Worst camping story..

[Bobbie Mayer]

Well, the worst wasn't me camping, exactly. My daughter was turning 11, and the plan was to have a slumber party, only the six girls would camp out in the yard in tents. Smart mom, I'm thinking, it will be quiet inside with all the noise and talking going on outside.

Well, it worked that way for a few hours, then some of the girls got spooked, and they started to migrate (noisily) to the house. They were making somewhat of an effort not to wake me up, but of course they did. Finally two of them came in crying. Angelina, it seemed, was the brave remaining soul who wanted to sleep in the tent, and they were all upset because they didn't want to stay outside and also didn't want to leave Angelina alone in the tent. So they wanted me to go out and make Angelina come in!

I managed to talk my own daughter and one other into joining Ang in the tent instead, and things quieted down somewhat and we made it through the night. And you'd think I'd learned my lesson about preteen girls and slumber parties, but no, the next summer I let three of them have a sleepout on the beach in a tent.

They were allowed to have a fire (a small one.) At about 10 my father went out and yelled at them as they were throwing huge logs on the fire, which was now the size of a small burning house. They let it burn down and may have done some sleeping. At 5 AM they left it slightly doused and came in to my parent's basement where they (loudly again) ate candy and thought they were being quiet. Awhile later they came down to my house and went back to sleep until 3 PM. In the meantime I went over to check on the beach and found that the fire was NOT out, and dragged them out of bed to come and do a decent job of putting it out, pack up their things, and get ready to go home.

And that was the last campout.

My daughter is actually a very responsible 29 as of yesterday. I might even let her camp out again someday.

[Jonathan S.]

What you don't want to hear from your friend who brought the tent when camping in the spring in the Olympic Rain Forest - "OOOOh! That was a rainfly? I thought it was something extra that got mixed in with the tent accidently - so I didn't bring it."

enuf said . . . .


Then there was the 'perfect camping spot' on Homer Spit in Alaska - no one else camping anywhere near it. And it was perfect until the tide came in . . . it was a nerve-wracking night with water surrounding my little VW - barely enough dry sand to walk around the van. I was very glad when low tide finally arrived and the sand was firm enough to drive back to the road - to the amusement of all the locals who knew better than to try what I had done!!

I had a similar experience in Puerto Penasco Mexico. I pulled into Cholla Bay right at sunset to camp on the beach. After a few beers a friend and I saw a baja bug driving up and down the surf. We decided that looked like fun so we jumped into my 4cyl. Ranger and put it in reverse to go enjoy the same thing. I also remember putting on some loud fast music after jokingly stating "let put on some good gettin' stuck music". I pressed the gas and sunk to the axle, apparently I had picked the correct music. We then decided to walk back down to a bar we had seen further up the beach and try to find help. The bar was empty other than the bartender and two VERY drunk Americans who agreed to help us. As we were riding with them down the beach in their truck to go pull mine out, the other two guys stop and get into a fistfight with EACH OTHER. Luckily the driver won so we had still retained our help. By the time we were able to get my truck out the tide was coming in and was over my rear bumper. The next day I mysteriously got laryngytis and spend the rest of the trip not able to understand Spanish and not being able to even communicate in English. Somehow we managed to still enjoy ourselves.