This troper loves to get away from society and go backpacking at least a couple times a year. On one trip, we didn't realize how long the hike up Yosemite Falls was with full backpacks, after several months of near inactivity. Another trip at Big Sur was going perfect, until the last night when it rained cats and dogs and the tent failed to protect me, resulting in soaking me entirely and no sleep. And then the trip in San Rafael where everything was going fine until the second to last day of hiking, when the trail suddenly disappeared... meaning we had to hike the previous four days in one day to return home so as to not worry our families too much. Still won't stop me from seeking refuge away from so civilization every few months in the backwoods.

This troper's fourth grade camping trip was a complete ''disaster''. Supplies were forgotten, the cabins were infested with bugs, and most of the week was rained out. Then there was the talent show, thankfully indoors... and in a building with a decent-sized basement. I mention this last part because that was where everyone spent half the night after a tornado touched down nearby. About the only good thing about the whole debacle was that my mother had come along as a volunteer, meaning she didn't think I was exaggerating just how ''horrible'' the experience was since she'd gone through the exact same thing. Even the teachers made jokes about how we should all get T-shirts saying "I survived the fourth grade camping trip"...

This troper was forced on a Church Retreat for his catholic confirmation that was just ''terrible''. They would keep us up until around 2 AM blabbing about how God is supposed to help us and is the light and then woke us up around 3 hours later to take showers in freezing cold water. (They admitted that wasn't their doing;, the showers were just broken) We were given Sunday mass one there, and then told we were going to mass ''again'' right after it and if we didn't go they'd hold our possessions ransom. We weren't allowed to bring anything other than clothing and bibles (not even a ''watch'') because it would "weaken our bond with god", weren't even allowed to go to the bathroom, half the windows in our cabins wouldn't close so the floors (as well as some of the beds) were covered in ''ice and snow'', and then we were instructed to walk out into a blizzard ''with no coats on'' and asked if we would hear the voice of god. I'm sorry...nobody wanted to go onto that trip in the first place: we all had homework to do since we were in school and it was in ''October'', most people were only in CCD because their parents made them do it, and most importantly, it wasn't a retreat so much as an Attachment-Therapy-Brainwashing recruitment for the Church. Needless to say, approximately 50% of the people who were on that retreat are now proud members of the HollywoodAthiest group, probably ''because'' of that trip and because of the stupid things they said to us. (Such as calling Hinduism and Buddhism flat out lies)

This Troper is very much convinced that he's attended the same retreat as the one mentioned above. He no longer fears Hell because of his own experiences, and very much welcomes it.

If there was a Debacle on how some people took a mattress out of a cabin, sledded with it, and then put it back on the bed, then that describes nearly the ''exact same'' retreat I went on a couple years ago.

Dang RCC clergy sounds hard core. Over at the Baptist camp we had a zipline and ''paint ball''.

This troper's school loves to take us on camping trips. On one occasion, in 8th grade, we were camping out someplace when it started half-snowing, half-raining. This troper's tent is a four person tent. There were three of us. We were cold, but otherwise all prepared for the night. Then another group sent a representative over. The conversation went as follows: #QUOTE# Her: Hey, the zipper on our tent's door is broken, and we've all tried to fix it but we can't. Can we sleep in here? #QUOTE# Us: Uh, how many of you are there? #QUOTE# Her: Four. #QUOTE# Us: Seven people... in a four-person tent. ...Yeah sure, come on in.

We ended up in an uncomfortable pile. The new arrivals had gotten snow inside, so it was wet and everyone was freezing. One person was crying because she felt sick, one person was crying because she was homesick, and a few of us were crying because seeing our friends crying was upsetting. Nobody got any sleep. It was a terrible night.

When I was 12 me, my dad, and my brother (who was 8) went camping over a weekend in June. All was well for the day, but around 10 PM it began pouring. The ground got saturated and the tent began flooding. To make it worse, a damn screech owl was in the tree above our tent doing what it does best (screeching). Late at night a pack of coyotes came by, raided the campsite, and began sniffing the tent (at one point only the thin wall of the tent stood between me and one of them). In the morning everything was soaked, so we left and spent the next day in a nearby motel (we were several hours from home and had all only had 3 hours of sleep the previous night).

Coyotes have only caused three human deaths in all of recorded history...though I doubt knowing that would have mattered at the time.

This troper's Boy Scout troop once went on a 15 mile hike up and down three mountains. (Small mountains, but still). When we finally got to our campsite after going all day, we discovered that the campsite (which we were going to stay at and hike BACK from the next day) did not have running water. After a few minute's deliberation, the troop's leaders decided thus: We drove back down. All that...FOR NOTHING!!! It still makes this troper mad when he thinks about it.

This troper, earlier in the year, went on a camping trip with her best friend, best friend's mother, and best friend's mother's cousin. It started out with an inability to get everything of importance in the car, and my best friend's grandmother made off with a sleeping bag when we weren't paying attention. After shoving everything in, my best friend and I squished in the backseat in about one and a half seats. Cue four hour drive. Slowly.

Camp was broken after dark, and I had to use the restroom for feminine reasons. After being warned that a bear would eat me if I didn't clean up properly, I set off into the darkness to find the bathroom. Cue paranoid fears that bears and rapists were behind every tree. That night, after blowing up the mattresses, we learned we were short a sleeping bag. My best friend and I split a bed and blankets and gave mine to her second cousin. It got cold. Even wearing everything we had, we froze, and nobody got any sleep.

The next day, we went into town to meet my best friend's great uncle. He let us horse around on his quads. My best friend flipped hers, and simultaneously pinned herself and broke her collarbone clear through. We had to drive to the hospital in the next town, and headed back home that night.

When I was 13, I went on a camping trip with my girlfriend, her sister, her mom, and her step-dad. It was a four hour trip, made longer by a half an hour when we missed the turn into the campgrounds and had to find a way to turn around legally. We stayed for three days. In that time, I got hit in the forehead by a freezer-burnt apple, whacked in the tailbone with a fake sword, busted open one of my toes on a sharp rock while we were exploring around, and got dehydrated while fishing. Take me back to civilization, please!

Picture it: Christmas Day, you're 13 years old. Your mother comes to your house to come get you because it's her weekend. You're suddenly whisked 200 miles away to Bandera, TX where they've been living for nearly a month, and it's freezing fucking cold. Their electricity and water at home got shut off, so they've been bouncing from state park to state park. Dear ol' Mom and then-boyfriend decide over the course of the night to get too sauced to tell you how to use the super expensive, crazy-complicated sleeping bag you've been given so you don't freeze to death. (They're huge camping enthusiasts...none of their gear costs less than $100.) The sun goes down and with it, the temperature. To a lovely 24 degrees. You spend the night in the truck, desperately wrapping yourself from head to toe with whatever you can find to stay warm. It doesn't work. Repeat for 3 days.

Beta Maxis was the only person who was sent to church camp to learn about God as opposed to getting a week's piece from your delinquent kid you keep forcing to go to church hoping something'll click or camp where you send your kids who are good about pretending 'till your back is turned. Specific examples:

First year - Tippy time on the bunk beds, one of my clean pairs of underwear ending up in a tree (complete with showing me and then bragging about it to my face.

Due to the cabins being old, the changing room (closet) had no door, So I changed into my pj's under the sheets of my bunk. Then "Tippy time!", me sticking a bare leg out to keep from falling out completely, and nudist accusations persisting until my final year despite explaining it.

Painting my legs while I was asleep/out of it.

I heard some teens BRAGGING about making a kid hide under a porch crying and telling them to go away. They were LAUGHING like you'd expect friends to after a good movie.

Last year - Last day ever (I didn't go back the final year I was able to, I eventually learned my lesson), during free time I found teens talking about what kinds of porn they liked.

Non-specific example - every year there I'd cry myself to sleep after the first or second day and promise to call home to get picked up if things kept up but always managed to tough it up and actually get something religious out of my time there.

Gleams of hope:

Second to last year one of them actually make peace with me though and shook hands with me.

Last year I sung In the Jungle (The Lion Sleeps Tonight) at the Thursday (we arrived Sunday) talent show and got some respect that lasted until going home

Second to last year I made I friend I had fun with, last year there I had the same cabin as him (new cabins by then - I JUMPED at the chance to show early and claim one when they were new and limited second year) as well as a friend from my local Youth Group (I was usually the only one from my small hometown to go there).

Quite possibly my LONGEST post EVER.

This troper remembers his older sister telling him about her church camping trip when she got back. While she did say it was fun, there where a few things that did almost ruin it for her; such as one of her friends getting wrongfully punished for something a bully did, as well as a late-night game of Hide & Seek, setup by the camp leaders, gone horribly wrong (One girl got poison ivy in her eye and had to be sent home as another twisted her ankle, all while the rest of the group had a hard time finding their way back to the "base" the leaders setup for this game).

Every year this troper's father and two of his friends go on a backpacking trip, and one year, decided to take all of their daughters with them. Over the course of the trip, a 70 foot tree fell on one guy's head, the six mile hike to our first campsite ended up being eight and a half because the meadows we were supposed to walk through were flooded, the backpack I was using didn't fit me properly so it bruised and literally cut my shoulders, there was a ton of mosquitoes (What would normally be considered a swarm was how thick they were everywhere), everyone had to wear hats, mosquito netting, long pants, longsleeved shirts in 90 degree weather, and tons of mosquito repellent that didn't work because there were too many mosquitoes, fires were forbidden at the campsite, there was no outhouse (just a toilet-like thing that had been knocked over by a bear), and the mosquitoes were even worse. It also turns out that my dad forgot one of the tents, so he and his friends had to sleep outside. It was next to impossible to sleep, because the wolves started howling once it got dark. The next morning we got up and had to do the same thing all over again to get back to the cars because we decided we couldn't stand four more days of this. Everybody got at least 200 hundred mosquito and horse fly bites and there are still bloodstains inside our tents and sleeping bags from all of the mosquitoes we squashed.

This troper went on a camping teen tour in high school. One of our campsites was an island in the middle of a lake. Unfortunately, the day we were supposed to canoe out there to camp was the worst storm they had seen on that lake in something like 25 years. Four of our canoes overturned and we had to chase our stuff halfway across a bay to get it back. And then, of course, we had no dry clothes to change into once we'd got to the island. I'd never been so wet in my entire life.

My old secondary school had the CCF, or college cadet force, of which I was a member. at the end of my first (and last full) year we had a mandatory annual camp to Longmoore military base. In an odd subversion the proposed outdoor camping was preferred to the billets full of total dick-heads, to the point where one guy in ours mooned another school's division, there was a 2 hour wait in the cold, dark open air outside when a fire alarm malfunctioned and went off continuously and I ended up catatonic depressive following the hours of drill and marches (one of which was 5km, doubletime, and I was fat back then, and to this day have little stamina outside of the bedroom, sorry but I had to add that comment). The only highlights were me being equal best shot out of in excess of 9000 (cue meme) at the shooting range and the fact that UI lost in excess of 2 stone in a week dispite having fry-up every morning for breakfast.I fucking earned that rank of lance corporal, and remain an able marksman to this day, though Ironically I'm more militaristic now than I was back then.

This troper's first camping trip with his father. A long weekend in a caravan by the sea. All well and good, apart from the weather. CONSTANT high winds and driving rain. The first caravan site visited had a problem with the barrier, so the caravan had to be towed to a different site across the bay. In strong crosswinds. By a car barely heavier than the caravan. On arrival, levelling the caravan off as best as possible in the wind and rain, getting the water barrel filled by way of a half-mile slog through the weather, and a few hours of trying to get a TV signal with a laptop and a USB gadget. Then three days of being stuck inside the caravan with this troper's father. A caravan that wasn't properly level, so things slid downhill. The wind caused the whole thing to lurch anyway, the rain was noisy as hell, and this troper's father cannot cook worth a damn. And the annoyance of the beach being just beyond the bank that was blocking the worst of the wind, but not being able to visit it because of the wind and rain.

Our geography teacher said it'd be fun to rough it in the outback for a couple of days. Fun, my ass. Our tent collapsed during a freak storm. We sat up all night holding the walls up. The girls next to us had their tent blown completely away. We had to fish it out of the lake the next morning. NEVER AGAIN.

This troper wound up tired, wet and frozen after a church trip. Her mother refuses to buy her an air mattress, so she slept in the leaky corner on some foam matting.

Ancient history for this old troper (hope it's not too squicky)...back when I was engaged to my girlfriend (who did, indeed, later become my wife and, blissfully a few years later, my ex-wife), we went on a camping trip to the Smokey Mountains. The trip happened to coincide with my fiancee's period, and while I was aware she had a history of some pretty bad menstrual symptoms, I had not yet spent time with her in that condition while cooped up with her in a tiny tent in the middle of nowhere. No problem...I was patient and understanding, and she was very self-controlled, not wanting her discomfort and mood to spoil the trip for me. All was well.....until she discovered that, while tossing some trash at a previous campsite, I had somehow also discarded a bag containing...you guessed it...her pads. That broke the camel's back, with my lovely girlfriend turning into The Incredible Hulk before my eyes. So, anxious to put a lid on a situation that could have broken our engagement (or, quite possibly, my skull), I hopped into the car and sped to the first place of mercantilism I could find outside the park. Yep, it was quite an interesting experience for this very male troper to have to go into a tiny Mom and Pop general store in backwoods Tennessee, and plunk a box of maxi-pads on the counter in front of the very prim old female clerk. Order was restored, the she-hulk pacified, and the rest of the trip went swimmingly. (Wish I could say the same about the subsequent marriage.)

This troper's father once went on what was supposed to be a short day ski. He and his friend got horribly lost and ended up accidentally going in circles following their own tracks. Then my dad's ski broke, and since there was about nine feet of snow (there had been a heavy snowfall that year, we usually only get about five feet in the mountains), he couldn't move very fast. He and his friend got separated, and my dad lost one of his gloves (I'm not entirely sure how). He tried to light a fire, but he only had child proof lighters and it was so cold that he couldn't move his hands well enough to actually produce a flame. When he didn't come home that night, my mom had to call search and rescue. They found him the next morning and he was taken to the hospital with frostbite but no permanent damage.

Another time, this same troper's father went on a canoe trip with a few friends. It was supposed to be a three day trip, but on the first day, they discovered that the river was so high it was somewhat dangerous, however, they decided to continue on anyway. Eventually, both canoes swamped and they were all dumped into the river. My dad was nearly sucked under a log jam, while one of the other guys lost his glasses and got his legs all cut up on rocks. The third friend managed to hold onto one of the canoes, while the other was washed down stream along with $1500 dollars worth of gear. They then had to hike ten miles to a nearby ranch and get a ride back to their cars. The lost canoe was found a few weeks later, 90 miles downstream and in three pieces.

Forgive this troper for saying this, but your dad needs to stop going on camping trips.

One of this troper's father's friends lost both of his legs to frostbite because he got stuck on a camping trip during a white out.

My eighth grade camping trip wasn't bad at all, until one of my classmates got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. As she was stumbling around in the dark trying to find the flashlight, she stepped on my leg, which was already pretty sore from hiking all day. You will not believe how much that hurt. Another girl sprained her ankle after tripping over a rock.

My Dad is hopeless at any kind of roughing it. He managed to have one of these in a static caravan, while my Mother, Brother and I slept peacefully, he lay freezing, trying to sleep fully clothed, because he failed to notice that the room he was sleeping in had a heater and an electric blanket.

This troper went on a massive group hike for Ventures (like 500 scouts from 14-18) anyway, it rained every single day, she caught a bug and thus was throwing up every 10 steps (she counted) and she had to sleep in the gambling tents as her group forgot the tent. She arrived home at 1am sleep deprived, dehydrated and sick. Fun times

This troper has hellish luck when camping trips are involved. And since in his line of work camping trips are always involved, he has a load of stories to tell. Besides getting stung by a stingray as soon as he stepped into the water and rolling down a mountain, one of them stands out. This troper and his survival class went for a sort of final exam on camping to the Altar desert in Sonora, Mexico. As you know, the desert is famous for its lack of rain. If you are lucky it rains just one day every year. So, this troper (after reading several weather forecasts for the area) decided it would be pretty safe to take his very big tent that lacked the rain protection thingie that goes on the outside. Not only did it rain, the storm of the decade hit that night, soaking THEN freezing said troper during the same night. Next day was sunny. Then the storm came back and we had to pack everything up and run for our lives. Fun times.

This troper completely swore off camping trips after she was bitten by a brown recluse spider on her last one.

This troper's school organized a camping trip during typhoon season. The tent flooded. None of our belongings were saved.

@/MacPhisto has been in Cub Scouts/Boy Scouts all his life. The odds of probability are against me.

This troper, her dad, sister and sister's friend all decided to go camping at a lake a long time ago. It was a five hour drive, and the last half hour of the drive was beautiful, so we figured the campsite would be, too. Unfortunately, the lake was just a puddle with hardly any trees surrounding it. On top of that, camp fires weren't allowed, and a big wildfire had started not too far away from where we were. My sister starts crying and freaking out, her friend just stands there unsure of what to do, and my dad finally decides it would be best to go back home. What a waste of time.

A subversion. Whenever this troper was taken on a camping trip as a kid, he always ended up with bad sunburn that lasted for days, but really did like those trips.

This troper once went on a Girl Scouts camping trip, back when she lived in Arizona. Aside from the fact that the other girls in the group and I had a long history of not getting along, I had never been camping before. I ended up sharing with one of the adults, because we were separated by Girl Scouting level, and none of the other kids my age would share a tent with me. Thus, the (very nice) lady I was sharing with mostly put our tent up and I handed her whatever she needed. This turned out to be very, very good when a monsoon hit. Our tent was one of two (out of around fifteen) that stayed up. The other one was where the other two adult chaperones were staying.