TL;DR - I continue to be really happy with the main tent, for the most part. I am not however, happy with the rain fly on it due to the "stargazer" windows never ever drying off.
The @Cascadia Tents Mt. Shasta Pioneer tent has been a game changer when camping. Being up off the (often wet) ground, having quick setup and tear-down, and just being all-around more comfortable are big pluses in my book. However, since the beginning there's been a problem: drying the rain fly.
When I ordered the tent, I splurged and extra couple hundred dollars for the "stargazer" option. These are two "windows" in the roof of the tent which allow you to look up at the stars as you fall asleep. However, they've never really worked, and now I hate them - for two reasons:
- The plastic they are made of is not clear enough to actually see the stars. I mean, you can tell there are stars in the sky, but everything's blurry because the plastic is all "warped." So, they fail at their reason to be.
- The bigger problem however is that they never dry off. Unlike a normal rain fly that heats up in the morning sun to evaporate any water (rain, dew, etc.), these plastic windows either reflect all sunlight/heat or just let it pass through, and so they never warm up. As such, any water on them (and water droplets form on both the inside and outside of them) takes forever - literally hours and hours - to dry.
So, nearly every morning I find myself balancing on the edge of the truck rails with a beach towel in my hand, toweling off the sopping wet stargazer part of the tent - while everyone else (with normal rain flys) just let their tents dry out in the morning sun.
#fail 
Unfortunately, I don't have a solution to this problem. Really what I'd like is a non-stargazer rain fly. However, I don't know if CVT even makes those anymore since stargazers are now "standard" on all tents. Plus, I bet they are expensive.
My recommendation to anyone else getting a tent: do everything you can to avoid the stargazer (or similar roof-window) option.
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