50+ thread

@vssman I watched that movie a couple months ago. That was pretty intense. Amazing story though.

 

Frog stew?!?!? Gross…

 

OK, time for some campfire stories. Everyone gather 'round.

You all know I'm a semi-professional camper and take things pretty seriously. I know what I'm doing when I'm out there and my folks always taught me the "leave it better than you found it" principal, I'm a good camp neighbor when I'm in a campground, I listen to Smokey Bear...yada yada...
I think all Idaho camp hosts are insane. At least from the few I've interacted with the last couple of weeks.

After Yellowstone I went through Idaho Falls on my way to Craters of the Moon. I stayed overnight at a camp run by the county just outside of town so that I could have full hookups to dump and recharge and also so I could grab some groceries on my way out of town the next day. The camp is on a reservoir and also has a day use/boat ramp area. The people at the fee booth directed to me head into camp but to call the camp host before I take a site. OK, no problem. So I drive through camp and there's a lot of empty spots. I call the phone number on the info board and this guy answers. I told him I didn't have reservations and just wanted to grab a first come first served site for one night. Was it OK that I take whatever site I wanted?
"well thats how first come first served works" he tells me.
"OK, I get that but the people at the entrance booth told me to call you first. So I'm calling."
"yeah, take whatever site you want. you just can't set up a tent on the lawn"
"No problem, I dont have a tent."
"OK because you can't set up tents on the lawn. That's not allowed"
"Again, I don't have a tent. I'm in a camper"
"We don't allow tents on the lawn because there's underground sprinklers. And they come on at 3am"
"Understood. I don't have a tent"
"So if you set up a tent its going to get wet when the sprinklers come on in the morning"
"Got it. I don't have a tent."
To be fair the entire camp is like a damn golf course and acres of green grass everywhere. So I find a site that 's got some shade and I settle in. Run back down and drop a check in the fee station.
Camp host comes driving around later on. He's in a truck, too lazy to get out. So I have to walk up to the road to talk to him. He's got a printed sheet of rules I need to know about. Then he tells me I need to pay. I say I did and I go to grab the payment stub from my truck and he's got two envelopes in the truck with him. He flips to one (not mine) flips past mine and back to the first one. "Nope, don't see your fee envelope here." he tells me.
"its right there, the 2nd one"
he flips to mine again and then to the other one.
"you just went past it, the other one"
"oh, there it is"

"now I lock the gates at 10pm sharp. and I can't let no one in after that."
"not a problem, not planning on going anywhere until tomorrow"
"OK. and you can't set up tents on the lawn"
"I don't have a tent" also screaming in my head because I can't go through that conversation a 2nd time.

Later on I roll into my reserved campsite Friday the 30th and settle in - level out the camper, set up my rug and chair and table and solar panel, get my fire bucket and stuff set out. And then I took off and went down to the lake for a bit to get out of the heat.
I get back to camp a couple hours later to start cooking dinner but there's a note on my camper door - SEE CAMP HOST IMMEDIATELY!!! I'm thinking OK? WTH? So I walk over to the camp host site that I passed by near the entrance to camp. Big dog chained up outside and it starts barking at me really aggressively. So I'm not interested in getting my leg bitten off so I head back to my camp.
Just as I get back I'm digging for something in the truck and I hear this golf cart motor whirring at warp speed down the road. Golf cart whips into my site and comes screeching to a halt, back tire pops up off the ground in the process and this guy jumps off and start screaming at me "you can't just come in here and take any site you feel like! you need to check in with a host when you get here and we'll show you which sites are available! we've been trying to track you down for hours!"
and I cut him off explaining that I was just over at their site but their dog was a little aggressive and maybe they needed to lock it up and didn't take just any site, I took the one that I reserved and the one that my name is on the little reserved sign out front.
he's still yelling, now he wants to see my reservation confirmation email and a photo ID.
I'm like what the hell for?
"well we've got to make sure that you're who you say you are and that you're not just squatting in someone else's site"
I'm thinking that this dude is going to have a stroke right there he's so upset - its a freaking campsite reservation, not nuclear luanch codes. Also thinking how many truck campers from MT are you expecting this weekend and what is the more likely possibility that I'm the truck camper from MT that made the reservations or that I'm some random person with a truck camper from MT who picked a random campsite that just happened to be reserved for a truck camper from MT?!?!
So I grab my phone which is on airplane mode since it hates Idaho and thankfully I can view my emails so I show him the email I got from recreation.gov. Still not satisfied he wants my photo ID. So I have to go digging in the camper because I hide my purse once I get to camp. I show him my ID. He finally relents and mumbles something to me about everything checks out.
I wanted to ask if there was anything else he needed - maybe fingerprints? DNA sample? I've never been asked to verify a camp reservation even in Glacier and Yellowstone which are super crazy places.
So he gets back on the golf cart which his wife was driving and she's just sat there the whole time he's screaming at me just staring straight ahead not ackowledging anything that's going on.
After they drove off I walked back down to the camp entrance and looked at the information board there - no mention anywhere about checking in with the camp hosts.

I get back to camp and cook dinner, I'm sitting outside eating and notice some folks are moving into the site across from me. Family with two little boys and they're camping in a tent. They first set up a screen tent and the boys go in there playing with their Tonka trucks or whatever they had. They were in the shade, bugs aren't bugging them, happy as clams playing in the screen tent. They set up their sleeping tent on the tent pad. Here comes the camp hosts on the golf cart again and he lays into them about needing to confirm their reservations. Then he tells them that they have to take the screen tent down. Tents are allowed only on designated tents pads. I can see tents being an issue if there was grass but A) there wasn't a single blade of grass anywhere in the enite campground and B) its a screen tent, no floor! Leave them alone and leave the boys to play in the damn tent! Its not hurting anything. Dude was just on some kind of power trip.

If people stealing sites is a legitimate problem they could have just stopped by and asked "do you happen to have your confirmation email? We sometimes have problems with folks taking the wrong site so we just need to double check that our records match the reservation info you have." Just a simple request, not a freaking interrogation!