Camping pet peeves: What are yours? Many have written about campground etiquette in the hopes of educating new RVers. I recently saw a Facebook post asking the question, “What’s something you see while camping that makes you cringe?” Many of the nearly thousand answers went beyond standard campground etiquette, stating valid concerns worth sharing.
My thoughts are that maybe new RVers will pay more attention if they hear these camping pet peeves directly from other campers, rather than being preached at concerning proper etiquette. Straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak. Read on to view select answers, read my thoughts on the subject, and then feel free to share your own. The answers have been categorized for convenience.
Camping pet peeves of RVers
RV sewage
- Taking off your sewer hose and not cleaning it, then putting it loose in the same area as your water hose! Also, putting that sewer hose on the picnic table… Eweeeeee!!
- Watching someone dump at their site, then stick the sewer hose so the water spigot is inside it so they can rinse it.
- Cleaning sewer hoses on the picnic table.
- Seeing people not use a sewer hose—they just dump it near the sewer and then use a water hose to spray it into the opening in the ground. I have seen it more than a few times.
- People emptying their black tank without gloves!!
- People cleaning out their tanks in flip flops.
Frames and slide outs
- Lippert frame failure. Gets me every time.
- When the Schwintek starts to grind and pop.
- Chassis weld cracks on a trailer less than one year old. And Schwintek slides; stuck outward at a severe angle to the frame.
Camping pet peeves from nature
(Just an FYI for newbies.)
- Spiders
- Snakes
- All those worms/caterpillars that are everywhere at the beginning of spring. Don’t even want to go outside.
- Bugs
- Mosquitoes
- Bears
- Ticks
- Spiders/webs in bathrooms
Picking up after oneself
- Folks not picking up their dog’s poo.
- Garbage left behind. If you brought it in, you take it out!
- Cigarette butts on the ground.
- Wads of toilet paper all over.
Visual and noise distractions
- Someone that shouldn’t be wearing yoga pants
- Fat people shirtless or in skimpy swimsuits
- A clear stream with old white guys walking around naked
- Loud music
- Speedos!
- Yapping dogs. You know the ones that don’t stop barking
- When people bring like 5 dogs and they bark constantly. Then they go out adventuring during the day and leave the dogs barking at the campsite.
- #1 People walking thru your site. #2 People who think you need to hear their music!
- Campers lit up like the Vegas strip.
- Giant 5th wheels, RVs and campers who set up big flat screens outside.
- Rookies trying to back their trailer up and their wives nagging at them while they try to do so.
- Loud generator at night. I go camping to escape the city noise.
Children
- Kids playing in the fire.
- Children with no supervision.
- Little bitty grandkids around the fire and their parents say, yeah, go ahead and throw that stick in there!!!
- Kids on electronic devices.
Other camping pet peeves
- Hoses with regulators on the wrong end
- Drunken people near campfires
- Nasty bathrooms
- Trying to back a fifth wheel into a pop-up camper spot!
- A campfire left burning at night
- People leveling their campers with stabilizers
- People that speed through a campground, thinking they’re at Daytona speedway!! There are children, and people trying to walk and ride their bikes!! Slow down or get out, you are selfish, and braindead!!!
- 3/4T trucks towing triple axle trailers, and then saying something like… “I hardly know it’s back there!”
- People trying to burn soda and beer cans in the fire
- Tenters setting up in RV spaces
- Trucks pulling RVs that are too big for that vehicle. Accidents waiting to happen.
Camping pet peeves – Author’s thoughts:
Reading through the answers reminds me of why my wife and I prefer camping in the boondocks. No neighbors, and the price is right. However, we have boondocked where other less-thoughtful campers had before us and we had to deal with dog piles and trash in the firepit. I also found it interesting that cracked frame and poorly functioning slide-outs were mentioned among the answers – newbies beware. Note to self: Bring spray bottle containing bleach for the picnic table!
Hopefully, any newbies reading this will understand what makes other RVers cringe, and act appropriately when camping.
Feel free to add your camping pet peeve via the comment box below to help further educate those new to RVing. And be kind. Remember, we were all newbies at some point.
##RVT1094
The sewer hose on the table got me! One of our first purchases was a folding lightweight table. I do bleach the camp table because I set things on it but eat at our table. No gloves while emptying the tanks? I have a composting toilet that I empty at home. At the campground I empty the gray tanks. I have combined my black tank and gray tanks to double capacity. Hence all waste water is gray water! I still wear gloves and the gray water hose has its own plastic bin.
My biggest pet peeve is the drunk guy who starts waving a gun around and threatening to shoot people. Or the drunk guy who starts sawing down a live tree in the middle of camp. Or the drunk guy who yells at his wife all night. Or the drunk guy who races through camp like it’s NASCAR. Or the drunk guy who harasses other campers. Or the drunk guy who blasts his music super loud at night, and turns it back up after the cops leave. Basically, abusive, disorderly or dangerous drunk guys in general.
Why the fat-shaming? Being fat is almost always due to genetics, metabolic disorders, medications, etc. We need to stop assuming all obesity is a choice.
I don’t think my fat belly has anything to do with genetics. I quit smoking and have a new love affair with food!
Congratulations on quitting smoking, Jeff! 👍 That’s a huge accomplishment! Have a good evening/night. 😀 –Diane at RVtravel.com
Poorly posted campground rules. Especially rules that recently underwent a change, without a new posting. My best example is generator hours that change, without the new hours being posted/communicated at camp check-in, or available online.
Once while camping in Paso Robles, CA. We were trying to leave the campground on a Sunday morning. Someone backed their pickup under their 5th wheel and left it there, blocking the roadway leading out of the park.
They went inside to pack. We had to wait for a neighbor across from them to move their pickup so we could leave.
Pack up everything first, then hookup and leave or leave room for others to get around your rig.
Being offended by obese people is not acceptable. Obesity is a medical disease not just overeating or no exercise.
If some people have not got something to Whine about by 10a.m. they find it!!
People smoking weed near us and us smelling that crap at our campsite. Legal or not, keep that stuff at home or inside your camper – it STINKS! Also, loud, rowdy people making noise way past “quiet time”, quieting down when a park ranger or other “monitor” shows up, then cranking it up again as soon as they leave. More than one call in a night to a particular campsite should result in ejection.
All of them sound bad to some degree. Thankfully, we only have encountered some of these. Either we are traveling too little or we have picked great places to stay. 🙂 These do remind me of something we learned very early, the greater the separation between campsites, whether by distance, natural barriers, or both, the better. 🙂
Some less expensive generators are loud , not really intended for a camp ground. These are annoying even during the day.
I don’t care what others do or wear as long as it doesn’t affect me. Why should I get peeved if someone chooses not to use gloves or has a bare midriff. Chill. Live and let live.
I agree with you John. If someone wants to be unhygienic or wear weird clothes it’s really none of my business but we quit going to RV parks completely and finally sold our rig because of many of these other problems like strings of lights on all night, loud music and people smoking or lighting campfires under our windows then letting them smolder all night. Polite behavior doesn’t seem to exist any more. Sad but true.
Dave, I hope this is just a compilation of peeves that people have mentioned and not your personal list. It would be a very thin-skinned person who was irritated by all these things. I do wonder though where the old white men were skinny dipping!
Nope, not my list, just a compiled from a Facebook post. Although I do agree with some of them.
Fortunately most of the complaints were minor and would not bother me as they would not affect me negatively. I find I am happier if I don’t try to make everyone live their life like I would. If it has no impact on me~~~why worry? IE. Flip flops in the sewer wading pool, only if he tries to enter my RV!
Chill and enjoy, don’t sweat the small stuff
👍
Nice comment.
After reading all that, it appears that “Angry Bob” is everywhere! 😉 🙂
Someone that shouldn’t be wearing yoga pants
Fat people shirtless or in skimpy swimsuits.
Wow how shallow are you, you must have the perfect life. Nothing else to worry about in life except how somebody looks. Maybe this is the one place they can wear these clothing items or go shirtless and feel comfortable doing so. I suggest you just stay home if you’re that easily offended. Don’t throw stones at glass houses!! Unreal this is even mentioned on the hit list!
well said
It’s a joke, The list includes anything you can possibly come up with. Try to keep up.
I agree!
Not just shallow but also lacking in empathy and plain ignorant.
Campfires and especially campgrounds that sell wet wood.
What is wrong with a kid throwing a stick in a fire? nothing
Why do cramped campgrounds (95 per cent of all of them) even allow campfires? When you rely on open windows for ventilation you have no choice but be bathed in your neighbors smoke, which is even nastier after they have all passed out by the fire at 2 A. M. Fires were fir warmth and companionship while out on The Range, not while jammed in a state park in the hot summer. Just put a yule log video on your outdoor tv screen, will ya?
What about the people who cook over fires? Camp fire is part of the camping experience for the majority. I appreciate your aversion to the smoke but smoke happens.
Read our RVtravel.com poll where we asked our readers “Do you believe there should be ‘No Campfire’ zones in RV parks?” See how more than 2,000 of our readers responded: https://www.rvtravel.com/poll1948/
Pet peeve 1…the guy with the gazillion ton diesel pick up that believes he needs to idle it for 30 min before driving away…usually at 6 AM….
Pet peeve 2….campers who have no clue how to build, tend or extinguish a fire. Minimal flame and smoke 24 hours a day..even when they have left for the day. I may be extra picky because I was a girl scout outdoor director. We taught our girls how to prepare a fire for it’s specific use and that a smoking fire is a bad fire. Yes…call me a fire snob..lol.
👍
Somebody mentioned ‘Tenters setting up in RV spaces.’ Well, how about RV’s in tent sites! We camp with family that use tents for both the kids and adults; we have a Class B self-contained unit. We want our sites side by side!