Camping is much more enjoyable with a tent.

The MU vs. kU basketball game is always a huge deal, but this year it was even bigger. Since we're moving the SEC, we'll no longer be in the same conference as kU and they won't play us anymore. So, this year was the last year in a long time that we'll play kU at home. On top of that, ESPN's College Gameday came out to cover our game.

People started lining up at Mizzou arena Wednesday night. The show didn't start until Saturday morning.

Disclaimer: This picture was actually taken Friday night, though most of these tents were up by Thursday morning

My friend and I arrived around 10 p.m. Friday night. We were nine hours early but still significantly far back in line. Our plan, which was decided way back in December, was to just wait around on the sidewalk until the show started. But then mother nature decided this would be a great time for a rainy weekend. Our new plan was now to just wait around on the sidewalk with umbrellas and ponchos. This worked out well for the first 15 minutes, but then we got tired and wanted to sit down. The ground was pretty wet, so we used our problem solving skills and set out a poncho to sit on.

This worked out great for the next 15 minutes until it started to rain again and the poncho got wet and the realization that we still had to wait around for eight hours sunk in. We put our problem solving skills to work again and decided the only way to survive was to go get a tent.

We got the people in line next to us to watch our spots and we loaded up into the car and drove to Walmart. It felt so great to be in a warm, dry environment. Once at Walmart, we headed back to the camping section and found the tents. Luckily for us, the cheapest one was an affordable $35. Except there were none on the shelf. The next cheapest tent was $70, which was way too expensive, so this $35 tent was really our only option. 

We asked the sales associate and she went into the back to look for the cheap tent. The two minutes she was in the back were excruciatingly suspenseful. If they didn't have one, we'd have to suffer in the rainy cold all night. Or drive to all the other Walmart's in town to find the tent.

It must have been our lucky day, because they had one! Several actually. She came back with quite a few boxes. We drove back to Mizzou Arena and pitched our tent in about 10 minutes.

Apparently everyone else had the same idea as us (except they didn't wait until they were already in line to go get one), because we were just one of about 13 identical $35 Walmart tents. The night got significantly better as we enjoyed camping inside of our nice, dry, semi-warm tent. We got delicious cheese pizza and even managed to get about an hour of sleep.

The morning (aka 5 a.m.) rolled around and it was finally almost time for Gameday! Someone, I'm assuming the coordinators of the event, came to knock on our tent and tell us to pack it up so we could actually stand in a real line, rather than a conglomeration of tents. 

My friend and I weren't going to the actual basketball game, so we got to line up in the line for people just wanting to attend Gameday. The other line was for students who wanted priority seating for the actual game as well as Gameday. My line was much, much, much shorter than the other line, since most students were going to actual game. Despite coming to wait in line 2 days later than most students, we got great seats! We were only about five seats from the center section, and only about four rows from the front.

Gameday was super fun, my sign made it on national television and we beat kU! All around great experience, and now I have a tent for the next time I camp out for something.