[pct-l] RE: camping tip

[Ed.Welter@nike.com (Welter, Ed)]

I don't know why, but this reminded me why I prefer hiking to camping.  Went
along last summer on one of those so-called camping trips to a heavily used
facility within an hours drive from a bigger city (in this case, Portland,
OR).  Worst kind too, one with lots of rules, cemented designated spots
(yes, I'm talking car and hiker camping- uggh), right next to the highway,
stripped of every conceivable burnable resource, etc.  Needless to say, it
took only 5 minutes we were there for our camping neighbor to the right to
go beserk and proceed to shred his tent to pieces in front of his family and
the other astonished campers around.  Fortunately, he didn't have that
lightweight weapon (or any) and he got so mad they left their camp site and
headed home.  My wife was paying for the spaces and didn't get to witness it
and the rest of the family came in the next morning and nobody believed me
until they found the shredded tent in the dumpster.  And I mean shredded -
every few inches.  Needless to say, we took and paid for their adjoining
spot for our family because there was no guarantee that spot would be
available the next day - these places get really cutthroat for spots.  So we
got to spend the rest of the night defending the spot we paid for from
people trying to occupy it.  Finally, I set a lawn chair on top of the
picnic table in hopes of deterring some of the empy spot confrontations (the
crazy thing is, there was a tag right out front showing paid).  In the
middle of the night I got up to go to the bathroom and discovered somebody
camped in the spot.  They had two very sizable Rotwieller's in camp with
them so needless-to-say I just went back to the tent.  They took off early
in the morning to avoid the camphost and guess what - they took our lawn
chair too!!  Later, some other campers tried to take the firewood we bought
from the camphost and had set by our campfire area.  They just walked right
up and started loading it into their arms.  Unbelievable.  

The whole experience was so non-outdoors like that I just wanted to run for
my pack and tarp and head off into the backcountry to sort of undo the whole
experience.  Sometimes the lonliness of the thru-hike is a blessing in
disguise, especially if you compare it to something like that.

-swoosh

 -----Original Message-----
From: 	Steve Courtway [mailto:scourtway@bpa-arch.com] 
Sent:	Wednesday, April 18, 2001 1:13 PM
To:	PCT-L@mailman.backcountry.net
Subject:	[pct-l] camping tip

>A CAMPING TIP: When using a public campground, a tuba placed 
>on your picnic table will keep the campsites on either side vacant.

we usually use the "twisted troll face" and "gutteral grunting"
methods for this.



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