Picnic tables, much like the campfire ring, are a place where RVers and campers share some of the best meals and conversation. Wouldn’t you agree? Both gathering places are special to our lifestyle and both places are cherished among family and friends.
Cooking outdoors has many benefits to RVers (no smelly RV, no making the RV 100 degrees…), but eating outdoors has many benefits too, more mental-health wise, but still!
How often do you eat a meal at a picnic table? Is it a part of your dinner routine at every campground you go to? Do you tend to eat lunches at picnic tables when you day trip to new places? Or do you never really eat at a picnic table?
After you vote, please leave a comment. Tell us about your favorite meal at your favorite picnic table—we know you have a memory of it!
We use our bbq most every day, weather permitting & eat outside as much as possible. Indoor cooking in our RV is generally limited to breakfast. We often eat with friends so we utitlize a fold up table to eat at & use the park’s picnic table to put food on.
This was a lousy question. I thought it asked “if we eat at the picnic table when we camp?” Since this is a camping web site question, I didn’t realize it meant when we’re at home or on vacation at a resort or at a restaurant. In Wisconsin almost every campsite has a picnic table,(I don’t know about COE campgrounds)but where else would you eat? Besides in your camper? Or are you just trying to find out if people lap balance their plates?
We’ve noticed a trend over the past few years of campgrounds that don’t have picnic tables at the sites. This is partly because people abuse them. The park where I helped out at averaged having to replace about 5% of them every year because they had the tops burned by portable grills, cook stoves, and candles or had seats or legs broken, so the owner switched to metal ones. My favorite meal was chicken quarters cooked on an open fire with corn on the cob and baked potatoes cooked in the hot ashes.
Not very often. It is less hassle to just eat in the RV.
Always eat at the picnic table, if near the entry to camper, weather permits, and not in a mosquito infested area. We sweep off any debris. We eat off plates, not off the table.
I find it funny how many people leave home with their phobias about cleanliness. Maybe being the fourth of four boys makes a difference, but are we not out camping to leave our cares behind and not dissect what will or will not eventually send us to our maker. The outdoors is a beautiful place to observe what is good! Try it you’ll like it.
We always use the picnic table when camping – it is a major part of the experience, especially for great grand kids. Eating inside a motor home is a kin to eating at home – why spend the money traveling to still live inside? The only factors moving us in are excessive mosquitos, biting flies, high wind and/or rain, (snow?). We wipe down the table and cover it with a vinyl table cloth. Haven’t caught anything yet – and that’s approaching 30 years of seasonal travel. We could fend off the mosquitos or flies but prefer not use chemicals.
Nope. We have chairs with built attached trays. I find most picnic tables nasty. They should power wash with disinfectants every so often. It seems a lot don’t care and it’s not just cats and dogs on tables but kid running all over the tops and parents think it’s cute. Wrong.
As camp hosts for many years we have cleaned hundreds of campsites. On more than one occasion we have cleaned dog poop off picnic tables. People never cease to amaze me! You just cannot sanitize wooden tables to my standards so we do not eat at public picnic tables.
Our use of picnic tables is limited to lounging outside, using as a workbench, or a place for the wife to park her potted plants.
Since i disperse camp mostly n there isn’t a provided picnic table, I carry a fold up table with me. That’s usually my outdoor picnic table.
The way the question and responses are worded is probably good for full timer comparisons but not very good for comparisons between different types of campers. Should have been:
“When you travel/camp, how often do you use a picnic table? Always, sometimes, rarely, never.”
I suspect, to a large degree, that frequency of picnic table use is directly proportionate to the size of one’s rig.
We eat with friends at a picnic table three or four times per year. Usually it is just DW and me with our doggy and we eat inside the RV. We minimize the number of times that the doggy leaves the RV because of his arthritis, dementia, and failing eyesight.
We usually eat outside (weather permitting) when we are camping. However, we usually sit in our camp chairs rather than a picnic table (if one is at the site). Most of the picnic tables are dirty, the wood is rotting and the paint is chipping.
When we cook outside, we eat outside. The available answers seem to apply mainly to full-timers. My answer would be a few times a year, but that probably averages to once a week of travel (not camping) time.
Only at family reunions. I prefer my Air Conditioning.
If we are out sightseeing we will take a lunch or a snack so we don’t have to purchase overpriced and/or unhealthy stuff. We will sit at a picnic table if it is in a good spot and clean(ish). When we are at our site we normally eat inside our screened in gazebo.
Many variables here. Cleanliness of the picnic table #1, amount of flying and crawling critters, outside temp (too warm or too cold).
We eat most of our meals outside when we are camping. We always bring a big tablecloth and we sweep all the bugs and spiders off the bottom of the table and benches before we sit down. We also sit on cushions or sit-upons we made years ago when our 37 year old daughter was a Brownie. There have been a few sites with unusable tables but eating outdoors is one of the joys of camping, at least for us.