My entire family used to be avid campers. Two or three times a summer my parents, aunt, uncles, and grandparents would all rent a large, shared campsite at a local family campground for a weekend. This is the worst camping trip we ever had; it was bad enough that my grandmother never went camping with us again after that.
Normally, it would just be the aforementioned people, plus my cousins, my sister, and me. This year, we got invited to camp with the college-age son of a family friend and all of his friends. We knew this son very well, but didn’t know his friends, but since he and his father were awesome and well-known to us, we didn’t think it would be a problem. First mistake.
First day there, they stole all of the expensive beer that my uncle brought — despite being underage, and despite the fact that he didn’t bring it to share with anyone but my grandfather — then got drunk and started throwing up all over the place. I also found out, years later, that my aunt had yelled at them when she caught them smoking pot around my sister and cousins and me.
My mom always over-packed snacks because she wanted to make extra sure my sister, cousins, and I always had something to snack on if we got hungry. The friends saw me get a box of granola bars from the back of our car to share with my cousins and realized there was food in there, then helped themselves, completely clearing out all of the snacks in our car by the next morning. They never once asked for permission.
The next morning, my grandmother made eggs for my diabetic grandfather’s breakfast. The second they were cooked, the friends walked over to her stove, took the skillet, and ate the entire thing themselves without even saying a word to her. My grandfather had nothing to eat and almost had a sugar low. They didn’t even bring the skillet back when they were done, and she had to figure out where they left it; apparently someone just tossed it aside in the dirt. They then ate the cereal, cereal bars, and oatmeal my mom brought for our breakfast, so there was nothing for my sister and me to eat. We had to get breakfast from a neighboring campsite where, thankfully, we had become friends with the children of the campers in the site the day before, and they were sympathetic enough to give us some trail mix.
The friends wouldn’t stop leaving all the coolers wide open, so all the ice for our meat and drinks melted completely in the summer heat of noon. They offered to go out to a store and get more, so everyone pitched in money to pay for it. They came back with tons of raw chicken that no one asked for and not a single bag of ice, because they “forgot.” We ended up having to cook the chicken, plus all of the burgers and hot dogs everyone brought that day — otherwise it would have spoiled without ice — and it was way too much food for everyone. They then took the leftovers and threw it all into the woods, so we had tons of feral cats, raccoons, foxes, and even a freaking black bear in our camp in the middle of the night that night.
The absolute worst thing they did was forget me in a boulder field. One of the main draws of the campground is a prehistoric boulder field left behind by the Ice Age. People will go down there and climb on the rocks during the day and look at stars during the night. Our campsite wasn’t that far from the boulder field, so they decided to go climb on the rocks and brought my sister, one of my cousins, and me with them. We were only allowed to go because my parents assumed that the family friend was going with them and would watch us; they had no idea he was actually headed somewhere else on his own. When the friends left the rocks, they failed to do a headcount and left without me. I wasn’t even that far out on the rocks and was still within their line of sight, and they still didn’t notice they were leaving me. I didn’t even realize they had left and was still sitting there on a rock by myself, staring out at the rest of the field, when a father with three kids walked by and saw me alone and called to me to get my attention out of concern that I might be lost. By then, my mom and aunt were running frantically down the path, screaming my name, after they returned to the campsite without me. My parents told me we weren’t allowed to go with them anywhere, anymore, even if the one person we knew said he would be with them.
By noon the next day, they had drunk every soda, bottled water, and juice box that my mom had brought for my sister and me, ate every bit of food that they hadn’t already devoured the first and second day, drank every bottle of beer anyone brought, and not once did they ask if it was okay for them to take any of it. My sister and I were six and eight years old respectively, so we started crying because we were hungry and thirsty. My mom was furious because, even after all the food and drinks she brought, she couldn’t feed us at all due to their theft. My dad was boiling creek water so that we wouldn’t get dehydrated because of how hot it was that day.
We were supposed to be there for three more days, and already we were out of everything, so my family called it. We packed up the tents and gear. All the while, the friends couldn’t understand why we refused to stay there with them any longer, having completely ignored all of the complaints from my family members throughout the weekend. My grandmother says it was likely they assumed we’d stay and just give them more money to replace what they stole so they could steal it again, but after the chicken incident, no one trusted them to actually buy what we asked them to. If we went out and bought what we needed ourselves, they’d just take it without asking, and we’d be back to the same problem again.
We’ve been asked to go camping with them again several times since, but we have all made it clear that we’d sooner share our campsite with the black bear again than with them.
