Forums → The Tavern → Camping Trips

I have this one hilarious story about a boy and his dad camping in the Sierras who totally freaked out for no reason when they saw me in my bear suit, but that's for another day.

I wish I had some interesting camping stories, but unfortunately, the camping trips I've taken in the past have been tragically mundane. Unless you find sleeping on uneven hard ground with no sleeping bag interesting, I've got nothing.

But I would like to ask, what drives people to go camping, out into the wilderness with limited resources?

But I would like to ask, what drives people to go camping, out into the wilderness with limited resources?

Please post them pal, anything will do and it doesn't have to be as long as my story or as wild.
If you've never gone camping, where would you like to go: Yosemite, Death Valley, Yellowstone, The Redwoods, The Grand Canyon, Crater Lake, Glacier, Canyon Lands, Lake Tahoe, etc...
Tell us, I'm always interested.

My only camping experiences are from long ago when I was 6,7,8, and 9 yo.
My family and many uncles spent the entire Summer picking wild blueberries in the middle of nowhere. I saw many bears but I only had one bad experience and it was scary.
I was almost done filling my bucket with blueberries when 2 baby black bears came around me. I was amazed and I started petting them.
When my dad saw that he told me to stay away from them because their mother was probably close by and she would attack us.
He didn't finish his sentence when the mom showed up roaring, standing on her rear paws. I discovered how tall and big a bear can be!
Fortunately, the car was close by so we ran and jumped in it through the open windows and took off as fast as we could.
When we came back a couple hours later, the bears had eaten a good bit of our blueberries but didn't destroy our picking tools.

That was an exciting adventure, both fun and scary at the same time.

I miss those Summers.

The closest town was Bishop

Yosemite

This is one of the trout I caught on my last camping trip.

I've never seen anyone look less happy to have caught such a big fish, but my main concern is the date on the picture. You had to have taken at least one more trip after that if you went in October of that same year, unless it was an unusually long trip that lasted all of September, because you look just like the kid I scared with my bear suit (and you said above that you went camping in October 2013).

No more mystery threads, Matt. Now I'm trying to solve things that don't even need solving.

Well, maybe I have recall problems. I recited the original posting in this thread from my diary. I must have thought that 8/30/13 meant 9/30/13 or something like that.
And I don't know what this whole bear suit thing is all about. I really did encounter a big a-- bear a few days after I took this picture.

Here are some more of my vacation photos:
I took all of these myself (I have extensive photography experience).

















Well, that's a start. I have many more photos.

Note: not all of those are from the same trip though.

That is an epic crab. I wonder what it would taste like.

Actually, Ernie, that crab is pretty small. It was hiding from me in a crack in the rock in from a tide pool. I got real close, used super HD resolution, and a nice fill in flash to make it look like I took the shot with a much more expensive camera. It's crazy how some skill and a little tech knowledge can really fool (no offense) the viewer. I believe that type of crab is called a blue/green moon crab.

Here is a photo of my dad with the mahi mahi he caught when we were deep sea fishing in Mexico.

I go backpacking a bit. Last year I spent a semester in northern Queensland and during our mid-semester break (which I guess would be spring break for them) me and my (at the time) girlfriend took a boat out to this practically deserted island. It's called Hitchenbrook Island, for those who might be familiar with the area.

Anyway, the plan was to hike across the island and back over 5 days (maybe 60-70 miles round trip?). We each were probably carrying around 35-40 pounds of food and gear (plus this awesome nautilus shell I found the first day), and getting water from streams and such. Or, that was the plan. On day three (the day we reached the other side of the island) all the water sources marked on our map ended up being dry or contaminated with salt water. That day we had collectively drank 5 liters of our 5.5 liter water supply while hiking about 14 miles. The nearest water source that we knew of was probably 10 miles back and we only had half a liter of water between us (Did I mention we were in the rainforest in Australia and were sweating buckets the entire time? Also we had not seen any other people on the island.)

So anyway we just had to nut up and hike back. We both became extremely dehydrated and experienced some light hallucinations/delusions (involving a nighttime adventure through a crocodile infested mangrove...). We luckily found a tiny tiny little stream only a few miles back the way we had come. The shear joy of finding that little stream is impossible to express...

All in all it was really nice hike though. Saw some gigantic cane toads, a few lace monitor lizards, and some of the most beautiful pristine beaches (with nary a tourist in site!) and waterfalls of my life. The next couple days were filled with swimming under waterfalls and collected some dope seashells and drinking copious amounts of rum.

Here's one of the many beaches:


And the trail:

I haven't done much of the exciting camping/hiking/camp-in-a-different-place-at-the-end-of-the-day things, it's more of camping at a national park for a few days, hiking around in the park and then winding up at the campsite again things. So nothing very exciting happens.
Once I remember it rained the entire time. The first day was really boring, but the second day I decided to go out and play in the mud. I ended up making a snowman out of mud, and then an apple, and then a bunch of random tiny mudballs and my sister and I threw mudballs at eachother until we ended up hitting someone else's tent.
Good times.