Kelty Backroads Car Awning with Side Walls - Universal Fit

Video Transcript for Kelty Backroads Car Awning Review

Hey everyone, it's Evangeline right here at etrailer.com. Today we have the Kelty Back Roads Shelter. This is a car mounted awning/tent, which you can attach to your roof or to the tires of your vehicle. This creates a large shade that can hold up, even in windy conditions like this. We'll take a look at some of its features right here. This is a universal fit shelter, and it can fit most types of SUVs, cars, jeeps and even vans.

You don't need a roof rack to get this attached to your car, but it might be a little helpful and I'll show you later how to get it all set up and installed. The main difference between this shelter and other shelters from Kelty and other brands is gonna be the coverage. This is gonna have a more of a tent like structure where you have walls along the side, and then the other wall is going to be your vehicle. So if you want to get access into the shelter, this gives you a door access panel. You have these zippers for your door.

(zip whizzes) These are double-sided zippers, which are my favorite, which means that you can zip it up and down from the inside or the outside. You can also secure the door by rolling it up and utilizing the loop and the anchors along its side. You also have access along the sides of your shelter. We currently have these side walls down, just to give us more privacy as well as more protection from the sun. But you also have the option to unstake the sides and roll them up against your awning, securing them, creating an open sidewall.

You also have the option of a mesh window if you want even more breeze, but protection from insects and the sun. This doesn't give the full protection an actual tent would have though. As you can see, this really is mainly an awning. It doesn't have a floor, so if you do have water or insects crawling from underneath, nothing you can do about that. But something it does have, over a standing tent, is that adjustability.

You can get as much or as little coverage as you want, being able to move the corners around, and your only fixed point being the vehicle it's attached to, that's gonna be different from your ground tent. Being able to adjust where you stake your tent means you also get to adjust how much room you have inside your awning. This has enough space for around six or more people, depending on how you have your area set up. What matters is gonna be the height. So this can go from six feet, eight inches tall, all the way up to nine feet in height. That makes a difference, depending on the car you have this mounted to. I've dealt with a lot of different awnings and the experience changes from one to another. Kelty has always made some quality items. They've always had fun colors, and you can see from the inside, just the nice geometric design with all the seams. We have these lighter colors that allow light to come through, but also block out your UV rays and give you some shade. There's a good amount of wind coming through, but that's mainly 'cause it's really windy outside. I don't feel like I'm out in the elements though. This does feel like it gives you a lot of protection and just shade from the outdoors. It's pretty windy out here in Missouri, and we have 31 mile per hour gusts coming through. Setting this awning up was pretty tricky and we'll talk about that one later. And if this was other brands of awnings, I wouldn't even risk it. But I know that we have a lot of good design features in this one. A lot of quality materials, which is why I risked setting it all up. You can see that the canvas material is all holding well. Even with the gusts of wind. We have our fiberglass poles giving the structure to the awning, and when you have everything staked down, because Kelty reinforces their seams and also because of how they tape those seams, I know that I am protected from extremely strong winds, but also a little bit of water if it starts sprinkling out here. It is a more water resistant fabric than it is a waterproof fabric. So that adds into all the specs of it being a three season tent, spring, summer and fall. Plus being made of a 68D polyester denier, which is your stronger mid-weight rating material for tents. Ultra-light backpackers have lower denier counts. This is gonna be what's pretty common on your sturdier materials. So if water does fall onto your material, you'll notice that the water will bead up and not seep through. I don't recommend using this during a rainstorm. If possible, try to pack it up. But if it's just a quick shower, it's okay to leave this up. When attaching this to your vehicle, you do have two options. The first is the easiest. If you have a roof rack, then you have short buckles that can attach to that, creating a solid and close point. The second option is to attach your awning to your wheels. If you have your awning off the side, then go over your vehicle and attach it to those wheels. If you have your awning off to the back, then attach these straps to your rear wheels. Attaching it to your wheels has a little bit more hassle. So here's some tips. The first is try to clean off the spot on your rim that you're gonna attach to with a rag. That will prevent the dirt and soot from getting on you. The second thing is to make sure that your brakes have cooled and that you've parked for a good amount of time so that your wheels can cool off so you don't accidentally burn yourself. But once that's done, you just- (buckle clicks) bring the strap around your rim, tighten it down, and make sure the strap to the awning is tight as well. Setting up the awning, that was a whole process, mainly because it was really windy outside. Would've been a lot easier if we didn't have to deal with gusts of wind. So if it's windy like this is today, I do recommend having a friend help you out. Otherwise, it's pretty doable on your own. The first thing you do is get the awning. The awning comes in this very easy to use carry bag, which is helpful if you just need to throw it into your vehicle before your trip. You take the awning out of your bag and just lay it out on the ground where you're going to set it up beside your vehicle. Then you're going to get your different tent poles. So there's three poles. There's gonna be two long ones. Those are gonna put together and run crosswise. Once it's there, you then have your shape and this is what you're gonna bring to your vehicle and strap down. But once it was attached, it was simply a matter of getting our stakes, driving them down into the ground and also staking down our guy lines. All in all, I'm really impressed with the Kelty Back Roads Awning. It held up really well, even on a windy day like this. In fact, a windy day like this is a perfect time to really test the limits of our awning. We saw the different walls. We saw the coverage and space we had inside those walls. We saw how it looked and how it held up. For a universal fit awning, I think it did great. But that's the thing, it's a universal fit awning. It's pretty much a tent that attaches to your vehicle with straps. You're still gonna have to break down this awning, pack it up into a bag, put it in your vehicle, and then do everything all over once you get to your campsite. So if you don't like that extra hassle, you might consider some of our roof rack mounted awnings. A similar one would be the Rhino Rack Dome 1300. That one goes off the side or off the back based on your roof rack, and it has a similar dome structure. It can also get walls added onto it. The downside to the dome awning though, is those walls are sold separately, and you do have to have a roof rack first. So with that being said, the Back Road Shelter is a bit more versatile and it does give a lot of space. Everything is included, your stakes, your walls, your guy lines, without having to purchase anything extra. So for a universal fit awning that can go on any vehicle, the Back Road Shelter is a solid choice, and we saw how it works, even on a windy day here at etrailer.com. This was a look at the Kelty Back Road shelter. Check it out, and the other Kelty products, right here on our website. My name's Evangeline and I hope you enjoy the journey.