What is your Greatest Camping Story or Memory?

[stillh2o]

I'm there at FW and love talking to people and hearing there stories.
Everyone has such great stories to tell, so tell us yours! I have to go to EPCOT now I will post mine later.

 

[PenskeSth1]

We use to spend every Thanksgiving at FW. I remember our son was like 3 years old, we were inside finishing up dishes on Thanksgiving day. We heard a huge bang and the whole 5th wheel shook. DH and I ran outside. DS had taken another key from hook and ran golf cart right into the front of the camper. DD was outside with him but did not know he had a key w/him. It was just a old key to something we no longer used. The little stinker did not get hurt and he was just grinning ear to ear. The whole top of the cart was pushed back. When DH took it over to bike barn he was worried about what they would say. CM had told DH about some worse instances then the one that had just happened. I remember seeing CM driving it down the road. It cost us 175.00 to repair. We laugh at it now when we look at the pictures. Although we were glad our DS was not injured. We had some great laughs over that day. DS is now 7.5.....

 

[allisophie]

had to rub in that trip to epcot eh?

My favorite memory has to be when we camped the first time in Yellowstone. DH and I drove to visit my bestfriend who was living in Idaho Falls. We drove from St.Louis in a dodge shelby charger.. stick.. NO I did not know how to drive one. .yes I knew how by the time we returned 2 weeks later I some how managed to go the wrong way and we ended up on the Kansas Turnpike.. umm dear we just passed Witchita.. I think I missed a turn.. ( yes I found out I needed glasses to drive hmmm ) After a 4 hour wrong way I managed to get on the right highway.. made up some serious time thanks to trucker and found Colorado... any way.. lost track.. We head into Yellowstone with my bestgal pal and her hubby.. we get the tent up, get firewood,make dinner ect.. Nessa (best pal) suggested marshmellow fluff instead of marshmellows.. soo Ok. I haul the fluff from here.. (for some odd reason she wasn't able to get it then, so had a extra jar for her in tow)ok.. so we get the chocolate melted for the "smores" and I go to open the fluff.. POW!! marshmellow gooo everywhere.. it exploded and scared the devil out of us and our neighbors.. mind you now.. it's pitch dark.. no electric just lanterns and our fire,here we are trying to ply the fluff off of our clothes,etc.. it was I forgot to mention it was about 40º at that time.. and they were calling for snow that night After getting the fluff off w peanut butter and showering in the mildly warm water.(sure wish we had our travel trailer then) we went to participate in the Ranger show.. where we learned the "correct" way to build a fire,the do's and don'ts w the animals that freely roam.. ie buffalo,elk, bears, about the time he mentioned the weather the snow started... oh sure it was beautiful..as we headed back to our tent we all wondered.. how much snow we were going to get... Then the snow turned to sleet and back and forth.. by 6 am we were frozen into our tent.. yup zipper froze.. luckily DH had the coleman propane heater and we melted our way out We had about 7 inches of snow, the Ranger came by about 10 am checking on us and asked if we were having fluff cakes for breakfast.. hmm he rememebered us.. and if we needed any assistance getting out of the park.. we told him nope we were here for the week, he laughed at us "youngins' and told us to have fun but to watch out for bears .." they like sweet things" we never did see a bear, just the elk that passed thru our site as we ate dinner.
We hope to go next summer, this time we are bringing marhsmellow's and the Travel Trailer Nessa can find her own fluff

 

[LegoMom3]

Mine does not involve an RV or camper, but it's my most memorable!!...Hubby and I spent summer of '92 in Alaska - I mean real Alaska: small villages, the bush, etc. Somewhere along the line before the trip I got this crazy phobia of becoming trapped in an outhouse by a bear. So every time I had to use an outhouse, I made lots of noise to scare away my phantoms, and looked both ways before emerging. Sure enough, one fateful early morning I open that crescent-moon door and come face to face with the biggest dang black bear I've ever seen (they grow 'em BIG up there!!). Had it been a grizzly I likely would have died on the spot, but this guy was enough to send me promptly back INTO the outhouse. He wasn't scared of me in the least, and after a few sniffs and whuffs, he ambled down the trail and disappeared into the brush.
My phobia of outhouses now has NOTHING to do with how smelly they might be....

 

[wildernessfamily]

Wow! we have so many of them...My DD said her favorite memories are of her sitting around the campfire with her grandparents and singing songs. I come from a long family of campers so I would say some of my memories are of a bear stepping on our tent in the twilight and almost pulling it down on all six of us in the mountains...or at Girl Scout camp when Hurricane Agnes came through and all of us girls were seperated from the adults because our cabins were on the hill and a creek ran between us. Two memories that helped teach me something about respecting the great outdoors. OF course my favorite Disney camping one is when my DD was little around 5 we watched the electric water parade from the marina at FW and she kept repeating...."I'm not going in that water" "I'm not going in that water" she apparently thought they were real.

 

[sixAMmom]

Well so far my family has had only one( soon to be more) camping experience. We just got back from Ft Wilderness on Monday !! We had the best time except for the heat ! At night it wasn't so bad because we had the fans in the tents and after the rains cooled everything off we slept pretty well. My favorite part of camping (your not going to believe this) is getting up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom ; ! All the animals we saw on our stroll to the comfort stations was cool. We saw all kinds of bunnies and they didn't dart off into the bush right away either. We saw an armidillo too!! My kids were so excited. When we first got to the campsite we walked around a bit. We went to the little canal that ran behind the site. My husbend saw a small gator !! We were still happy to be there. How could you not its Disney. I know that if I was camping out in the wilderness somewhere where I had to use a tree this probably would not make the top 10 memories list !! Only at Disney is going to the bathroom a memory !!!

DH 30
DW 32
DD 8 Jasmine
DD 7 Ariel
DS 4 Capt Jack
DD 15 months Belle
DD

 

[fanofmickey]

We went on our first camping trip with our pop-up camper with DD12, DS9 and DStwins 2. One of the twins and DS9 sat in the back seat of our van for most of the trip. Every 5 minutes, the 2 year old would look out the back window and say, in his sing-song voice, "Camper comin' with us?" We went from GA to TN, and we heard this almost continuously the entire trip. Now, we like to say it to DS16 just to irritate him.

"Camper comin' with us?"

 

[ftwildernessguy]

This was on our first camping trip and involved our then 2 year old daughter. (What is it with 2 year olds, anyway?) We had a used Coleman and were camping in the coastal redwoods near Santa Cruz, CA. In the middle of the night, DD was screaming "Somebody turn on the lights!" which we promptly did. Seems our Yorkshire Terrier had gotten cold and thought DD's face was a pretty warm spot to sleep. I opened my sleeping bag, the dog shot down to the bottom, not to be seen again until morning, and DD rolled over and went back to sleep. DD is now 20, but I remember that night like it happened yesterday.

 

[madhouserobey]

getting on the stage at fw campfire at age 5 to tell a joke and whole thing goes dark .i think they blew a fuse or trip a breaker .my parents thougth i hit a switch or something.boy were they laughing.now 37 boy the years sure do fly by.

 

[RocklandRVers]

My most memorable FtW camping experience was during our first stay in May 2003. It was on our last night. My son had taken his bike for a last ride around the campground just at dusk and the plan was for us to meet up with him at the campfire show. DW and I took our the rental golf cart out for our own final tour. We ended up at Settlement and stopped for a few minutes soaking in the atmosphere of the marina, Pioneer Hall, the trading post: the smell of food mixed with the woodsy aroma, the subtle lighting and "old west" feeling, the sound of banjo music. We sat there and talked about how fast the week had gone and vowed to return as often as we could.

Now whenever we return to FtW, one of the first things we do is head to the settlement for the familiar smells, sounds and sights. It puts us into our Disney mood immediately.

 

[Chess]

madhouserobey I know you hit a switch as I was right there.

One of my favorite camping stories besides laughing at my brother at Ft. Wilderness is camping with the horses at Assateague State Park in MD. We've woken up with them right outside our tent and have also watched them mooch food from campsites by throwing bags of opened food into the air and by rolling a watermelon off a campers table so it busted open.

 

[linchat]

Drunk and Renting 24 hour golf carts! Getting one stuck in a pedestrian bridge over one of the canals near the general store and watching them dismantle the bridge the next morning! lol

Only only hurt to pay the $300 bill for damage.

 

[ftwildernessguy]

Drunk and Renting 24 hour golf carts! Getting one stuck in a pedestrian bridge over one of the canals near the general store and watching them dismantle the bridge the next morning! lol

Only only hurt to pay the $300 bill for damage.

So I guess renting a golf cart and driving around FW while intoxicated resulting in property damage is funny. Sorry, I don't see it that way.

 

[linchat]

To each his own. Not getting drunk at fort wilderness doesn't seem all that funny to me. To different sides of the spectrum.

 

[lindsey]

One of my favorite memories from FtW was in 1988. We were returning to the campsite after a day in the parks. We found a squirrel eating peanut butter out of an empty jar that had been put in the trash bag. The squirrel had almost his whole body inside the jar. It was so funny!

 

[linchat]

Going for you bachelor party and having your group hold you down while they chain a bowling ball around your ankle and forcing you to downtown disney... Funny at first, but carrying a bowling ball for a few hours isnt't!

 

[dgaston]

First major camping trip at FW with new-to-us popup. We arrive on Sunday, Oldest DS is at college, and send him email from Epcot. Then when we're in bed that evening, someone knocks on the trailer about 1 am. I yell to DH "there's a man at the door!" It was DS, who couldn't stand that we went to WDW without him. He'd planned to surprise us, but there was a snowstorm in Boston, and he didn't get out very early. He had to sleep in the conversion van that night, and in the morning, I told DS10 there was a surprise for him in the van, he insisted it was just clothes, and took a while to discover his favorite sibling was there! It is a family legend now.