Camping, hunting and other outdoor activities are among today's most popular leisure activities. While different types of camping and different types of people will have different items in their camping equipment collection, just about all of these collections will have a tent. The tent provides basic necessities of protection from the elements and a surface other than the ground upon which to sleep.
In addition to the tent, most people will utilize additional objects to provide comfort and padding while sleeping. While pillows and blankets are common, air mattresses are particularly ubiquitous for outdoors excursions due to the fact that they provide complete and portable cushioning, are relatively lightweight and compact, and can accommodate multiple persons. However, air mattresses suffer from the disadvantage that they take up a considerable amount of space inside the tent due to their height requirement. This is especially a factor in smaller tents where there is not a lot of vertical height to begin with.
Various attempts have been made to provide tents with cushioned or inflatable sleeping surfaces. Examples of these attempts can be seen by reference to several U.S. patents. U.S. Pat. No. 5,562,115, issued in the name of Sotelo, describes a combined tent and sleeping mat system including a cushioned mat along a bottom surface.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,615,521, issued in the name of Simerka, describes a tent flooring system including a support structure with two (2) separately inflatable bladder members fastenable to a bottom portion of a tent.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,632,291, issued in the name of Botbyl et al., describes a circular air mattress and tent including an air valve in a sidewall permitting pneumatic inflation of the mattress.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,660,197, issued in the name of Boe et al., describes a portable tent with an integrated inflatable mattress formed between a double cushioned floor portion of the tent.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,913,322, issued in the name of Gallant et al., describes a tent with a plurality of inflatable mattresses which can be secured to a base portion of the tent in a side-by-side orientation.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,167,898, issued in the name of Larga et al., describes a tent with an integral air mattress and a bottom surface including a series of intersecting grooves permitting air flow and water flow underneath the tent.
Additionally, ornamental designs for a tent with an inflatable floor exist, particularly U.S. Patent Nos. D 330,745 and D 546,914. However, none of these designs are similar to the present invention.
While these apparatuses fulfill their respective, particular objectives, each of these references suffer from one (1) or more of the aforementioned disadvantages. Many such apparatuses, when actuated or inflated, reduce the amount of usable space within the tent. Also, many such apparatuses are difficult to inflate. Furthermore, many such apparatuses do not enable separate use of the tent or mattress functions of the apparatus. Accordingly, there exists a need for a tent providing mattress cushioning features but without the disadvantages as described above. The development of the present invention substantially departs from the conventional solutions and in doing so fulfills this need.