what was your worst night camping ever? - TravelPUNK Backpacker College Student Budget Travel Message Boards!

**kingcrazylegs** · 09-16-2005, 10:22 PM

Hiking in the rain today I started thinking "what was the worst night camping I've ever had"?

The one that takes the cake was 10 years ago - I was road tripping with a friend of mine and the destination that night was Eureaka Springs, Arkansas. We got to the camp ground in the middle of night, parked the car, and just pitched the tent as quickly as we could because it was really cold. We got in and fell quickly to sleep.

A couple hours later I woke up and instant thought two things; something smells strange and I'm wet. I sit up to realize it is poaring with rain and muddy water is gushing into the tent through the zipper and we are lying in about 6 inches of it. The smell was the mud. I woke up my friend and we got out. Only then we realized that we had camped righ at the bottom of two hills

We ended up trying to sleep in the car - wet and cold - didn't work out so well.

What about you? Worst ever?

**space virgin** · 09-17-2005, 12:07 AM

Sleeping in mud wouldn't be so fun.

This is just one in a loooong string of similar stories, but one night while I was judging a smaller horse show I unexpectedly had to stay the night. This was a small combined training event, which do not take place in a nice manicured arena in a snooty stable-- nope, they're usually way out on several hundred acres somewhere and everyone camps. That night there was no room in anyone's tent. So, since it had been a nice day, I wrapped up in an afghan and fell asleep under a tree. This wasn't unusual for the type of situation, I'd pretty much LIVED outside on a Navy base survival area for almost two months the previous summer. But around 2am I was woken up by rain. And all I had was a freaking knitted afghan.

So there was nothing for it-- I opened up the horse trailer, kicked the road apples [read: horse shit] off to the opposite side and laid down in there.

Oh, and another time I was stuck dead center in the middle of a huge two-room tent during a rainy night. A puddle formed in the roof of the tent, RIGHT above my face... the tent was definitely not waterproof, because I was subjected to Chinese water torture the rest of the night.

**ScarlotteDorian** · 09-17-2005, 07:13 PM

i guess it was when i was about 6 and we were on a family camping trip with my two older brothers, my sister, my mom and her new husband. all the girls were in one tent and all the guys in another. since our tent had been in the garage for god knows how long and we just threw it in the car without re-sealing it, of coarse it leaked....alot. my sister and i woke up in the middle of the night in pools of water and couldn't for the life of us wake up our mother. luckily we were in one of those family camp ground areas and there was a concrete wash/bathroom. we sat underneath a hand dryer all night taking turns pushing the button.

edited for spelling correction

**omisan** · 09-18-2005, 11:42 PM

My buddy and I - newbies to camping - getting separated from the rest of our party during a week-long trip into Yosemite backcountry. Just before nightfall, hardly any food on us (the others carried the bear containers due to weight distribution...), and out of clean water. 3 rapid river crossings, 2 rattlesnakes, and 1 night of two guys huddling together under one sleeping bag... I'll have to recount the whole story one time, but suffice it to say, it's one I never, ever want to repeat.

**kingcrazylegs** · 09-19-2005, 11:59 AM

^that sounds aweful

damnrepoman · 09-19-2005, 03:01 PM

My friends and I all ride quads and dirtbikes, and love to go down to Pismo Beach and ride in the sand dunes out there. Well it was like mid Dec. and freeezing cold when a friggin sand storm came up and started sand blasting all of us. We had to tear down the tents and put our tool boxes and fuel jugs on them so they wouldnt blow away! Now its about three hours into this and then it starts pouring rain. So we are now covered in sand and getting wet, and decide to climb into the two room tent that wasnt buried yet and ride it out. Yeah, so now theres 5 of us laying in this tent thats collapsed and partially buried trying to sleep cause theres nothing else to do. Wake up to find ever thing soaked and/or buried in sand. Oh Yeah! great fun!

**joanofarc** · 09-19-2005, 05:03 PM

i was camping in the desert (valley of the moon) with my ex-bf and his friend. we didn't have tents or anything and had just thrown our bags down in the sand... well - it totally started pouring that night, POURING and i sleep really hard. anyway, they had to wake me up and we ended up having to rig a small tarp against our friends jeep and then shimmy in the mud underneath the damn jeep into our make-shift shelter. i'm normally not much of a baby, but i bitched the whole night thru after that. i swore i'd never camp again, but i was just grumpy - i was out the next month as usual : )

nice topic btw.

**kingcrazylegs** · 09-21-2005, 02:08 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by joanofarc@Sep 19 2005, 05:03 PM
i'm normally not much of a baby, but i bitched the whole night thru after that.* i swore i'd never camp again, but i was just grumpy - i was out the next month as usual* :* )

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thats the spirit!

**bluepea** · 09-21-2005, 07:55 AM

Jake and I did a road trip honeymoon and ended up in the southwest of Minnesota on one of our first nights. It was so beautiful out there, we got a campsite in a huge state park, and since it was middle of the week in May, there was hardly anyone there. We were watching the sky and it looked like some horrendous storms. I called my parents and asked them to check the weather and it looked okay where we were. So, we go to sleep and I could hear either coyotes or wolves howling, which was kind of creepy (normally, I love it but I was a little on edge!). Then, I wake up to the wind blowing the tent so hard that it's bent over. The walls are touching us. Then - I hear what sounds like a train. I panic. I shoot up (as much as I could with the tent on us) and am ready to wake Jake up to tell him we need to leave, but, then I realized... It was actually a train... Hmmmph. The wind, thunder and lightnight never let up that night and I never fell back asleep. Fortunately, the no tornadoes touched down around there that night.

**MolsonGirl** · 09-21-2005, 08:51 AM

I was camping with my high school in Algonquin park, halfway across a large lake a tornado swept in... we barely made it to shore and by the time we got our tent up we had a good inch and a half of water in it and were all soaked through... no one ate that night and only one group managed to get their tent up so 20 of us sweezed in what (thankfully) was a 12 person tent... no sleeping bags (they were soaked)... all soaked trying to stay warm. Thank goodness the tornado passed overnight and the next day was spent getting a fire started and drying everything and setting up all the tents properly. We ended up being a day behind on our 5 day portage/camping trip, but it was still awesome and my teacher still tells the story of our trip to this day... (This is 5 years ago)

**urOZm8** · 09-23-2005, 08:08 AM

The last time I was 'camping' if you could call it that was pretty bad. Me and two other travellers turned up to Oktoberfest with no accomodation so we hit up the department store and purchased a tent. I had no sleeping bag and a wafer thin mattress I also had bought. Let me tell you I was frickin' freezing! Stein after stein didn't seem to be enough to keep me warm.

ev

**Somnambulation** · 09-23-2005, 03:57 PM

Ive had a lot of bad camping experiences, but one sticks out in my mind. I was camping with my Boy Scout patrol and we knew rain was coming so when we put down our graound tarps we were supposed to tuck the corners inside, so the rain runoff wouldnt collect on it and soak the tent. For some reason me and my buddy thought we were too cool to follow directions and conciously neglected to do this. We fell asleep and during the night it rained. We woke up in the middle of the night in about four inches of water, everything soaked. Its amazing it took us that long to wake up, for four inches of water to collect. It was beyond miserable, but we knew we had fucked up, so we couldnt really go bitching to anyone else so we stayed put and drifted in and out of conciousness for the rest of the night. We emerged in the morning with our bodies wrinkled and visibly blue, to find that everyone else had abandoned the tents and slept in the cars that night.

Another notable night was again with the Boy Scouts, camping at Silver Lake in the Sierras during winter. The lake was frozen and we hiked across it in snow gear and set up camp. The day a blast until night came and it was time for bed. I was using my Dad's sleeping bag, which he insisted was 'top of the line' even though he got it in the 70s and all the down had deteriorated noticably. So I had that, and it proved to be grossly inefficient for snow camping. I put on all the clothes I had brought but then the body heat does nothing towards heating the bag, so it was a trade off and I was still freezing. The kid I was with was puking to a garbage bag all night too, which didnt help things.

**kingcrazylegs** · 09-23-2005, 05:38 PM

^ your second story reminds me of when I went camping in winter in -20 (in Northern Canada) and actually ended up putting on too many layers and started sweating in my sleep and a piece of sweat froze on my face

**MeTurk** · 09-26-2005, 04:44 AM

It was about a week ago in Amsterdam, the place was all booked out thanks to a convention that I didn't know about. I got really stonned in town before heading out just before night fell to set up my tent for the first time ever. I got it set up just in time as it started pissing rain, thunder and lightning. I'd left my sleeping bag in Spain because I figured I wouldn't need it and it took up to much room in my backpack, my sleeping mat was in Portugal for the same reason. I had to sleep on my wet towel which wasn't even a little bit comfortable and my tent was almost wetter inside than outside for some reason. I just got really stonned, took a handful of mushis and listened to Pink Floyd for the night... Actually it wasn't to bad now that I think about it.

hot momma · 09-26-2005, 08:36 PM

You guys sure have had some bad nights camping. My worst night camping was also my best. It was two winters ago in Rocky Mountain National Park. We had been in the back country camping and climbing for almost a week and had set up camp in a new spot that night. In the middle of the night there was a lighting storm and it started to hale. Nothing to serious, but noisy as all heck. At about 3am there was a loud "thunder" that seemed to be really close...and then we realised the thunder sound didn't stop. It was an avalanche! It covered about 3/4 of our tent and was really scary, but no harm done.

**mowark** · 09-26-2005, 08:42 PM

I was camping in Yellowstone, with Ted, and we ate some "brownies". I went to the tent with my girlfriend and tried to sleep, but I was kinda tweaking. Just as I was falling asleep I heard some sniffing and scratching on the outside of our tent. I figured I was hallucinating and tried to ignore it, but I couldn't ignore my "hallucination" when it started snapping at my toes that were touching the edge of the tent. I poked my head out of the tent, slowly, and saw a group of coyotes circling my tent. About crapped myself, but I knew they were basically harmless. I yelled at them to leave and didn't sleep a wink the rest of the night.

morte · 12-24-2005, 02:30 PM

Once a friend and I decided it would be cool to hike/camp way up into the back country and not bring any food or supplies whatsoever. Well 1:00 am rolled around the temperature dropped to around freezing and it started to rain. With inadequate clothing and very little firewood we decided to hike out at around 3:00 am ish, in the dark. The remote alpine lakes of Montana are a great place to dig nature but a bad place to get hypothermia. Next time I plan a hike in the dark through the rain across a river ford or two and ten or so miles down a mountain I will bring a flashlight.

**kingcrazylegs** · 12-25-2005, 10:09 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by morte@Dec 24 2005, 02:30 PM
Once a friend and I decided it would be cool to hike/camp way up into the back country and not bring any food or supplies whatsoever.
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What on earth made you think that that was a good idea???

morte · 12-28-2005, 06:21 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by kingcrazylegs@Dec 26 2005, 06:09 AM
What on earth made you think that that was a good idea???

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We live literally in the middle of nowhere so after a long winter of being snowed in we tend to get a bit ______ (insert mild word for stupid) and go on very extreme, shall we say, treks into the wilderness in order to shake off the restraints of winter breath fresh air into our lungs and test our physical endurance (but really it was a dumb idea)

**kingcrazylegs** · 12-28-2005, 06:42 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by morte@Dec 28 2005, 06:21 PM
We live literally in the middle of nowhere so after a long winter of being snowed in we tend to get a bit ______ (insert mild word for stupid) and go on very extreme, shall we say, treks into the wilderness in order to shake off the restraints of winter breath fresh air into our lungs and test our physical endurance (but really it was a dumb idea)

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ahhh......