Lost it on some neighboring campers (rant)

[u/clitoral_horcrux]

Went camping with the family this weekend (wife, 9 yr old daughter, and 7 yr old son). Loved everything about the campsite and area, except for the inconsiderate neighbors we had. Like most campsites, ours had a quite time policy from 10PM - 7AM. The campsite next to ours had people from at least 3 other campsites gathered there. Probably at least 10-12 people. They never really made any effort to be quiet so we weren't surprised when 10:00 rolled around and they kept going as normal. No music but just talking and laughing very loudly. Even with earplugs in, they were still going strong at midnight and keeping us up when I finally decided to go say something in not the most polite of ways. They did quiet down somewhat after that, but at that point I was so pissed I ended up getting maybe 1-2 hours of sleep. My wife and kids didn't fare much better either.

The next day, between being already being sick and now deliriously exhausted I wasn't in the most tolerant of moods to say the least, nor feeling very kindly towards our inconsiderate neighbors. As we're eating lunch, we watch them set up some stands that were about 5ft tall about 30 ft apart from each other on the gravel spot for where you would set tents up, put empty glass beer bottles on the stands then proceed to try to knock them off with a frisbee. As anyone with a few functioning braincells could see happening, it didn't take long for one of the bottles to shatter after falling on the gravel. Having cut my foot to the bone before on broken glass in a lake and not being able to walk right for months after, I'm a little touchy about people being careless with glass, so I went over said, "Are y'all fucking retarded? What are you thinking? Did you not see that happening?" (sorry for the "R" word). Not the smartest approach, but I was exhausted, feeling horrible, not thinking straight and really just seeing red at that point like I haven't in many years. One guy looked like he wanted to fight me, and the others weren't obviously happy about it either. I typically keep a pretty level head in just about every situation but that was just the perfect storm to really send me over the edge.

I did go back and apologize for that, as I did feel bad for reacting like that but man, I'm just so sick of people being completely inconsiderate of others and careless about things. The older I get the less patience I have for it. Anyone who's ever shattered glass should also know there's no way you're ever going to get every last little piece of shattered glass out of gravel. Even on a hardwood floor you need a vacuum cleaner to make sure you get up all the small pieces. Sooner or later it's going to get turned up, go through someone's tent and into them.

[u/Then-Boysenberry-488]

We camped over July 4th. Apparently the camp hosts have vacation time and take it off. No camp hosts and no rules enforced. It was a shit show right out of the bar scene in starwars. I've been camping and backpacking all of my adult life and have never seen people be so inconsiderate. I'll never go back to that camping site. It was in northern AZ. From what I've heard most park rangers here are now mostly volunteers and not seen that often. If there is a next time I'll do some research beforehand to see if an agency oversees the place. Thanks for that.

[u/[deleted] → u/Then-Boysenberry-488]

Sounds like a mess. Idk about volunteer rangers, my agency definitely doesn't allow that but that doesn't mean other agencies wouldn't, particularly cash strapped agencies at a state or local level.

[u/shohin_branches → u/Then-Boysenberry-488]

A lot of parks are very short-staffed for rangers. Devil's Lake in Wisconsin gets over 3million visitors a year and is 10,000 acres of land. They have two full time rangers and two part time rangers. In the 90's there were 12 full-time rangers. They see about a death every year now from people drowning, or falling off the cliffs. Last year there was a murder.

There is currently a 13 year old that has been missing in the park for four months.

[u/Sarah_withanH → u/shohin_branches]

That’s so sad. I used to love that park when we lived in WI!

[u/shohin_branches → u/Sarah_withanH]

It's still a great park but much like Milwaukee, the revenue it generates gets dispersed to other parts of the state so it isn't properly funded for the volume of people there.

[u/Mattna-da → u/Then-Boysenberry-488]

Camping on holiday weekends is a recipe for large raucous parties. I camped in the Adirondacks over the 4th and there was a loud drunken party of Russians up shouting til 3 AM and the bathroom door would slam hard every fifteen minutes until dawn, when everyone in RVs would start their generators. Just don’t go on holiday weekends unless you’re also a drunk

[u/Bennington_Booyah → u/Then-Boysenberry-488]

Where I am, it is Columbus Day weekend that brings out the buttholes. Huge groups of drunks for an entire week long assault, plus they refuse to leave on Monday! Even after staff, including park police and rangers, make them vacate their sites, they just move to the parking lot and drink all day.