As I was cleaning out my camper this weekend I was thinking of all the fun times our family has had while camping. In particular it brought to mind one rather funny incident although I wasn’t at all amused at the time.

During a meal while on a huge family camping trip (we had 4 families camping at the campground and had invited the rest of my husband’s brothers and sisters, along with his parents, to join us for a meal) I went into our camper to grab something for the meal - I don’t remember what anymore.

As I walked to one end of the camper (we have a pop-up tent camper) the camper suddenly tipped towards that end, causing me to scream and freak out. My husband hadn’t remembered to put the stabilizing bars down on the camper when we had set it up the night before so when I was the only one in the camper and on one end of it, the darn thing tipped.

I stood in the camper trying to figure out what to do while everybody in the family was laughing. I was not only embarassed, but I was rather annoyed too because I heard my husband clearly say “whoops” so I knew it was something he had done or not done. And, it didn’t help that he was laughing the hardest. Nor was I happy that he didn’t come help me.

Instead, I slowly made my way back to the middle of the camper, braced myself as it tipped back upright, then walked out of it and put the stabalizing bars down myself (after I figured out what the problem was).

Then I spent the rest of the day and evening avoiding my husband because I was mad at him.

Now, everytime we go on a camping trip with our family we are asked if we put the stabilizing bars down because otherwise “I’ll get scared and freak out on everyone again.” Why is it that families only remember the stuff you don’t want them to?

Everybody who camps or rv’s has at least one story to tell about something silly, crazy, or funny, that happened (even if they didn’t think it was funny at the time.)

For me, one of the things I can remember vividly is the day my loaf of bread disappeared. We were camping with family over the Memorial Day weekend 3 years ago and decide to make pudgie pies for lunch. I dug out my pudgie pie makers and my loaf of bread, and then decided I needed to take a quick trip to the bathroom before continuing with lunch preparations.

I was gone less than 5 five minutes. When I got back I couldn’t find my bread. I thought I had gotten it out, but it wasn’t sitting on the table in the screen room attached to our pop-up camper and that was where I could have sworn I left it.

I proceeded to look in the camper in case I had only dreamed I had gotten it out. I didn’t find it. Then I walked down to my brother and sister-in-law’s campsite to see if anyone had come to my camper and gotten the bread. They hadn’t. The only other bread we had between us was about a half loaf (and that wasn’t going to feed 7 hungry people) so soon everybody was on a hunt for it.

Suddenly, my five year old niece called out “There it is!” She was pointing down a grassy hill, about 25 feet from our camper. Yep. That’s where our bread was - what was left of it. Running away from the bread, was a big fat raccoon who apparently didn’t get scared off until my niece yelled “There it is.”

In the few minutes I was gone from our campsite, that raccoon came to our campsite, squeezed under the screen room walls, reached up onto the table, took the loaf of bread, ran into the field with it, and ate most of it. Talk about a fast masked bandit!

Yes, we had to take a trip to the store before we could have lunch that day. And no, I no longer leave any food out unattended - not even for a minute.

We don’t have to deal with larger animals like bears where we camp but we have a lot of smaller animals to deal with, especially raccoons.

A few years ago during a summer camping trip, we left the campground for the day and headed north to pick cherries. After picking 6 buckets of cherries and having a few cherry fights, we headed back to the campground and pitted them. We then tucked them into our electric cooler (with a latch) for safekeeping until the next day when we were leaving to head home.

We spent the evening sitting around the campfire, roasting marshmallows, making some popcorn over the fire, and drinking some wine and beer. When my husband and I crawled into the bed in our tent camper later that night we were really tired and fell asleep almost instantly.

The next thing I remember is my eyes popping open because a loud growling sound had woken me up, but not my husband. No, he sleeps through just about anything. The noise sounded really close. Then I heard what sounded like two animals fighting. Because I’m a big chicken I was afraid to move at first, but since my husband wasn’t showing any signs of ceasing his snoring, I managed to make myself get out of bed and look out the door to see what was going on.

I nearly screamed when I saw 4 huge raccoons right outside our camper door. They had the latch to our cooler popped open and several bags of our cherries on the ground. Mostly empty bags I might add. They had been there a while feasting away. Two of the racoons were fighting over a nearly full bag, which is the commotion I had heard. I quickly slammed the camper door shut.

Now, because I was excited and all worked up over those raccoons outside my door, I had to go to the bathroom really bad. Did I mention we don’t have a bathroom in our camper? That meant I had to figure out a way to get the raccoons to leave so I could salavage the rest of the cherries and get to the bathroom before I wet myself.

My husband, Mr. heavy sleeper, still hadn’t woke up so I marched over and shook him so hard his teeth nearly rattled. After several minutes of incoherence from him, he finally woke up completely when he heard the raccoons fighting again, this time about two feet from his head becasue the sleeping compartment of our camper was almost touching a hilly wooded area and the raccoons had dragged the bag of cherries right next to the end of our camper to continue their fight.

By then I was convinced, the raccoons were going to develop superhuman powers, open the door to our camper or chew through the canvas portion of it, and attack us. It didn’t help that I now felt like my bladder was going to burst at any second.

My husband, my hero! He got up, took a broom, went outside, and chased the raccoons away. Well kind of. They took up watch at the edge of the wooded area and stared at him as he got our cooler closed to salvage what was left of our cherries (less than half), and loaded the cooler in our vehicle. He then picked up the remaining cherries on the ground, put them in a trash bag, and put them in our vehicle too, in order to discourage the raccoons from coming back and finishing the leftovers.

By now, I was wishing we had never gone camping that week, had never picked cherries, and that I would have had only 1 beer instead of 3 earlier in the evening because maybe then I wouldn’t be jumping around trying to not wet myself like a little baby.

My husband said he would walk to the campground’s bathroom with me, just to be nice. But now, I didn’t want to come out of the camper. I could still hear and see the raccoons. They were definitely well fed because they were huge! But I absolutely had to go to the bathroom so my husband gave me the broom so I had a weapon (told you I was a chicken) and we proceeded to the bathroom but only after I made him grab a long thick stick we were using to put out spread the ashes in our fire pit at night to put out the fire. I wanted him to have something to fight off the raccoons that I was sure were going to follow us.

The rest of the night passed without any further raccoon fights in our camping area.

The next day we had to explain to my brother and sister in law why we didn’t have enough cherries left to make cherry wine when we got home.

Lesson Learned: Even if a cooler has a sturdy latch, stow inside at night because animals are clever and can open them!

Do you have a camping story to share? If you do, please make a post in the comments section.