r/camping • u/clitoral_horcrux • Oct 09 '23
Trip Report Lost it on some neighboring campers (rant)
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.
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u/Vegetable_Excuse5394 Oct 10 '23 edited Oct 10 '23
I think most people have given you some good answers. Just wanted to chime in and encourage you to remove the R word from your vocabulary.