The dumbest thing you have ever done

[AZsix]

As all of you that don't live where there is year round camping are getting ready for camping season I thought it would fun to see what the dumbest thing you ever did that was camping related. It could be while working on the pup or on the trip to or from or while actually camping.

Since I have only had the pup less than a year my experiences are limited but I'll start with what happened on my first trip.

We went to a cg that had full hookups. I took my time setting up making sure I did everything the proper way. The set up went well, I plugged the a/c in, attached the water hose and then the sewer connection. All was well. That night one of my sons wanted to take a shower. Wanting to see how the shower worked I thought it was a good idea. We removed the cover to the shower and  the shower was full of red water. (we had spaghetti for dinner). Though I had the sewer hose attached I forgot to pull the lever to open the drain. It's a good thing my son wanted to shower otherwise I would have driven home with that water sloshing around and spilling into the pup I'm sure.

We are doing more camping this year so I will have many more opportunities to do something to top that I'm sure.

Looking forward to hearing your stories.

[east lake hunter]

Tried to raise the roof with one latch still latched.   One month at the dealer and $200.00 later the problem was fixed.

[CajunCamper]

I pulled into a site one time and forgot to chock the wheels on my pup. Not noticing that I was on a slight slope, I unhooked from the SUV and away she went. I was able to grab the tougue of the trailer and hold on with everything I had. I started calling out to my family "quick block the wheels. My heels were dug into the dirt, but the weight of the pup was taking me with her. My two sons each grabbed a pieces of firewood and blocked the wheels. Whew! That's one that hasn't happened again.

I also backed into a site one night after a long drive late into the night and performed a minumal set-up of the pup so we could get in bed and go to sleep. When I went to plug in the electricity, I was about a foot short of making a connection. We had to reposition the pup the next morning.

CajunCamper

[k-t-did]

I popped the camper down with the door still in place.


*crunch*

Thank goodness DH is handy...he fixed it, but it ripped the screws and the metal brackets right out of the ceiling. bummer.

[rccs]

CajunCamper I had the same experience a few years ago. I went to a county park by myself to park the camper on a site so we would have it for the weekend (they allow this if you pay for the extra night) and I backed into the site just fine. I positioned the camper where I wanted it and proceeded to unhook from the tow vehicle. As soon as the camper was cranked up enough to clear the ball hitch it began to roll backwards. Being there by myself I had to think quick as what to do to stop it. I just pushed the front of the camper sideways enough so it was not heading downhill as much and then got my wheel chocks out and put them in place like I should have done in the first place. Then I looked around to see how many people were on other sites near by laughing. Lucky me, no one in site!  I have not forgot to chock the wheels before unhooking since then.

[CajunCamper]

CajunCamper I had the same experience a few years ago. I went to a county park by myself to park the camper on a site so we would have it for the weekend (they allow this if you pay for the extra night) and I backed into the site just fine. I positioned the camper where I wanted it and proceeded to unhook from the tow vehicle. As soon as the camper was cranked up enough to clear the ball hitch it began to roll backwards. Being there by myself I had to think quick as what to do to stop it. I just pushed the front of the camper sideways enough so it was not heading downhill as much and then got my wheel chocks out and put them in place like I should have done in the first place. Then I looked around to see how many people were on other sites near by laughing. Lucky me, no one in site!  I have not forgot to chock the wheels before unhooking since then.

I'm laughing with you just thinking about it. Oh by the way, I looked around too to see if anyone was watching. Lucky me my family was the only ones laughing at me.

[MJohn]

As all of you that don't live where there is year round camping are getting ready for camping season I thought it would fun to see what the dumbest thing you ever did that was camping related. It could be while working on the pup or on the trip to or from or while actually camping.

Since I have only had the pup less than a year my experiences are limited but I'll start with what happened on my first trip.

We went to a cg that had full hookups. I took my time setting up making sure I did everything the proper way. The set up went well, I plugged the a/c in, attached the water hose and then the sewer connection. All was well. That night one of my sons wanted to take a shower. Wanting to see how the shower worked I thought it was a good idea. We removed the cover to the shower and  the shower was full of red water. (we had spaghetti for dinner). Though I had the sewer hose attached I forgot to pull the lever to open the drain. It's a good thing my son wanted to shower otherwise I would have driven home with that water sloshing around and spilling into the pup I'm sure.

We are doing more camping this year so I will have many more opportunities to do something to top that I'm sure.

Looking forward to hearing your stories.

Okay this one wasn't me but my dad. Who by the way is better known as AKA "Tim Allen".
My dad is always trying to power something up or get something to go faster, better, stronger etc. Gorrilla glue is his best friend!
Well........
When I was maybe 12-13 years old my dad was trying to build a campfire.
 The wood would light for a bit but just wouldn't stay lit and he had ran out of lighter fluid. SOOOOO he decided to use white gas......
No I wish I was but I am NOT kidding you.
As he threw the match onto the gas and wood a big whoooosh and boom
happened, singing his eyebrows, literally shook the ground beneath us and all he could say was "Well I got it goin' didn't I"?
Here's your sign dad......LOL

                                       MJ

2005 Ford Freestar
2007 Fleetwood Westlake
2006-15 days in CO in a very large Coleman tent in July and IT WAS COLD@ night!
2007----22 days spent in CO and NM June in 1997 Sun Valley, Fleetwood
2008 Looking forward to 21 or so day in CO in new camper come July!

[TheViQueen]

Husband was getting ready to pull the TT out of the Rv spot on the side of our house. He unhooked the main power cord from the house but instead of coiling it up and putting it away right then, he decided to pull the trailer out a bit so he had more room. Got in the truck to pull it forward and kept going pulling the trailer with the power cord hanging from trailer and dragging on the ground. It got caught on one of the tires and it ended up pulling the whole power box under the fridge (the one with all the fuses and electrical wires running to everything) out of it's wood housing breaking the wood and ripping out cords. We go lucky with the repair. Took it to the dealer to be fixed and Jayco knowing it was our fault went ahead and fixed it under warranty.

[wayner]

my brother-in-law and I jacked up my pup while it was half set up so that we could get the tire off to check the brakes...  one side wasn't working at the time..  we got it up on a jack...with nothing under the jack in the cg lot, with nice soft grass...  it started to tip and we almost lost it off the jack... so I ran to the back of the trailer and pushed with all I could just about pushing my toes through the fronts of my sneakers... until he was able to block it with wood and straighten the jack...  we decided to fix it later once we had it all down...

[AZsix]

I knew the more we camped the more opportunities I would have to do something dumb. On a scale of 1-10 it's only probably about a 3 but I thought I would mention it.

As we prepared for our Grand Canyon trip I made some new purchases including an Extreme Cooler. (Glad we bought it). We also did our food shopping according to the menu we had planned out. Included in with that we bought a nice big package of chicken legs to cook over the grill. It was a meal requested by our children. After a long day of walking around the Canyon we dragged ourselves back to the cg for a little rest and them a nice chicken dinner. I fire up the grill and start to prepare for dinner. I open up the new cooler and start looking for the chicken. Now I was certain that I packed it, after all, it was the one dinner that was most anticipated by the kids. Since the cooler is not THAT huge I quickly discover that our chicken is missing. Luckily at the Grand Canyon the General Store was only a minute away and I was able to buy another package. Had we been out in the middle of nowhere it could have posed a problem since we brought only enough food to last us for the time that we were going to be camping. Needless to say that we had another meal of chicken legs at home on the backyard grill before the chicken went bad.

Every trip I get the feeling that I have forgotten something and I don't think that I have been wrong yet.

[butterflyfish]

Every trip I get the feeling that I have forgotten something and I don't think that I have been wrong yet.

This is me also.  This trip I decided to write everything down and cross it off as I went along (actually I usually do this lol).  Long story short, I still forgot paper towels (luckily had enough in the pup to last the weekend) and breakfast sausages (not a necessity, but the 6 year old loves 'em)... and guess what both were on my list and both were crossed out!  I apparently crossed them out thinking I was getting right to them and got side tracked and didn't pack them.  So obviously lists don't work for me.  

[PattieAM]

My most recent act of stupidity was to de-winterize and not close the drain valve under the PUP - wondered why I had no water pressure after filling the water tank...as I'm standing there with my feet getting wet - duh!

I too have done the lowering of the roof with the door in place.....

Towed home at dark-thirty and disconnected, but didn't see the breakaway cable still attached - had to go to some meeting, so hopped in tow vehicle and wondered what that noise was about half-way down the driveway... no damage, but I sure felt stupid.

One trip I had help with setting up.....only mid way through me setting up (attaching sewer hose), my partner had an issue so I stopped what I was doing and went to help - never opened the greywater valve....Sure figured that one out fast when draining the sink from dishes!

[wavery]

OK......another sailing story. For those of you that don't like my sailing stories, click off now.

In 1996 we were in Christchurch, New Zealand with a lot of time on our hands to kill. We were waiting out the tropical cyclone season before sailing to Australia and up the Great Barrier Reef. We were sitting in the boat one evening with some friends having a few glasses of wine. Another couple, from another yacht, was visiting and we came up with the brainstorm of sailing down to Antarctica for a few weeks to kill time (and not spend $). The other couple had a fairly light boat that really wasn't designed for the heavy weather sailing of the Southern Ocean so we all decided to go down in our boat. We started planning and provisioning for the trip and the girls decided to chicken out and asked if we would mind if the girls stayed on their boat and the guys sailed down alone. That was fine with us because now we were all psyched up for the trip and the boat was ready to go.

We sailed down to Dunedin, NZ to wait for a good weather window. I had a weather fax and we would check it each day and watched the storms as they roared across the Southern Ocean from West to East, like freight trains. One day, we saw a big gap from one storm to the next and decided to go the following morning. The plan was to sail into the tail-end of one storm to give us time to have fair weather all the way down to Cape Adare. That was going to be our first stop off point.

The day that we were to leave, the other guy came down with a bout of Malaria that he picked up in Africa, a few years before. We had no idea how long it would last so it was now or never. I decided to go alone rather than to forget the trip all together. I had enough provisions for 4 people for 60 days, plenty of diesel fuel for the heater and any motoring that I might have to do so I decided I was going.

I set sail the Day before Christmas, 1996. It was a very rough start, as I sailed right into 50MPH winds and 40' seas right off the bat. I continued on (even though I was sea-sick) as it was a fast moving storm and it looked like nice weather for the next 5-7 days before the next low pressure system brought a storm.

I had 25-30MPH winds  and fairly good seas the rest of the trip down and made 200 mile days. In 5 days, I found myself in the ice flow and colder than I had imagined.

Before I left, I met the captain of a US Coast Guard Ice Breaker that was in Dunedin at the time. He thought that I was nuts and gave me a USCG Survival suite to take with me (he made me promise to return it). I never thought that I would wear it because it was quite bulky. However, I spent the best part of the next 6 weeks in it, day & night (or should I say day & day).

I got down to Cape Adare and found the spot that I was told about by some fisherman. There was an inlet that goes back into the ice on one side and a mountain with huge black boulders on the other. The mountain protected the spot from the wind and seas.

When I arrived, it was calm and I motored down the inlet and found where fisherman had tied lines to the rocks on one side of the inlet and there was a huge ships anchor laying on the ice on the other side of the inlet with lines going to it also.

When I first got down there, I was exhausted and used the lines that were there. I slept for nearly 24 hours and woke to the wind blowing about 60MPH. I was quite concerned about the lines that I was tied to so I got my dinghy off of the deck in the middle of this high wind and almost killed myself doing it. However, had one of those old lines broken, I'd be in real trouble. The storm looked like it was going to get a lot worse (as they usually do down there).

I put my bow anchor chain in the dinghy and motored over the the rocks. I wrapped the chain around a huge boulder, then worked my way back to the boat. I rested for about 2 hours then took another 100' piece of chain and about 400' of nylon anchor line and headed for the ice shelf on the other side.

When I got to the ice shelf, I had a very hard time working my way up the side and had to tether myself to the line that was already there. I made it to the top and pulled the chain up out of the dinghy. I attached the chain to the ancient ships anchor (it must have been there for over 100 years). While attaching my chain, I noticed that the old line that my boat was attached to was nearly worn through. What a scare that was.

I made my way back to my boat with the nylon anchor rope securely attached to the chain that was securely attached to the old anchor.

For the next 4 days the wind blew in access of 100MPH with snow blowing so thick that I couldn't see more than 3'. I had to go out and clean the snow & ice off of the deck with my hands. As the weight of the snow got to be too much, the boat road lower and lower in the water. I was afraid, at some point, water would enter my engine through my exhaust system if the boat got too low in the water. That would have been a disaster.

I sat there for the next 4 weeks with one storm after another coming through. I would get 1 or 2 days where I could actually go out on the mountain that I was tied to. I explored a bit but the temp never got above zero and sometimes dropped to -20 (in the summer). Moving around in that survival suit was exhausting and I just wasn't adapt to that degree of cold.

On day 26 there was a high pressure system building and it looked like the right time to leave. I retrieved my bow anchor chain but left the chain that was on the ice shelf. the following day, the wind was zero and I still had plenty of fuel to motor all the way back to New Zealand, if I had to.

I never did get to my final destination and didn't get to see much of Antarctica. I saw a lot of beautiful ice, plenty of fur seals and other sea life but there was nothing ashore for me to see.

Several times during my stay there, I nearly froze to death. My diesel heater would sometimes just turn off while I was sleeping. I think that there might have been a small amount of moisture in the line and it would freeze or get the the furnace burner and it would go out. I'd sorta wake up but I was nearly in hypothermia by then and just didn't care to move or even really wake up. It's almost like being drugged. I would even realize that I was about to die but that was OK, it just took too much effort to move. Then I would think about my wife & kids and what they would go through if I was just never found. I would shake myself out of it, get the furnace going again and have something to eat.

The fish were plentiful and all I had to do is put a line over the side with a shiny hook on it. Within a minute, I would have a Blue Cod. It was a fish that we don't have up here. I'd bake it and it taste exactly like buttered lobster.

The trip back up to Dunedin was supposed to be the worst part of the trip because I had to fight the Easterly running current. However, the wind blew from the east, most of the trip north. It would die-off at night and I would fire-up the diesel and motor for about 10 hours until the wind picked up again.

As soon as I got back to Dunedin, another storm came through but I really didn't care. It was 65 degrees and I was safely moored at the Dunedin Harbor Master's personal dock.

So......whenever a camp-out comes up when it's going to be close to freezing, you'll know why we won't be there. I hate snow and I hate ice. If I never have to see that stuff again, I'll be quite happy. I've determined that was the dumbest thing that I've done in my life. I have no interest in being cold again. I still have nightmares about it. :eyecrazy:

At least I kept it down to the short version.... :p

[cjpoppin]

On our very first camping trip with our Calif group we pulled into our site and my DH got the hitch somehow caught up in the chain or something anyway he couldn't get the pup off the hitch and he was jumping on it and driving forward and back trying to get it so it would come off..........Needless to say some of the guys in our club came running over to give us help They all were jumping up and down on the hitch and it popped loose......I thought isn't this great and he was really red faced......Hahaaaaaa  Just a different point of view I guess?

[pamelajo1]

We knew the spare tire was going to be a problem on our first trip out (had ordered a two inch extension hitch) but decided we could work around it until it came in. We have a Jeep Liberty and we couldn't clear the hitch latch with the spare tire when trying to hook up.

 We managed to get the pop up hitched up by sliding the hitch (already attached to the ball) into the tv knowing we would have to remove the spare to unhook. After arriving at the campsite we took the bolts off of the spare but it still couldn't clear the hitch, so there we stood two of us holding the  trapped spare, one lifting the hitch from the ball, one driving the tv forward and one directing the driver. Luckily, the whole family decided to go camping that first trip otherwise we wouldn't have had enough hands!

Pam