Worst Campsite Neighbors?

[Guest]

Not to dwell on the negative, but some of the bad neighbor campsite experiences have bordered on the absurd, and some have been especially memorable.

There was this:

There are two gentlemen camped at a tiny, tight site at the mouth of Deadhorse Canyon. They hail me as I paddle in and, when I ask about camping further up in the canyon, one replies with an oddly hesitant Wellll, you can go have a look

I will do that. There are four or five boats beached on the gravel bar at the head of the canyon, where it opens up into a massive bowl shaped wash fringed by cliffs. A rental Grumman or two, a couple of cheap rec kayaks and an ancient Blue Hole. Most of the gear is still in the boats, in garbage bags and plastic storage bins, the rest is scattered hap hazardously in the wash.

As I am securing my canoe a middle aged guy walks up with a scowl.

Hi, sorry to disturb you, I am just looking to see if there is room for a solo tent back here.


He folds his arms, looks pissed and replies Nope, no room back here


I give a quizzical look over his shoulder at the acres of open ground behind him and he moves to block the trail and glares at me. He is itching for a confrontation and the old redneck deep within me begins to boil.

We had a tense little standoff while I decided which way the day was going to go, and eventually my desire for peace overcame my urge put him face down in the dirt. I fingered the rescue knife on my vest and called him a Di@$head in the most dismissive and disgusted tone I could muster. That seemed a derogatory with which he was familiar, and he did not press the issue.

I paddled on in search of a better and kinder world.

I still wonder if I made the right decision, and kinda wished I had forced the issue. And fantasize about waking up at 3am and setting that his canoe adrift.

The most memorable bad-neighbor will always be the episode with NightSwimmer and the Russians.

We were headed back to camp after a day paddle on Alleghany Reservoir. Rounding the point into camp Nightswimmer sees a pontoon boat, beached on my campsite.

Nightswimmer is a local legend, a timber surveyor, friends with the Rangers and concessionaires and everyone else in the area. The second he saw a pontoon boat on my site he went into race stroke, and Ed can haul arse when he wants to.

By the time the rest of us reached the site the inevitable confrontation was already underway.

A party of Russians in a rental houseboat had decided to stop for a picnic lunch. On my site, with my paid-for permit displayed on the post, taking up my table a few feet from my tent with a stove, cooler, food and a fancy Samavor.

The rest of us arrived in time to hear the Russians explaining Oh, oh kay, vee stay vun, maybe two hours


Nightswimmer is built like a fire hydrant. It a fire hydrant were made of solid lead. Ed does not like Russians; I think it is a Polish ancestry WW II thing. Whatever, that was very much the wrong response.

He got as seriously do-not-eff-with-me as I have ever seen and began hurling their gear into the pontoon boat. He said only one four more words.

You. Have. Two. Minutes.

He was not kidding. 120 second later he dead lifted the end of their pontoon boat, which had been driven well ashore on the sandy beach, and essentially threw their boat out into the deepwater cove.

I have a lot of fond tripping memories, but remembering those two rude Russian guys, not yet aboard their rental boat, desperately hiking their shorts up to crotch level while wading into chest deep water trying to catch their boat, shouting TOO VAR, TOO VAR!, will always be a favorite.

They may not have been the worst campsite neighbors, but they were the most memorable.

 

[Steve in Idaho]

Worst campsite neighbors?

Dam beavers. I check for beaver sign before picking a camp near water now. Always. Those of you who don't snore may not understand.

 

[yellowcanoe]

Wow I was lucky.. We had fantastic neighbors both trips down the Green but most nights we were solo on the campsite.. Horseshoe Canyon we did share with others.. OK that was our worst neighbor instance
One of the other parties had a Lab. They were quite out of sight of us.. but the Lab could smell dinner at 500 feet and came to eat ours before it was all cooked...
Unfortunately the Labs owners did not offer beer when we dragged their miscreant but lovable child back to their site.

Our best neighbors at Spanish Bottom not only offered beer but we had a two day sandbar bocce tournament.. If you lost you drank

 

[DanG]

Ile d'Orleans downstream from Quebec, 1975. A maitre d from Quebec City's finest restaurant (or so he assured us) was in the adjacent campsite. He sauntered over and began exercising his charm on my bride, inviting us for wine, for filet de sole, for many other delicious items that my memory has failed to retain. Whilst we wined and dined, M. Maitre assured my bride that she was the fairest flower to ever grace the isle, that his wife was a bitter woman who failed to appreciate the finer things (him), that he took this annual vacation here to get away from said wife, that he and she (my bride) should leave the deaf and dumb husband (me) who did not deserve her (well, true enough) and come with him to Quebec City where he would show her the delights of something something (it was in French). I was enjoying the conversation as my faithful bride signed everything M. Maitre said.

Then, "Why do you wave your hands about so?" asked M. Maitre.

"Ah, I interpret for my husband what you say."

"So your husband, he knows all I have said?"

I mustered my biggest smile and answered M. Maitre myself: "Oui!"

 

[deerfly]

some of the clowns I camp and fish with are alcoholics with a fishing problem. They are great fun, but the drinking and carrying on well past midnight can be hard to take sometimes.

Closest I've come to fighting with other campers is over generators running all night at public camp sites that are supposed to be primitive only.

 

[Terry Q]

Cainpatch, Everglades Park. Campsites need to be reserved since they are few and far between. This is one of the biggest sites and was maxed out with four parties and about a dozen people. Everyone else were fisherman with their flats boats.

Started out bad when one guys cpap ran out of battery power. He went from tent to tent asking for batteries since he needed a good nights sleep and was apparently unprepared for the number of nights he was staying out.

Around ten pm another fishing boat shows up, this time with three highly intoxicated fisherman without a camping permit. Crowd in another couple tents. Worse, they had a generator, so the guy with the cpap convinces them to let him use it, running about 20 feet from everyone else crammed into the camp site.

For more excitement, the rangers show up. That led to citations and a good talking too. They let the drunks stay since it was unsafe making them leave. They must have suspected something since it is a long way to cainpatch and down a two or three mile long creek that is a no wake zone.

Party went on for hours, but was mostly drowned out by the noise of the generator. One of the loudest nights I have ever experienced camping in a wilderness area.

 

[Guest]

when on a long hard adk trip, I planned to have a lazy layover day on a wilderness site with a sandy beach. The people in the next campsite left till evening and left their dog tied up in their camp. he barked constantly all day.

 

[Guest]

I had not even considered State Park campground experiences.

A young couple pulls into the next campsite over, an electric site. Each of them is driving a jacked up pickup truck with a child passenger and a ton of WTF gear in the back.

They proceed to set up camp, including a full perimeter of patio lights strung between trees. Those were not enough to ally their fear of the dark, so at night they ran multiple gas Coleman lanterns. It was like camping on planet Mercury.

That was not the worst part; they were NASCAR fans. Or maybe drag race fans, they had brought a full sized drag race starting light, which also illuminated the night.

That was also not the worst part. Their two kids were maybe 6 and 7 years old. It became apparent why they needed both trucks

They had brought battery operated cars for the kids to race around the campsite loop. Cheap battery operated cars with hollow plastic wheels. The wheel noise was ungodly, as was the nighttime illumination. If they had smelled bad it would have been a sensory trifecta.

The most satisfying bad neighbor campground experience was the three meth-heads that pulled into a site across the loop. A shirtless snaggle-toothed older guy and two young bucks in wife beaters, all meth haggard gaunt.

Seconds out of the truck the boom box is blaring rap music. A few minutes after that we look over and, I have no idea how they achieved this, kerosene maybe, they had a Burning Man bonfire blazing with 6 foot tall flames. They are hooting, hollering and cursing, leaping about the fire. Ah, crystal meth.

Soon after a Park Ranger paid them a visit and the cursing and rap music got turned down a notch. We were watching this interaction to see how it went. As the Ranger walks back to her vehicle she stops to peer through their truck windows and then continues on her way.

Ten minutes pass and suddenly the park is swarming with Law Enforcement Rangers, State Troopers, everything but the SWAT team. All three meth-heads are immediately led off in handcuffs.

Figuring they were going to be in the hoosegow for a while we helped ourselves to what was left of their firewood.

I am pretty much done with campgrounds.

 

[Steve in Idaho]

Wow. Our definition of "wilderness" here does not allow any engines. No outboards, no generators, not even and electric chainsaw. Pretty much weeds out the two-legged nuisances. Most of the more popular FS managed campgrounds around here have camp hosts, who do a good job of keeping the lid on things. I feel very privileged. "Dispersed" camping is a crapshoot though, unless we go very remote - which, fortunately, isn't difficult.

OTOH - another worst campsite neighbor was deep in the Frank Church Wilderness. A hunting guide/outfitter, who was attempting to convince us and others camped nearby that he had exclusive rights on the land we were camped on (he didn't, and we knew it). He rode up on his horse and, with hand on his holstered sidearm, informed us that he would throw our camp in the river if we didn't move it. Without going into detail, we convinced him that would be a very bad idea. So in the night, he drove his ponies through our camp...with cowbells on.

He'd been treating others the same before we were there (which is possibly why the ideal spot was open), and while we were out hunting, a couple of F&G officers showed up, dressed and outfitted as hunters themselves. They got the same welcome. The rest is history.

 

[27 ELKS]

I must admit, I was once the bad neighbor. In my early 20's there were 4 of us camping at a site and we may have been a bit loud. We got our pay back at 7 the next morning, when the couple at the next camp site unleashed their 3 kids on their big wheel tricycles, riding circles around our tents. dang, those big wheels are loud, even more so when you're hung over.

 

[Odyssey]

Wow. Some of those neighbour nightmare stories are enough to keep me home. Almost. Either I've been really lucky or really good at being antisocial. Ha. I try to plan a trip to avoid people. That doesn't sound very neighbourly I know but part of getting away from it all involves getting away from people. Of course depending on route and circumstance we do cross paths with people, sometimes even sharing the same lake (oh my) but can't remember any horrific experiences. Or maybe I've just blotted them from my memory.
I do remember a barking retriever at a site down the shore from us which must've spent too many hours cooped up in the canoe; it went absolutely ecstatic escape silly racing around barking and running. I felt fairly sure it was telling us all "..and here's a stick and here's a rock and here's a tree and here's log and ...squirrel!!" Annoying noisy, but it didn't last. Wolves kicked up a fuss later that night, back in the forested hills behind our camp. That was howling I never get tired of hearing. Between the long eerie calls came pup yips and yaps, finally echoing and dying around the hills. And then there was Peace at last.
A youthful group built a bonfire down the lake from us one time, and did the whole crazy whooping and hollering thing. Alcohol and hormones might have been involved. But their party stamina matched their wood supply, because within the hour both was nearly spent. Not long after the only sound I could hear was the soft simmering of my own small fire. Peace at last.
One summer a noisy group of men moved in to a site on "our island". They would've been annoying if they hadn't been so darned nice. We wound up getting to know one another as friends and neighbours. One last hurrah around a campfire with drinks, snacks and stories turned a neighbour rating from worst to first. Wife and I walked through pools of shadow and splashes of starshine, back to "our side of the island". There wasn't a breath of wind that night, only Peace at last.
On another trip one night, after my brother and our two sons had stumbled off to bed I sat up late tending the low fire. I had let the cup of coffee go cold in my hands, I was so mesmerized listening to the fire talk to me, the wailing across the water confused me before it startled me. I could just make out a canoe pulled up on shore and a tent settled in the trees. A baby was crying and giving all it had while hushing and shushing by a mom and dad did little to calm the situation. I wasn't bothered much at first, but it did begin to get under my skin. I wanted to call across for them to relax and don't stress about their bawling babe. As this went on I reminisced about my own wife and children at home and began to feel homesick. I missed them terribly. Soon enough (or maybe not soon enough) the caterwauling faded and I guess they all went to bed. I sat up awhile longer, slipping into the black lake for a past-midnight swim. I felt weightless and cool, floating between two heavens.
Peace at last.

 

[Odyssey]

Okay, there was that one time our neighbours could've been a little more considerate, but they couldn't help it. We were car camping our way down the spine of Appalachia soaking up the sights and sounds from Pennsylvania on down to North Carolina. Some of us soaking up more than others. One late afternoon with kids in tow I was getting the lowdown from the Head Ranger in his Park office of all the do's and don'ts. He was friendly and frank with a drawl as wide as the Skyline Drive view. Our kids were awestruck by his speak. Later a campsite kid sauntered in while we were building a fire for roasting hotdogs. He told us he and his pa were from Georgia here on a fishin' trip. Our kids were once again suitably impressed by his twang talk. He chose to rename our youngest daughter HillyBilly, and so that name stuck, much to her disgust. I asked him to stay for supper but his dad wouldn't hear of it. They all ran off and played catching fireflies because according to our young pal Cody "Their butts light up!" Later a gang of girls invited our eldest daughter to join their family gathering for a S'Mores party. Their lyrical young voices decorated the evening air like filigree, their honeyed accents rising and falling across the park as they laughed over marshmallow and chocolate. Mom and Dad sat in front of a quiet fire listening to the play around us, happy that our kids were making friends as easily as greeting new neighbours. But it all came at a terrible cost. Every once in awhile over campfire smoke and S'Mores one of our now grown kids will copycat their old newfound friends with a tender southern drawl. The original sounded much better than the imitation, but I agree that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. I had really wanted to be left alone in quiet contemplation with wife and kids that evening and have been ever thankful that those plans never quite worked out. Altho' our HillyBilly still doesn't like her name.

 

[Steve in Idaho]

"Their lyrical young voices decorated the evening air like filigree...."

I never got the hang of such descriptive writing. I sure enjoy reading it though.

 

[Terry Q]

A weird, yet delightful camping experience awaited me while paddling the Mississippi solo. A few days from the Missouri, Ohio, Mississippi confluence I found a nice little island to camp on.

Just after dark a power boat shows up with three guys planning on spending their weekend hanging out. The weird thing was that these three guys were all bread/bakery delivery drivers from three different companies. I asked who sold the best bread thinking that I could start an argument, but they were all in agreement as to the best brand of bread. I thought that was weird too.

Apparently they all met delivering bread, thought they had something in common and started camping out together several times a year. They shared drink, food and interesting conversation until I could no longer stay awake.


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[jefffski]

My best worst camp neighbour was a humpack whale in the bay in front of our campsite on Hanson Island on Johnstone Strait in BC. It woke me up at about 2 a.m. with it's heavy breathing. Eventually, I crept down to the shore just to listen for about half an hour before I got tired and ambled back to bed overwhelmed with gratitude to have experienced that wonderful wilderness disturbance.