When someone says they are going camping, what comes to your imagination?

I’d assume they mean a regular car camping site, unless they suggested otherwise or I knew they had an RV.

Usually the follow up question “where are you going?” will allow me to paint a clear picture in my head of the type of camping they are doing.

I actually just got home from babysitting for my sister. She went camping with her BF in this adorable thing. No clue where they went and I didn’t really care.

I was just fucking pissed that they took the trailer camping. That is normally on their back porch and where I crash when I babysit.

It depends on who is saying it…if it were my mom & stepdad I would know that they are taking the RV somewhere to park that has hookups for water/cable & wifi…..if one of my friends said it I would know they are going to take a few sticks and a couple of blankets to make an old school style tent somewhere in a field where they can get really high all night…...my dad and brother would go camping the way it’s supposed to be done with real tents & sleeping bags out in the woods, probably near a river, where they can go hunting or fishing.

If I say that I am going camping, I mean that I’m going to Vegas or the Pechanga (a nice Indian casino about 6 miles away from my house).

@Silence04 I’d assume they mean a regular car camping site, unless they suggested otherwise or I knew they had an RV.
Is there a thing as camping from a car, or in the car? If one is in the woods but can drive their vehicle under 40 yards from where they pitch a tent (if they even have a tent and not in a trailer) is that truly camping? Even if one was in the woods and has a tent, is that alone enough to call it camping?

@johnpowell .I was just fucking pissed that they took the trailer camping. That is normally on their back porch and where I crash when I babysit.
If you are not there overnight, who is watching the kids by day when you are babysitting, and if you are there overnight babysitting, if you are not using their room, would not the couch (if a guest room was not there) be a better choice should one of the kids actually need you quick?

@cheebdragon [ …if it were my mom & stepdad I would know that they are taking the RV somewhere to park that has hookups for water/cable & wifi…. ]
How does that differ from plain old RVing? If the park was tucked in the mountains as opposed to off the interstate but had all the same amenities, does the fact that there are wooded areas nearby make it camping, adding the fact you don’t have a tent, dig a latrine, or have to start a fire other than stoking up the propane stove?

[ …..if one of my friends said it I would know they are going to take a few sticks and a couple of blankets to make an old school style tent somewhere in a field where they can get really high all night….. ]
If one is not residing there a few days and just putting up shelter to get inebriated in privacy, no plans to cook there, no change of clothes, not starting a fire, can that be called camping?

Camping to me means being the forest, with pine trees and lakes and maybe a stream, creek or river. It cracks me up when I hear people say that they’re going camping at the beach. I live within driving/biking distance of the beach, and the beach is near civilization, meaning 7–11 stores, gas stations and bars. That’s not camping, that’s an extended beach barbecue.

I need tents in the woods, or RV’s or camp trailers. Those are fine too. You have to cook outdoors, preferably over an open campfire, but a camp stove is OK too. If you cook on a camp stove, you still have to have a campfire in your camp, to consider it to be real camping, though. Campfires are for telling ghost stories, for singing around, and for warming your tootsies, better yet for making s’mores, frying up bacon and eggs, roasting weenies, and making coffee. The smell of a campfire is more than 50% of what camping is all about.

I prefer to sleep in a tent or in an RV or camping trailer, rather than completely outside or on the ground, which is too cold, too hard, and there are too many bugs, and if it was like the last time I went camping, too many coyotes running through the campsite in the middle of the night.

Camping, for me, should be done in the warm summer months, not when it’s cold, and especially not in winter time or in the snow. That’s not camping, that’s torture. If I wanted to freeze my butt off, I’d camp in the refrigerated milk room at Costco.

Like @cheebdragon said, it really depends on who is saying it.

If it is me, camping is us (or me), and whatever I need that fits on or in a backpack, putting on the backpack and hiking away from other people and the niceties of civilization for a few days. No hard sided buildings, no cars, no running water (unless it is a stream), no electricity, no phones, no wi-fi, tablets or computers, Just nature, me and whatever I can carry.

My daughters ex went with us to a national park one year, and on this trip we were staying in a campground. We had a tent pad, covered sun shade that we could hang our hammocks on, picnic table, water faucet about thirty feet away, restroom (no showers) about 50 yards away a store up the road, a restaurant across from the store. We brought an ice chest. cokes, beer, frozen foods, two burner coleman stove, extra fuel, lantern, and other homey amenities with us. There were 63 other padsites in the campground.

Her ex was so impressed and said “This is what I call real camping! When my folks go camping they take the RV with the tv and everything and usually eat out at night!”

@Hypocrisy_Central Car camping is the term for standard developed campground sites that are meant for you to drive in with your car.

Whether you have a car with you or not, or if it’s a developed site or primative site, it’s all still camping. One type of camping isn’t more true than the other. Camping is just seeking temporary shelter at a spot that would otherwise not be very developed/habitable.

@Silence04 Whether you have a car with you or not, or if it’s a developed site or primative site, it’s all still camping. One type of camping isn’t more true than the other. Camping is just seeking temporary shelter at a spot that would otherwise not be very developed/habitable.
Isn’t it? Not all camping is on the same level, at least in the eyes of many. What @rojo described as taking what you need with you and going deep, not having ”civilization” unless you brought it with you and packed it out when you left is maybe the purist form of camping. If you have access to stores for those forgotten matches, lighters, rope, etc. or showers with running water, even if only cold, trash containers with park services that empties them, it is like a primitive rest stop on a road trip. As @Kardamom mentioned, having a campfire and cooking over an open flame, even if it is a camp stove is more camping than being in an RV with AC, generator or solar panels to keep your electric gadgets going, and a toilet, bed, etc. I would say even if you had a tent, but you have a full-sized blow up air mattress, it is less like camping then of you had a sleeping bag and had to choose a soft patch of grass and use a pad to set your sleeping bag and tent on. Your toilet is wherever you dig the hole. How much ”cilivilation” can you have before it is not ”real camping”?

It’s all “real camping” though. Just becuase someone prefers a certain type, doesn’t change the definition of camping.

It depends on the person. If this is someone I’ve spent any amount of time with, I will probably be able to guess what sort of camping they might do. There’s a range of possibilities, from hiking into the backcountry with a tent or lean-to, to driving up to a campsite in an RV. And yeah, I think it’s all “real camping”, though I will admit I have less respect for the latter type. I mean, if you’re carrying a full kitchen and a TV, why even bother?

I think a lot of things. I think tents, I think campers, I think RVs. Mostly I think “camp fire.”

I gotta have a real toilet. And now that I’m older, a real shower too.

Naked and Afraid Now that is real camping!

@Hypocrisy_Central is there a required amount of time before sleeping outside in a makeshift shelter can be considered “camping”? I don’t think so.
What makes it camping? The people that are calling it camping.