By J.R. Montigel
Here are 20 ways to become the most disliked man or woman in the campground! Obey them, and we guarantee you won’t have a single friend anywhere nearby.
We’re sure this list is incomplete, so please add your own rule(s) in the comments.
OK. Here’s how to totally annoy your fellow campers
- Be sure your campfire smoke always blows in your neighbor’s window.
- Never pick up your dog’s poop.
- Crank up your music as loud as possible. A boombox on the picnic table works great!
- Turn on every outdoor light on your RV after dark. Add additional lights, especially blinking colored lights. Keep them on all night.
- Sit around your campfire with bubbas getting drunk, belching, swearing and smoking cigars.
- Let your engine idle for at least 30 minutes in the early morning before leaving your campsite.
- Watch your favorite Rambo movies loudly on your outdoor TV. The later at night, the better.
- Burn your trash in the campfire pit.
- Encourage your dog to bark at every camper that walks by and every other sound it hears outside the RV.
- Teach your kids or grandkids that walking or riding their bikes through other campers’ sites is a good way to get around the park.
- If you arrive late night in a campground, bang everything as loudly as you can while setting up and be sure to swear loudly at your partner while backing in.
- If you take an early-morning or late evening walk in the campground, talk loudly. If you bring your male dog along, let it off leash so it can pee on other campers’ outdoor furniture and their car or RV tires.
- Be sure to proudly display large political flags or banners.
- To get a conversation going with a stranger, say something like this: “Hey, how about that Trump (or Biden)?”
- Run your generator at all hours.
- Be sure to use your power drill to raise or lower your trailer jacks early or late in the day.
- Always use your cell phone outdoors. Be sure to speak loudly and use the speaker with its volume turned all the way up.
- So what if your kids or grandkids are running all over the place, screaming and yelling? They’re on vacation! Let ’em have fun!
- Use a chainsaw to cut firewood.
- Everybody loves tobacco smoke, right? So what if your cigar smoke blows into their window? It’s a free world!
- OK: Now it’s your turn. Please leave a comment. We bet you have something to add.
##RVT1075
Go off and leave your barking dog and your kids to run all over screaming. Play ball in the road and bounce it off cars and trailers. Walk your dog with a retractable leash and never pay attention to what it’s doing, and let it run up to my dog who is minding his own business and on leash.
Those retractable leashes are one of the worst inventions ever.
I agree. I refused to use one with our dog.
Our very first time camping, a man two campsites from ours started a campfire by first pouring charcoal lighter fluid in excess, then leaving the bottle of It on the rim of the campfire, he proceeded to take a large blow-torch to start the fire. He sure had quite the blaze going.
Go ahead and dump that gray water that is now running through my campsite.
#10 is my biggest pet peeve. I do question #16, I’m not going to wait till everyone is awake if leaving early am and find nothing wrong later in the day.
6 and 16 get my vote
Park as far to one side as possible on your campsite. This way we can be closer neighbors when you open your slide out just a few feet from ours! This is especially helpful on buddy pull through sites… but we don’t know you!
I have to disagree with #16. My cordess drill makes about as much noise as a normal conversation. I don’t set the clutch to hammer. It’s actually quieter than my tongue jack.
One thing missing is leaving your dog locked up all day, constantly barking while you are out sightseeing all day.
I’ve politely told many campers of their barking dog while they are gone. Almost all of them are genuinely shocked. Most CGs now rule you must NOT leave your pets unattended, must be “In your hand” at all times. Whether they enforce this…. Well…
#4 is my biggest pet peeve. I don’t understand all the lights outside but to each their own, right. All I ask is that when you go in for the night or by quiet hours turn them off. No reason for anything more than your amber porch light to be on through the night. The rest of us don’t need your outside lighting nor do we want it shining into our windows. Thanks.
Agree 100%! When we used to tent camp and then pop up camper camp we really resented our fellow campers with all the lights. Also, didn’t like super bright restroom lights. Now we have a TT and I made blackout curtains so sleeping is lovely. However, sitting outside under the stars loses something when the neighbors turn on their airport lights.
Might be on to deter night time thieves.
Agree.
Show up with friends and family in several adjacent camp sites and do karaoke until close to midnight. BTW, the park ranger lived nearby in the same loop and never did anything!
This happened to us, too. We complained to the campground host and learned that the very noisy campers on both sides were their relatives! They had stayed up until the wee hours and had a blazing campfire, lots of lights, music and beer. Next morning they got up at the crack of dawn to go fishing. Getting ready to fish involved much loud discussion, slamming vehicle doors and music. We left after one night. Forfeited our already paid in advance next 2 nights. We did not camp at that campground again until many years later. It was lovely. Full disclosure: It was Labor Day Weekend and we were camping in a not at all sound proof popup.
If you and your partner both smoke, make sure you are sitting outside right under your neighbors open window. And make sure one or the other of you is smoking at all times.
Leave your dog in the RV to constantly bark while you are gone.
Kind of look at #5 as part of Camping!! Except Smoking Cigars!! Most of us Guy’s are so pure that even our Wife/Partner has given up on telling us How to Live Our Lives!!
Bring out a 1.5 liter bottle of Fireball and let the party begin. Most won’t leave until it’s empty.
Get to the campsite after dark and slam the car door every time you go back to get something. Start your construction generator at 8am, leave, and return at 5pm. You’re too cheap to get solar or a decent generator.
People that believe the campground rules don’t apply to them.
Leave your dog alone in your RV all day while you are out sightseeing. He/she/it loves being alone and the neighbors enjoy the fact that every time they move around their campsite or anyone walks by your dog announces it for 10-15 minutes.
Install a blindingly high-power motion detection flood light at eye-level and aim it such that it activates when every vehicle passes, walkers pass or people exit their RV on the other side of the road.
City people can’t live without their car alarms .. and why does anybody need the porch light on after they are in bed? Amber or not.
Be sure to bring your gas or electric leaf blower and run it every hour to get every leaf or twig off your campsite.
Bonus points if you run it during cocktail hour while watching the sun set over the lake.
I learnt in Boy Scouts to ask “Permission to enter campsite?” which I do if there are people outside their campers. DH and I both have arthritis and lower leg problems, and so sometimes the shortest distance between two points is thru a campsite.If no one is out and about we obviously can’t ask permission, we have dealt with that by using the campsite edge and being very quiet. No, we really don’t want to drive the car to the showers or the camp store, we’re already dealing with the problems inactivity can lead to and we’d like to try to maintain the little bit of activity we can do. Please respond if anyone feels 100% that this sort of campsite passage is unacceptable. Suggestions welcome (except for using the car)
Good point. Campground designers seem convinced that making people walk 3/4 of a large loop to get to a restroom is fine. There needs to be more cut-through paths designed into campgrounds.
Also a good point, but I might suggest that if you’re walking more than half a loop . . . try going the other direction. 😀
We recently spent a weekend at a beautiful Corps of Engineers campground in southern Missouri in an accessible site. We didn’t realize that our site would be the primary shortcut to the shower house in lieu of a slightly longer trek up the same hill via the road. Every day dozens of campers walked through our site, some passing within a few feet of our door and even walking between the coach and the car. There was ample room behind our site and no sites on the other side of our coach, but they walked through, sometimes with their dogs.
Arrive at sunset hour; leave your headlights on and your motor running the entire time you set up every aspect of your entire campsite. Bonus if you have a long conversation with an acquaintance, to stretch the process out longer; and if your exhaust fumes are headed for your neighbor, so much the better.
There’s an old saying that goes, “Your right to swing your fist ends one inch from the tip of my nose”. Have fun, by all means, but be considerate of other people. Some of us are grumpy old farts who go camping to relax, and just don’t appreciate noise the way we used to, and not all of us are deaf enough to benefit from turning our hearing aids down. Safe travels!
I have severe heat induced asthma &when I nicely asked people to do something about their thick black smoke from fire ring built about in our campsite was told to “go check into a motel”. Twas too hot for me do without a/c. I”ve had a ( 🙂 )bit of outdoors experience and I diagnosed the problem as really green coniferous wood being kept lighted with way too frequent applications of liquid fire starter. No kidding, it could have been used as an instructional aid for how to send smoke signals in really intense daylight. Think substituting a smaller amount of seasoned firewood & using my little fan set to blow smoke coming thru a/c iintake away from me would’ve probably solved problem. (Used my rescue inhalers frequently that night &next 2 days as we traveled)
When unloading, grab a handful, LOCK THAT vehicle (HONK) walk 20 feet, come back , open, get another load, LOCK THAT vehicle (HONK) walk 20 feet and repeat another 15 -20 times. I use to think we have become a people without morality, we have, coupled with oblivious people with care for others blinded by entitlement,
Here, here!
Ax throwing. Apparently that has replaced corn hole as the best way to create repetitive mind numbing noises. And set the arena up close to other people’s sites so when you miss throw, it doesn’t hit your stuff.
Frisbee throwing behind my rv and it hits my rv several times and when you speak to the person they say” it’s only plastic, it can’t hurt your camper” or practicing putting with a golf ball next to or behind your rv and again when you say something they respond ” I am almost a golf expert, don’t worry it won’t hit your camper”
We had a similar problem with a boy hitting a baseball toward our TT. I asked him turn around and hit it in the other direction, toward the field. A minute later, the ball bounced under my trailer and I picked it up and held onto it. His father came over and told me the ball was nowhere near us, until I showed it to him. The boy then started hitting it toward their RV. Amazing how fast the father told his kid to stop.
Number 1 is in the correct spot, my number one peeve!…and WHY during the day when it’s 90 DEGREES OUTSIDE?
Count me in on hating all day smoldering campfires. If you don’t already know, a hot fire produces less smoke. If you need the fire, tend it!
It’s called a smudge fire and does keep the mosquitoes away. just a normal part of old time camping.
Teach your dog to bark while locked up in your RV and leave for 6 hours. When you return and your neighbor approaches to inform you, your dog was barking the whole time you were gone. The tell him, “my dog doesn’t bark when I’m gone!”
I’ll up vote #6, especially those diesel pusher class A’s – noise and smoke.
Letting your kids run feral through the campsites at all hours yelling to each other continuously while Dad and Mom get s**tfaced.
Well, I agree with most all of the above except 1) campfire smoke – you can’t help where the wind blows and the firepit IS there to use so keep your windows closed if it bothers you and 2) people’s choice to smoke cigars/cigarettes, etc. They are outside and have paid the same as you – once again – close your windows on that side
Hi Donna, the windows are closed and the smoke smell still comes in and makes the whole RV smell like a forest fire. This has happened to me a lot. Maybe in the future rv parks will put in the smokeless fire pits.
if you burn clean dry wood, your fire shouldn’t smoke.
Smokeless firewood? Is that patented? Been burning clean and dry wood all over the country for 70 years and have never been able to find any of that.
Loud Morning Farters.
Sorry….
😆 Have a good night, Drew. 😀 –Diane
yup, that was world class. How loud are these that it made this list?
not the usual complaint “heard” on the bad campers list
Don’t review campground rules with the kids so they are clueless about proper camping behavior. Even better, sit around the campfire and watch your child take a hammer and beat the bark off a tree. Then when the office calls you about a complaint they received about hammering a tree, you pick up the hammer from the ground where the child dropped it, go over to the child, and hit him in the head with it. True Story.
I hope like hell someone reported the parent for hitting the kid with the hammer!
Sing bad karaoke 🎤 late at night.
Sorry that was us 😉 But in all fairness we were at a music festival ….
(we aren’t like that at any other campgrounds)
ANY singing, late at night!!!!
On campground things that might annoy your neighbor, in the early am say 5:30 am slamming your storage bay doors ,all of them and multiple times a day and then late at night after 10pm. Your kids slamming your RV door repeatedly, in and out. Using your smoker24/7 and I have to smell it coming into my RV and whatever you are cooking smells terrible.
It’s amazing how loud door-slamming is, and how few people realize it when they’re doing it.
lock (BEEP!) and unlock (BEEP!BEEP!) your vehicle every time you get something out of it.
Next article: 20 things that State Parks and campground do that make you crazy. 1) allow key things, like laundry and bath facilities, to break and stay broken. 2) Have unreliable electric power and frequent black outs 3) Have a long list of rules, none of which are EVER enforced! 4) NO WAY to check in After Hours! 5) Allowing DANGEROUS and AGGRESSIVE dogs in the park 6) SNOTTY SNOTTY SNOTTY staff 7) REFUSING TO ALLOW MAIL to be delivered EVER 8) Having a “dog park” that’s nothing but DIRT 9) CRAMMING SITES so CLOSE together that you have no place to park your tow vehicle or dolly 10) Advertise amenities that DO NOT FUNCTION and haven’t functioned for a long long time 11) Have GREAT Amenities- pool, clubhouse, jacuzzi AND CLOSE EVERYTHING DOWN AT 5PM EVERYDAY!!!! 12) IMPOSSIBLY UNLEVEL sites. 13) Park WIFI that is expensive and SLOW and UNRELIABLE as all get out 13) FLOODED sites that don’t drain for days after rain 14) Electric boxes with SPIDERS15) Hookups on WRONG SIDE
Looks like you have been to the same RV parks we have been to.
Have experienced all of this and more
Spiders? Seriously? It is called “camping” for a reason!
Don’t forget back up alarms going beep-beep-beep as they try to back up at night.
Also at night, extra LED backup lights that put out as many lumen’s as my headlights. I thought a lost commercial aircraft was in landing mode.
Backup beeper are required on certain classes of vehicles in Japan. They actually make a lot of sense in a crowded environment.
Thanks to our government, hybrid and electric vehicles have to have backup alarms. Had one on my hybrid F150 and my wife’s Kia hybrid. Hate them, both vehicles are no louder than ICE vehicles. Too much over regulating by our government.
I don’t know where you live, but in PA the EVs were nearly silent. Many cases of pedestrians being hit by EVs because they never heard them backing up or going forward. Legislation now mandates EVs must make some audible engine noise so they don’t sneek up on people. Backup beeping is for the same reason. I don’t like EVs and I hate government interference in my car or in my home. But, preventing injury and saving lives is good in this case.
Leaf blowers going all day long for a few leaves on outdoor carpets. There is something called a broom that’s quiet and better for the environment.
We use a leaf 🍁 blower during the day but not all day. Even campground hosts and maintenance people use them. It only should take a couple of minutes to blow off a campsite.
Leaf blowers are annoying
Slam your vehicle door every few minutes right when it gets dark then make sure the horn blows every time you lock it back up.
This happened to us in the wee hours of the morning after midnight. Tent campers slamming car doors all night plus talking loud and playing music 🎶 without regard for the campers who were all around them. It was horrible. At 3am they were still going strong. Next time we found out there is always a park ranger on duty that can be called and he would have gone over to the campsite to tell them stop.
Bring along guitars and have a concert 6 feet from your neighbor’s RV. It’s a treat for them, right? Other people tell you how great it sounds. No, thank you. Go do your music making in a larger public area like the day use picnic area,, playground,, I dont care…anywhere except right next to my campsite.
I had campers next to me playing guitars. Luckily it wasn’t too loud.
No. 22. When using the campground’s restroom facility, never flush.
Thanks for the tips. There’s a few of them I don’t do…yet.
Flush your tanks for 20 minutes while a dozen people are waiting to dump.
Being stark naked early morning bending over with your kiester pointed at your neighbor’s RV while starting your fire!
Yep…saw that one. Older gent in the site next to us. It was a cool autumn morning, so we didn’t see much! 🙂
That was twenty years ago and DW and I still laugh at that unexpected side show.
I believe that you’ve covered most everything. In over 40 years of camping, I’ve experienced every single one of them. There are no shortage of i***t campers out there.
Thank you, J. R.! Well, your list is so strong that I am overwhelmed and unable to think. I would say take an extremely long time to dump your tanks, but that would mostly (entirely?) inconvenience people leaving the park. Maybe if you did it when you arrive AND lots of campers saw it AND you then set up (using all the hints you have already listed), then they might dislike you a little more. You could loudly make fun of the other rigs in the campground as you walk your dog, or just walk by yourself. Your list is going to make people so mad that little else can increase their anger further.
When you are partying at a campsite and need to “go,” make sure you walk over to your neighbor’s site, while she is sitting in her screen house, and use the woods next to her fire ring instead of walking one site over to the bathrooms. Dude, really!?!?
Raise a huge flag that says “F**k @&#*#” in a family campground with kids of all ages running around on a holiday weekend. Actually happened at a Colorado state park this summer and nothing the rangers could do. First Amendment of course.
A home outside our town had multiple flags like that. Real special for my Grandkids to see on their way to Grandma’s house. I just told them LOW CLASS people communicate that way.
On our lake, someone flys one of those on his dock. Worst yet, this guy does it while his own kids have fun on the dock. I am all for political speech, but this is beyond acceptable.
Set your rinsed sewer hose on your neighbor’s (or any) picnic table to dry.
1) In a campground with small sites and movable fire rings, having your neighbor move his fire ring right over by your campers windows.
2) Campers who think their dogs are angels when left alone in their unit but in fact the dog barks non-stop (and more particularly annoying when the dog belongs to the camp host!)
3) Other campers who trap your spouse in a long conversation while you are trying to either back your unit in or after backing in engaging in that conversation while trying to level and unhook.
Razors, ATVs, gunfire
Leave Fido unleashed so he can be “friendly with all people and other dogs ….he is such a good boy!
Be sure to consider every square inch of the entire campground as your precious dogs’ personal outhouse – even when you “clean up afterward,” there’s still residue nobody wants to step in! This happened to us once, 10 feet away, ON OUR SITE, WHILE WE WERE EATING AT OUR PICNIC TABLE!
Managed a small city park campground
For over 20 years.
Saw all the complaints stated. But most campers were very considerate of neighbors and very nice.
But may have been because manager was there with them as we had to camp with them 24-7