have to make sure that your wheel straps are tightened down. And if you have a roof rack, just go ahead and connect the center straps to your roof rack. So here we have the included stakes and the guylines that are already connected to our tarp. So I'm just gonna drive the stakes down. I'm using a Coghlan's peg mallet just to give myself that extra force to drive these steaks down. So we have the corner and the middle guylines drove down and we're gonna do the front one now. So may I just say how I really like the way they tied down their guylines. It's already set up to the edges of your tarp, and all you need to do is just pull this one end and everything comes apart, making it so easy to drive your stakes down. They also have these really easy-to-use adjusters for your guylines. So just adjust accordingly on all of those lines. So while this is technically a one-person job, I highly recommend doing this with two people. In fact, normally, you would stake down your center guyline first as you have the center pole up. But because I had someone else holding that center pole up and it was really, really windy, I just went ahead and did the center and the edges. So it's really just playing around with your vehicle and where you are with finding out what's the best fit for you. So I still need to adjust some of the straps on the side, as well as some of the lines, just to make sure that it's tight all throughout the tarp and that it looks better. But for this process, I think it all went really well and it looks really good. So we took the roof rack off of our 4Runner, which I kind of wish we didn't do because if he did have a roof rack and some crossbars, this would be so much easier to tighten down. You can see here as I pull this strap, how much more tightness we get into tarp itself. It definitely works still even without a roof rack or crossbars, but that's something worth considering. You might have to still go onto your roof and adjust it manually yourself, or even possibly tie a bow and stern strap into the hood of your car or towards the front of your car. So my personal thoughts about this awning, or I guess car tarp is that it's definitely among my top picks when it comes to car awnings, and I've done a couple part awnings. I did the Rightline Gear SUV tailgate awning, which is definitely lighter and a more universal fit, but you have to attach it to a car's open hatch. So it doesn't fit all of your vehicles and could be a little tricky. Another awning I did was the Thule HideAway awning, and that was a lot of fun too, but it does mount to your roof rack and your crossbars, so it mounts permanently or more permanently than this would. So you get to carry it around everywhere, but it takes a little bit more work and maybe not as spacious as this. So you get a really spacious awning, you get really nice design, which is a personal opinion, you also get really good stability. It's kind of windy here at etrailer and our awning held up well with all the different stakes. So all in all, it checks off most of the boxes that you need for a really good car awning, and again, one of my top picks. And that was a look here at our Kelty Waypoint awning right here at etrailer. My name is Evangeline and I hope you enjoyed the journey..