Share Your Camping Adventure Stories to Win Fuel & Camping Gear

We’ve only received 11 submissions so far! Check them out then send us yours.

• Every year since I was just a wee lil boy of 18 we have camped at Maupin, OR and floated the Deschutes white water rapids. This year will mark 21 years with friends and family. We have had groups as small as 3 and as large as 28. I look forward to this event every year because I get to spend quality time with my two boys and close family and friends. We make sure to make the trip as much fun for the adults and the children, beer pong for the adult and soda pong for the kids......I think the older teens cheated and forgot the pop.....they were properly punished the lil "pukes" anyhow camping gear is always welcome and needed we go through a lot and share what we have with who may be less fortunate. This years trip is July 20th woohoo

• First ever camping trip with friends and no family we drove almost two hours into the mountains in my little Chevy classic! We forgot so many things that we ended up not being able too cook or sleep comfortable but! We remembered the booze haha!!!!

• Growing up my parents never took my sister and I fishing. About two years ago I decided to purchase a fishing license and found a nice secluded area to fish. One of the first times I went out I saw a huge small-mouth bass swimming near me. I lured the fish as if I was playing cat and mouse. The fish grabbed the bait and I reeled in the fish. The bass was strong and broke the line as I got it on the land. There was no way I was going to allow myself to lose that catch, so I jumped on in after it, wrestled with it and carried it back with me to my car. I drove up to my friends Starbucks where they work with mud all over me and with the stenchy smell of the fish to yell, "I CAUGHT ONE!" Haha.

• I am known as "bear bait" in my family. My first encounter was with my family at McCall Id.. I was 8 years old and a bear swam all the way across Cascade Lake and chased us all right up to the cabin door. After that at the headwaters of Cathrine Creek outside La Grande Or. a bear watched our camp for 4 days and on the 5th it chased me for a hundred yards while I was riding a motorcycle! Then a friend of mine took a picture of me eating huckleberries by Meacham Or. and when she developed the pics there was a bear behind me only 50ft away! (Didn't even know it was there....) 3 years ago I saw a huge black bear on my way to my hunting spot. And last but not least..While hunting with my 12 year old last year we came around a bend in the trail and a black bear was 10 feet away standing on his back legs, peaking at me from behind a tree! I yelled "Git bear, GIT!" and he took off thankfully.. Needless to say my .357 is always on my hip when I'm in the woods because it's time to go get some morel mushrooms... Oh and my cougar encounters? That's another story....

• My family and I decided to take a 3 month motor home trip across the United States. We had all four of us crammed into a 21 foot motor home we refer to as "Stinky" We had quite the trip from my sister throwing a brush at me and it going through the window during the first leg o of our trip. So needless to say we had duck tape on the window for the remaning 2.5 months. We got lost in New Jersey and had someone run out to the street and steal our gold spray painted hubcaps off the motor home as we waited for the light to change. In Arizona while traveling up a rather large hill a tire fell off Stinky. My dad had to hitch hike back to a town, as we didn't have cell phones back then, while the rest of us waited on the side of a road in the Arizona weather for a couple hours. So in the end all though we saw some great sites we refer to the trip as the "Trip from Hell."

• In July 2012 approximately 30 friends gathered for a their yearly camping trip at a free camp ground outside of Roslyn, WA. It was just a regular camping trip with your standard food like Korean Short ribs and fried rice, stuffed jalapenos with shrimp, breakfast of steak, eggs and breakfast burritos. We had the DJ hooked up to a generator and gallons of Crown Royal. Our camping "rave" went into the wee hours and people from around the camp ground came and joined us.This is an annual event and this year is going to be epic. DJ and all!

• Summer of 2010, My trip took myself, my son Willy, and my gf Krissy to the Klickitat Valley. Way down in the valley, NW of Goldendale are a couple state parks: Stinson Flat, and Leidi Park Campground. This is a popular park for sportsmen, because of the Klickitat River and the Steelhead contained within. I'm not much of a "park" camper myself, so I loaded up my arms and walked with my family down the mile-long "mosquito alley". Toting hundreds of pounds of gear and sweating profusely, the mosquitoes smelled me a mile off... When you take your family, there's always way too much gear... So a mile back from the campground, just past a bend in the river is a high rock outcrop, a ten foot cliff to the river and lots of trees and grass. Very secluded, just the way I like it. There's no streaking allowed in state parks;) So anyway, after two or three trips back to the "man van", I had all the gear and about fifty mosquito bites. With camp set up, we enjoyed the day, fishing, playing in the water, and exploring. It wasn't long before we encountered our first rattlesnake. Scared the crap out of me, must have been four feet long, curled up by a tree just off the trail. Big rock + snake = all clear. Or so I thought... I encountered two more that day. The first caught me with my pants down, literally! I had just bent over a log just outside our camp, when I heard the distinctive "rattle"! I jumped up from my squat and, after replacing my shorts, located the source of the sound. It was a little over two feet and had a nice rattle. I found a good stick close by and captured/killed the bastard. It was a mile and a half back to the toilets and I wasn't going that far, so it had to be the snake. So I skinned him and set his skin out to dry, wrapped around a tree limb and held together with fish hooks. There are some nice rainbows in that river, and right off the cliff is a deep spot and a bend, where I always get bites. So, we're fishing off the cliff, enjoying the sun and each other, when I saw another snake at the bottom of the cliff on the bank, near the water. There was no rattle on this one, and I already had the bug, so I climbed down the cliff face and chased after it into the tall grass. Listening for it to rustle the grass so I could catch him, I followed it up to a tree. The snake climbed the tree. I couldn't believe it. I managed to hold it still on a branch with a stick and reached out to grab it behind the head. When I did, it reared back and exposed it's fangs! Holy shit! It did have a rattle, just a single nub. I went cold. I was standing there in the tall grass in nothing but shorts and flip flops, holding a treed rattlesnake in my hand. Ok, this is life/death; The park is at least twenty miles from medical attention and it was a mile back to the van. No cell service. I did what anybody would do. I carried back to camp, the long way around the cliff. He got skinned to. He was half as long as the last one and twice as thick. Here's a pic of the snake, and one of the rattle, I still have. The ex girlfriend made off with the skins. I'm planning to return this 4th of July for another outdoor adventure, with my brother, I was just reunited with after eight years, this year; my son, fiancé, step kids, John the preacher, Vinny the botanist, and my bf Matt, who's ex wife is my fiancé's sister. He's bringing his boys, they're now my nephews! We're going to catch lots of fish and kill many snakes! My brother Corey (Kona Gold on Facebook) had heart surgery when he was fourteen and is on Social Security. He now has his son, after fourteen years without him, cause his mom flaked off for some guy. Anyway, Corey's broke, so am I since I'm laid off. I have a tent and bags and stuff, but not big enough for Nanette and I, and our four kids, with Corey, his pregnant woman, Monique, and his son Jared. If I won this contest, I could give it to My brother for his family. I'm looking forward to spending quality time with my family and friends.
  I don't know if it took the second picture. If not holler at me and I'll bring the rattle down to the station;)
  Rock On! -BLD

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• My boyfriend and I went camping and we took my son. We were playing tag, and my boyfriend and I collided and I ripped my knees on my jeans. We decided tag wasn't a great idea, so we went for a hike. My son fell and my boyfriend and I reached to help him at the same time. He chipped his tooth. On the way back home, my son said he had to go potty. So, being over an hour from home, we stopped and decided to let him pee on the side of the road. He didn't *just* need to per. He began pooping. Standing up. Like a horse. It was a hilarious camping trip. Nothing went right and he had fun anyways :)

• Dave and I. And his friend Tom went on a weekend trip to Summerland, up over Mt. Rainier (you have to get reservations months in advance). We to camp for a couple of nights and it was a 3 mile hike to the camp site. We get to the ranger station and they check everything over there let us know that there have been bear sitings so to make sure we keep our trash and food out of reach. We start our backpack hike, it was a sort of a strenuous hike for Dave as he took everything bu the kitchen sink (to make sure. I would be comfortable). As we are about a half mile away to the destination we decide to stop for a quick snack break. About 15 minutes into it a park ranger comes and checks our pass...well... Seems we were a day early... As you can see by Dave's pack.. He wasn't about to trek back down then come back the next day. As we were sitting there a fellow hiker starts running down. The path hollering that there is a bear that came about two feet from there and said it was heading our way. The ranger was still there and when the bear showed up he proceeded to let us k ow to make all kinds of noise and to throw pebbles at its rump. Well it was a brown bear they figured it to be about a year old . With all of us hollering it ran off the bath and to the bushes off the hike path... Whew. Crisis averted... We decided to head back down to the nearest campsite and camp over night there, we had a spectacular view of mount rainier. It was definitely an adventure

• We got custody of my 4 year old Great Nephew. He has never been camping or boating before we took him to Maloney Mountain for some marshmallow roasting. He had a great time! The only thing we forgot, nothing really important, just the tent! So we made the best of it and started a fire, did some hiking and roasted marshmallows then we headed home at dark. Nothing will ruin his first time in the mountains, next time Uncle Jason will remember the tent!