Sharing your camping spots

I would guess that this is kind of like having a favorite hucklebarry patch, or knowing where to find the elusive (but delicious) morel mushrooms.
When you have a good fishing spot; you do not tell anyone where it is except for your friends and family, and I imagine that a favorite camping area would be the same kind of thing. Once a place gets overcrowded and over used; then its beauty has been compromised.
If the camping spot is left littered with beer cans, and candy wrappers, it doess not make for a happy camping experience; so keeping those favorite places secret is the best plan , in my opinion.

 

I certainly have my favourites but I've never thought of keeping them a secret. Probably because the places that I tend to frequent have more than one spot. Sometimes it is a good thing to get a new place to set up camp - you might experience something different that makes it become a favourite spot.

 

The spots in hawaii is pretty much free game. Anyone can make camp anywhere. But what really irritates me is when the previous campers leave the sites filthy. That really pisses me off. At least have the common decency to leave it as you find it.

 

Trash Camping. It's a human condition that is not safe guarded by boarders. I subscribe to No Trace Camping. Even though fines are rather hefty in our jurisdiction we see the work of trash campers everywhere. It would not be a first time that we have had to clean up the mess from others. We are not talking about the few bear bottle caps or cans it's massive destruction.

 

In most of the campsites, there is usually a grill that is left for the open fire. Locals usually leave it for the next person to use. IN recent years these grills have been taken, stolen I should say. So yeah, times are changing. No respect whatsoever. Vandalism is rampant. Sometimes picnic tables that have been chained to the ground go missing. The nerve.

 

I tend to hang with Provincial Camp Grounds - clean, tidy, governed well, and patrolled. If you wreck a camp site they will clean it up for you, send you a bill and fine you as well. When you get onto Crown Land it could be a different story because there are few rangers available to protect the vast amount of territory. Anyway - like you, we do our part.

 

It's a shame how some things change. For years we'd never had a problem with any of the rangers. They knew us, we knew them and, as long as there were no illegal activities going on, everything was fine. Nothing like watching a ranger come into the site, chuckling at all the happy drunks dancing around a fire. But, there are relatively new people in their headquarters now and one in particular seems to have a superiority complex. Every time I go to sign in for a site, she treats me like I've never been there, recites all the rules and seems to go out of her way to make sure I know I'm just another potential problem.

Anyway... she called me after my last trip, asking about a bucket and a bag in a tree. Evidently, she was ready to hand me a fine or something. I asked her if there was anyway she remembered the group I camp with. I told her that we've been going to the same park, with basically the same people for almost 40 years and have never left a site a mess. In fact, we've always gone out of our way to clean up whatever mess we find - except, in the case of the bucket and the bag, we weren't about to touch 'em. We know what buckets are used for and the nearby bag was just as suspect. From her tone, I suspect she didn't believe me, but she did let it go. I can easily picture her remembering me the next time I show up and starting the crap all over again.

I guess I'm telling this story because the times have changed. More and more people are having less and less respect for anything. So I guess, in a way, she has every right to be suspicious. Just pisses me off when even a simple getaway has to be marred by others' lack of simple decency.

 

...here's my story.

We took this greenhorn along on a trip, much to my discomfort. There was just something about his attitude that rubbed me the wrong way. At the end it is my practice to check the place before we get into the canoes and head out. I check everything and I insist that the place be raked before we leave.

You can imagine my surprise upon getting a letter from the Ministry advising me that, "We have found your garbage bag number (whatever) and are advising you under the act you can be fined up to $$$$$."

I damn near fall out of my chair grabbing the phone to call this, not only a greenhorn but an idiot to bout. "I figured that it was all bio so I threw it into the forest." he said. I'm not a violet man but at that moment I saw red and would have rung his neck.

He never again was invited on a trip and never again did we speak of him.

Doesn't he sound tough?