Answering the how good in the rain question got me remembering the time when the tent was moved after a limb fell next to it....while the limb falling wasn't funny, the move was!
The tree limb landed about 3 feet away from the tent, when the rain subsided 2 men came out of the tent. 1 in normal attire, and the other in one of those blanket wraps that are long, with arm & foot holes, purple to boot! Vision an over grown real life purple telle tubby carrying a tent. Now you can only get so much of a stride wearing one of those things.
They picked up the tent (still assembled) and moved it about 400 ft away from their origional site. The move took a while because the guy could hardly take a normal step in this thing....it was funnier to watch than to tell, where is the video camera when you need one!
So what kind of amusing camping stories do all of you have to tell ??
This past summer while in the tent we camped very close to a tornado in Southern Ontario, even had the park ranger put us on evacuation alert. When we woke up in the morning after a very heavy rain fall, my dauther announced we had a lake on our camp site! Luckily it was 4 feet away from out tent; I cut that trip short because they were calling for more rain that night. Here's the picture of our little lake. (http://canadianmom.com/port_burwell2004.htm)
In June 2003 I was camping in the Black Hills SD. The weather was cool and rainy but my PU ( on its second trip) kept us warm and dry. One evening the temp dropped and I started hearing something hitting the roof. I opened the camper door and saw marble sized hail on the ground. Using my "man brain" I decided to step outside, in my socks, under the awning to watch the hail. Well the hail became bigger and I couldnt understand why I was getting hit. After all I was under the awning. After several hits on my head, I looked up and took one to the forehead. My awning was full of holes from the hail!! I started to go back into the PU and the hail on the mat was killing my feet. Then the hail became even bigger and came down faster. As I reached the PU door my kids, who had heard me enjoying nature, had locked it!! I convinced them that they would live to see another day so they let me back in. In the morning I checked the PU for damage and found 70+ holes in the awning and the roof was dimpled. My wife still laughs about it......
My Mom tells this one...When I was young my dad bought a Viking PU. We went on a spur of the moment trip and the camp site we got was small and on a hill. My dad was bent over chopping wood by the PU door when I, in my youthful excitement, came out of the PU at Mach1, striking my Dad on the butt and sending him over the edge of the hill. :eek: While he was rolling down the hill I took off in the other direction and didnt come back until dinner.
At the risk of getting "paid back" someday ....
Last Memorial Day I camped with a few people who may post on these boards. ;) Someone (who will remain anonymous by me) arrived who hadn't had much practice backing up the new-to-them PU. Out came the beer and the video camera ... as most of the group gathered around to watch the show. And what a show it was!
Even better was when a more experienced camper showed up and promptly trimmed all the trees above their site with the bikes on the rack on the PU!! I'm pretty sure someone is not going to live that one down! :D
Fortunately for me funny things never happen TO me! ;) :) :D :p [/FONT]
We were camping in our Hybrid at Murphy's Point PP very close to a chipmunk nest, by boys were 5 at the time and didn't know the meaning of "close the door" They and their friends started screaming and lo-and-behold, we had a chimpmunk checking out the interior of our camper! I said I wanted to get the camera and x said forget it, after about 10 minutes of a "Tom and Jerry" type chase, the chimpmunk finally exited then my dx said, maybe you should have gotten the camera!
Quote from: KellyAt the risk of getting "paid back" someday ....
Last Memorial Day I camped with a few people who may post on these boards. ;) Someone (who will remain anonymous by me) arrived who hadn't had much practice backing up the new-to-them PU. Out came the beer and the video camera ... as most of the group gathered around to watch the show. And what a show it was!
Even better was when a more experienced camper showed up and promptly trimmed all the trees above their site with the bikes on the rack on the PU!! I'm pretty sure someone is not going to live that one down! :D
Fortunately for me funny things never happen TO me! ;) :) :D :p
We have to start getting to these campout earlier, we miss all the good stuff . So take this one off the list of possible people it could have been :) I'm still waiting to see the video... maybe we can add it to the non agenda in Ohio this June. Entertainment during a rain maybe?
Entertainment during a rain maybe?
Rain?? Rain???? It's NOT going to rain on us!
Many years ago, family gathering in state park. 2 nephews sleeping in in small pup tent.6 mo. old yorkie tied to DW lawn chair with short leash.DW get up to get coffee,puppy follow mom,chair chase puppy.Pup run inside to the back of tent. Boys were not happy with chair on them in that little tent,hard to stop laughing to get all untangled.
That reminds me of the time way back when we were tent camping. We had tied our old dog to the heavy wooden picnic table. Normally she was happy to just sit and wait for us. We were walking to the bathrooms (which weren't to far) when a man chased us down asking if that was our dog (an 85lb bouv mix) taking that picnic table for a walk!
She had pulled the table almost 2 sites down trying to follow us !!
This is the same dog who wouldn't let me go swimming, every time i went out in a tube to float she would swim out and push me back to shore.
25 years ago, right after my DW and I got married, we decided to tent camp way up in the U.P. of Michigan. We were miles from the nearest camper, way back in the woods. One morning I got up early to greet the day and being the tent was so small decided to get dressed outside. Stepped out of the tent, completely in the buff. Well as I was standing there for a second or two, I heard a noise and turned to look. There were two "lady" park rangers standing there watching me in my birthday suit. They had just stopped by to say hello. I heard a few giggles as they walked back to the truck and I'm sure the rest at the station got a good story. To this day when we camp my DW asks if I'm going outside to get dressed. She'll never let me live it down.
We were camping at Blackwoods CG in Acadia NP. We had just set up camp when my DM got violently ill and started throwing up. In our haste to leave I left the bag of vomit sitting outside our PU. I had to help her to the car and we went to the emergency room in Bar Harbor. When we returned the bag was empty. Raccoons had visited us and ate the vomit.:yikes: Now if someone in our family has an upset stomach we ask them if they feel like feeding the raccoons.:D
My first "camping at the racetrack" experience was back in 1997. A friend and I decided we'd try camping at Martinsville for the fall race rather than driving down & back the same day. We borrowed a Coleman dome tent & some other gear. :tent:
There was a guy camping by himself next to us. He had a small dome tent and a small screenhouse. Next to him was a group of guys (all looked to be early to mid-20's) in a cabin tent. The group of guys had brought an old barrel to use as a fire barrel and some firewood. They also brought a LOT of beer. They spent most of their time around their roaring fire (it was in October) and drinking beer.
We got there early Saturday afternoon and it started raining that night. It rained all Saturday night and most of Sunday so the race was rained out and postponed till Monday. We decided to stay over for the race and so did our neighbors.
The campfire and beer crowd had apparently brought only enough firewood to last till the race started Sunday afternoon. Since the race was rained out and they had spent a lot more time at the camp, they ran out of firewood sometime Sunday afternoon. They apparently decided the best way to get more wood was to cut down a tree. (I'm no forest ranger, but even I know that green wood isn't going to burn well. :rolleyes: But, then, I hadn't spent two days consuming adult beverages. ;) )
Next to the campground was a railroad track with a small line of trees between the campground and the tracks. They chose a tree and started chopping. The tree was sort of between our tent and the tent belonging to the guy camping alone, and about 15-20 feet from the tents. It wasn't a big tree but I was a little concerned about where it might fall. I yelled at my friend Debbie and we both stood there watching...ready to run if it fell the wrong way. :eek:
They chopped for awhile but weren't having a lot of luck getting the tree chopped down (the adult beverages may have been hindering them), so one guy decides to CLIMB the tree. (I'm still not sure why.) Well, he was about 6-8 feet off the ground and the tree started falling--guess his weight did the trick. From the tone of his voice while he was yelling, this was NOT something he had anticipated. :yikes: (Did I mention they had brought a lot of beer?) The tree kept falling (with him in it) and landed squarely on the dome tent next to us, collapsing the tent! Luckily, the guy camping in the tent wasn't in it--he'd gone off to visit the souvenir trailers.
Fortunately, there didn't seem to be any lasting damage--to the tent or to the guy who was in the tree when it fell. The tree had enough branches that the trunk didn't land flat on the ground or on him. After the others rescued him from among the tree branches, they managed to get the dome tent un-collapsed and popped back up. Except for being covered with a lot of leaves, you couldn't tell anything had happened to it. :p
The guy who was in the tree when it fell was OK, but was moaning and groaning something about how his wife was gonna kill him when she found out what happened. We think they told the neighbor what had happened to his tent when he got back, but we're not sure. And, as I had figured, the tree didn't burn very well. :rolleyes:
Debbie and I laughed until we almost cried. :J
Way back when DH and I were dating, he was in Officer's Candidate School and we didn't get a lot of free weekends. Being the US Govt., they decided to give them the 4th of July weekend off, and since we were pretty broke, we decided to go camping in the desert and take rifles and motorcycles. One of DH's fellow OCS candidates who had adopted us (I.E. he was like a parasite we couldn't shake off) decided he was going. We drove all the way out to the desert after a day of work for all of us and took our '53 F-100 off the main road to get out to the middle of nowhere, almost getting kind of sideways a few times and using a flashlight to see where the*#%$ we were going. It was so windy we could hardly pitch the tent, and of course this wasn't a dome tent but the kind you had to use stakes for or it wouldn't stay up. We couldn't get the stakes to stay in the desert sand, so we tried holding the ropes with rocks.
I've been accused of being able to sleep through anything, which isn't entirely off track, and when I woke up in the morning, the tenting was precariously close to my face. I looked over, and DH was wide awake with his arm locked in an upward position holding the top post of the tent up so his friend and I could sleep without being smothered by the tent. DH is a light sleeper and he said he felt the tent going down during the night, and he spent the rest of the night holding up the tent!
We had our fun shooting and riding the next day, then packed everything up and drove back home rather than brave that wind again that night.
And another.....
Our first PU was a '72 Viking that was basically a tent on wheels. The stove and sink didn't work and we paid $200 for it. DH and my best friend's DH decided to take our boys out to the desert for some manly-man time shooting some targets.
They went off-road and DH said he was watching the PU get airborne on a few bumps, hoping it would hold together. Then that night everything went fine with the set up and they had fun the next day. Then the next night they decided to cook inside the trailer because it was really cold outside and the boys were turning blue.
You know how sometimes you get too much gas somehow coming out of a Coleman camp stove and it will give you a huge flame? Uh-huh. Not to mention the fact that DH had spilled some white gas when filling the little fuel tank. So he had flames shooting up to the roof of the PU and he couldn't put it out. When he thought the whole PU was going up in flames, he yelled at the boys to get outside and the men finally were able to smother the fire on the stove. The roof of the PU was blistered and a little blackened, but intact. He said he had already decided that if the PU went up in flames, he was taking the VIN numbers off of it and using it for target practice!
We got our new PU a few weeks later, and I told him under no circumstances was he to take the new one to the desert!!!!
Our family camed along the East coast of Canada when I was about 8, my brother would be 11. My parents slept in the big yellow and orange canvas tent with 85 poles holding it up and my brother and I got to share a two person pup tent. We were somewhere around Cape Brenton and man did it ever rain! Our pup tent was washed out so we got to sleep in the big tent with mom and dad. Well, me being an 8 year old couldn't resist drawing with my finger in the condensation that had built up on the inside of the canvas tent. Little did I know what the final effect would be. :p Boy, were my parents ticked at me!
On that trip, we went jigging for macarel fish, it was so cool, except when I got locked in the head; seems the head door had a inside and outside lock and the Cap't didn't realize someone was in it. :(
The funny thing about jigging for macarel is when you pull one up, you have to sling into the box in the middle of the boat, well, being an 8-year old, my aim was a little off and I hit some dude right square in the head, again, my parents were a little ticked at me but I think they had to hold back the laughter too.
While we were driving along the Cabot Trail, we stopped to pick some wild berries. I had used my shirt as a basket to hold all the berries. As I was climbing back up the hill, my foot slipped and I landed flat on my stomach, which of course was filled with berries! My mom just shock her head.
That was such a great trip! :)
About 5 years ago we took three of our kids and two of their friend to Yellowstone. It
Quote from: KellyAt the risk of getting "paid back" someday ....
Even better was when a more experienced camper showed up and promptly trimmed all the trees above their site with the bikes on the rack on the PU!! I'm pretty sure someone is not going to live that one down! :D
Fortunately for me funny things never happen TO me! ;) :) :D :p
Now your post in one of the other threads makes sense to me...:J Wished I'd been there to see that...on second thought, if I'd been there, it probably would have been me! I once tried to drive into the garage with the bikes still on top of our SUV. Good thing it had "stop-on-a-dime" brakes!:banghead:
Many years ago my Mom & Dad took us to Yellowstone and we camped in a old canvas tent. This was when everyone who camped called out for Elmer (the bear) because he was alwasy robbing campsites. Well one night we were woken up by some noise. Since we were little girls my Mom had an enamel pot with a handle on it (it looked like a huge soup cup) so that if we needed to go the bathroom in the night we could use that pot. Anyway, my Dad grabbed the pot (it was empty!), went outside with the flashlight and started banging on the side of the pot to scare the bear (Elmer?) away. The bear left our campsite, but in the morning when we compared stories with other campers it was discovered that not only had Elmer stolen our bread and homemade jam that my Mom had forgotten and left in an insulated bag on the table, he had made the rounds to the other campsites. Across the road from us he had stolen a flat of eggs and a case of beer and further down the road he had gotten a huge birthday cake that a lady had made, amoung other stuff. We talked about this for years how Elmer had his own birthday party. My parents still have that dented pot. Every time I see it, it brings back all those fun memories.
Anther story was about 10 years ago shortly after Sal and I got married. We were going to South Dakota to do the tourist thing after visiting family in Boseman and outside Billings, Montana. We were tent campig at that time and I had a Honda Accord hatchback. We had found an old Sears tent trailer that had been gutted out. Sal painted it to match the Honda and we put all our camping stuff inside the trailer and towed it behind the Honda. It looked pretty cool, same gunmetal gray with matching pin strips. Well, we were driving from Montana to Hill City, South Dakota where we were going to camp at the Horse Theif Campground. I was reading the map and it looked like this one short jaunt would get us there faster than another route so we went that way. It was pitch black and around 8:00 p.m. This road ended up being a very curvey road where Sal could see the tail lights of the trailer very time we took a turn, pretty scarry. We laugh about that and call it "Making Memories".
On the same trip, we were campng at the Horse Theif Campground. We had camp all set up, the tent pitched, a pretty nice site. We used it as home base to go to Mt. Rushmore, Crazyhouse, and other attractions around that area. We had a 5 gal. propane tank in one of the corners of the trailer (the roof was wooden and could be taken off) with the propane pole on it and the lantern at the top, Sal would light it and it would basically light up our whole campsite. When we were getting ready to leave, Sal went to unhook the pole from the propane tank and poof, a flame rose up and singed his arm, eyelashes and eyebrow. He had a cigarette in his mouth when he unhooked the pole and forgot to vent the propane that was inside the pole. Needless to say it scared me to death. The fire went out quickly, but he had singed the side wooden frame of the trailer, melted the bag that the potatoes were in and scorched a bag of toilet paper. It wasn't funny then, but we laugh about it now.
Joan
Quote from: KellyAt the risk of getting "paid back" someday ....
Last Memorial Day I camped with a few people who may post on these boards. ;) Someone (who will remain anonymous by me) arrived who hadn't had much practice backing up the new-to-them PU. Out came the beer and the video camera ... as most of the group gathered around to watch the show. And what a show it was!
Even better was when a more experienced camper showed up and promptly trimmed all the trees above their site with the bikes on the rack on the PU!! I'm pretty sure someone is not going to live that one down! :D
Fortunately for me funny things never happen TO me! ;) :) :D :p [/FONT]
Um, Er, I have this video for both parties, now if I can just figure out how to make the video smaller for all parties to se :)
[/b]
I almost forgot about this story from last year. I don't think I laughed so hard in all my days.
We all wanted to have those s'mores so Derek, my youngest DS, went and got all the fixins. We didn't use the screen tent this trip so we just put the picnic table under the awning. He got 3 marshmellows out of a brand new bag and put them on the forks. He then set the marshmellows on the table. Got then toasted all nice and golden brown and then got up from the chair to get the choco bars. When he turned around he just started screaming; "HE GOT MY MARSHMELLOWS, HE GOT MY MARSHMELLOWS!!!!!!!!":yikes: Well sitting on the table with a bag of marshmellows in its mouth was a raccoon. The raccon took off
under the PU with the marshmellows in mouth, bag and all, leaving a trail of fallen mellows into the woods. Derek took off around the camper screaming and yelling at the critter. When he got to the other side he had lost the raccoon but found the mellow trail. He picked up the mellows and started to throw them in the woods yelling; "IF YOUR GOING TO TAKE THEM, THEN YOU MIGHT AS WELL TAKE THEM ALL!!!!!" He then came back in a great huff, very upset that the smores were not going to be made that night.:( :mad: It was so funny watching Derek go after the raccoon that my Deb and I were almost rolling on the ground we were laughing so hard. So we had a very entertaining trip this time out. OH yeah, I did pick up another bag of the mellows and we did have another visit from the raccoon the next night. But Derek kept the marshmellows sitting there right on his lap. Guess he thought that "Bubba Coon," (his name for it) had enough sweets for the weekend.:D
LOL, don't ya love those critters!
We had gone camping with my cousin , we both had our dogs that weekend.
We were enjoying the night fire, when all the sudden their dog starts rolling around like crazy. With a stench to kill not far behind!...Yep, you got it...the dog had just enough lentgh on the chain to get to the brush liine and disturb a skunk.
We sent the dog and her son back to their site and wait till they returned from the store with a case of douche. They took the dog to the showers, luckily it was after labor day and the CG wasn't busy. There they are with a 90lb dog and a case of douch in the shower. They all returned smelling lemony fresh!!
Well a few weeks later it was just DH and I, back to that same park, same stie..this time no dog. We are enjoying a nice quiet time, DH starts with the "here kitty kitty,here kitty kitty".... I'm just sitting there saying, "yeah right..I'm not falling for that".. he is trying to convince me he is not joking
when a skunk walks up about a foot or so away from my feet!!!...o.k. not the time to panic, somehow I managed to sit very still and quiet while this cute little kitty explored the ground around my feet.
It was then I realized, it is easier to sit still with a skunk next to you than it is to be still with a bug crawling around in your ear....that's a whole nother story...
I know there are more of you out there with good stories. Lets get you started again...Let me embarrass myself.....no how about the wife( :frosty: ) Back in my tent camping days I spent 2 weeks in the Black Hills. When we left I wanted to save room in the van so I tied up some gear and clothes on the vans luggage rack. It was raining that morning so I was kinda in a hurry. About 10 miles east of Rapid City SD I looked in the rear view mirror and I thought I saw a shirt fly past the rear of the van. I didnt think too much of it until I saw more clothes flying. I pulled over and saw that my wifes luggage had opened up!! She insisted that we go back a few miles to see what we could retrieve. We found several items alongside the road but as we were driving we saw 2 white humps in the middle of the road. When we got closer we realized that her bra was laying in the road perfectly shaped. Me and my big mouth, I made a comparison between the Black Hills and the White Hills.....