This just happened to me the other night.
I’m in a dispersed camping spot in a National Forest. It’s not crowded. I go to sleep around 9:30PM and wake up at 4:30AM to someone parked right next to me. There’s no trees between us and no possible way that they did not see my car.
As I drive out of the forest I pass dozens of empty spots.
This has happened to me twice. Who are the people who do this? There’s no rational explanation for it.
Instinctual survival habits.
If you asked them why, they likely couldn’t give you an answer, or they’d rationalize one on the spot without realizing it.
We have millions of years of evolution telling us it’s better to be grouped up to sleep, and just a couple generations at most for recreational camping etiquette.
Instincts will always wins that battle
There’s probably different levels of this instinct that correlate to experience camping out in the boonies, as well as the size of your own party. For instance, an inexperienced individual or small family probably would want the security of being near other people. But more experienced people want the solitude, and especially so for larger groups.
Chalk it up to someone not too familiar with camping.
I wouldn’t judge someone who shows up to a campground at 430 am too harshly…
They’re probably running on pure lizard brain at that point.
Like, depending on your definitional of rational, there was/is a reason for this behavior, but it’s not like someone intentionally decides to do it. It’s just autopilot.
A lot of what we do is just autopilot and rationalizing it later. Shits crazy interesting, but we can’t really study it because it’s not ethical to just cut people’s brains in half for no reason other than to gain knowledge. And there was only a brief period it was a valid medical treatment for things like epilepsy.
Sperry performed another similar experiment in humans to further study the ability of the right hemisphere to recognize words. During that experiment, Sperry asked volunteers to place their left hand into a box with different tools that they could not see. After that, the participants saw a word that described one of the objects in the box in their left field of view only. Sperry noted that most participants then picked up the needed object from the box without seeing it, but if Sperry asked them for the name of the object, they could not say it and they did not know why they were holding that object. That led Sperry to conclude that the right hemisphere had some language recognition ability, but no speech articulation, which meant that the right hemisphere could recognize or read a word, but it could not pronounce that word, so the person would not be able to say it or know what it was.
In his last series of experiments in humans, Sperry showed one object to the right eye of the participants and another object to their left eye. Sperry asked the volunteers to draw what they saw with their left hand only, with closed eyes. All the participants drew the object that they saw with their left eye, controlled by the right hemisphere, and described the object that they saw with their right eye, controlled by the left hemisphere. That supported Sperry´s hypothesis that the hemispheres of brain functioned separately as two different brains and did not acknowledge the existence of the other hemisphere, as the description of the object did not match the drawing. Sperry concluded that even though there were no apparent signs of disability in people with a severed corpus callosum, the hemispheres did not communicate, so it compromised the full function of the brain.
https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/roger-sperrys-split-brain-experiments-1959-1968-0
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Here’s something interesting, it’s cultural. There was a study done in the 80’s or 90’s and they found that Hispanics and Asians were more likely to sit next to each other in an otherwise empty room, whereas Caucasians were more likely to sit very far apart.
Nice! Looks like you answered a “million+ year” conundrum within 1 hour.
I just really liked the idea that OP thought they were exaggerating the timeline with that, when they were still waaaaaay off on how baked in that behavior really was.
Modern life makes a lot more sense when you realize we really weren’t built for this shit. On an evolutionary timescale we went from taking a shit while walking like a horse to Star Trek in an afternoon.
It makes it a lot easier to let shit go instead of assuming the other person is fucking with you intentionally. Which ironically is another thing baked into our instincts. It’s safer to think someone you don’t know is a threat and is acting maliciously. Now a days it’s maladapted into road rage shootings because someone forgot to signal for a merge.
Because you assume a camper seeks quietness and privacy. Some campers may just seek camaraderie of what they guess would be like-minded people
So the cars can cuddle when you’re not looking ❤️
I don’t want my car to be lonely while I’m out in nature. If you’re lonely, they’re lonely…give them a friend.
Don’t worry, the wendigo that breaks into your car at night to wait for you to return will keep it company :)
Exactly. Where do people think new cars come from?
Am I crazy or is the weird thing actually where you drive to a national forest and “dispersed” camp in your car?
In my mind dispersed camping is when you maybe drive to a trailhead but then actually camp after hiking several miles into the forest.
If I saw a car parked in a parking lot I would not assume anyone was sleeping in it.
Maybe it’s a regional thing?
Yeah, depending on where I’m going, there are specific areas you can bring your car around to if you’re deciding to camp in the car lol parking lots, in my experience, are for day trippers and people looking to drop their car off and hoof it to the stream for fishing or go deeper to camp/backpack.
Edit: West Coast/Rockies and foothills mainly for me.
Dispersed camping is any designated campsite that allows you to show up and go as you please. In Montana, they’re everywhere and frequently have spots to put your RV or car. “Dispersed” is a designation by the NFS for these sites
Not to quibble but technically dispersed camping, according to the USFS, is camping anywhere outside designated sites. The distinction is important because people believe they can’t camp on USFS (or BLM) land for free, almost anywhere they want. In fact with relatively few exceptions and with a bunch of rules like time limits, proximity to water sources, fire restrictions etc etc, you can.
Yeah that’s totally fair, I felt weird writing that because that was how I was brought up thinking of it. I suppose where I live, the dispersed camping is very clean cut and does show up on NFS listings, so I’ve learned to think of it differently recently. I suppose at the very least me and many other people just call any first come first serve camping “dispersed” because of this 🤷♀️
Whatever the case, it certainly doesn’t need to be a backpacking spot.
I don’t see where they said they camped in their car. They could have easily parked the car at the site and then set up a tent, or like we do, towed a pop up camper there.
After rereading they do mention they’re at a campground. I focused on the ‘dispersed camping spot’ phrase.
The only conclusion I can come to is OP uses different camping terminology than I’m familiar with. For me ‘dispersed’ can have a broad range of meanings but always means ‘not at a campground’.
Even with dispersed camping (which is not at designated sites) you can still drive to them. We do so all the time. They’re very popular here in Colorado. We literally take a 27 foot popup camper there, my brother in law brings his toy-hauler, my in laws bring their class c. And you just drive right up and camp. There’s no marked site, it’s just dispersed.
Just yesterday I got back from a trip at a designated campsite, which was marked, and you were not allowed to camp outside of 100ft of the marker. Notably this was a bit further up the road from an actual campsite, which had rules about hours, restroom use, no equines, no dogs off leash etc. and the sites were maintained spots with gravel etc.
So there’s three levels, and dispersed is just the ‘free-est’ of them all, but it has no bearing on whether you can drive up and plop down a camper or not.
Dispersed just means undefined sites
I may have an explanation for you. There are two state parks near me that require people to park next to each other. You can actually get towed for parking off on your own. They say they’re trying to get as many cars in the parking lot as possible.
Maybe that person is used to these sorts of rules.
Apes together strong.
Reverse Monty Hall problem. With two cars next to each other, yours is less likely to be broken into.
Power in numbers
An empty parking spot with dozens of open spaces and I park far away, clearly trying to avoid other cars. I come back and the one other car in the vicinity of my own is parked right next to it. Fucking why!
You parked far away because you care about your car. They parked next to you because they trust you to not ding theirs.
Or to spite you.
Pulling into an area, the odds of unwanted clinging proximity decrease with more turns made and the more gnarly the road choices appear.
Simple flow chart with unpopular choices. Three gnarly turns in a row is pretty solid.
If it’s ugly looking, of course walk it first. Even big puddles will deter weaklings and tweaklings.
Thus I’ve woken in the middle of the night because the moon has come up and I’m surrounded by lowing cows, or being bumped by a bear, or being practically deafened by profound silence (mostly).
Introverted versus Extroverted personalities.
The behavior is likely due to the wide spectrum of human functional thought. Perhaps they went camping to share a niche social experience. TBC, I want to have my space too.
Depends:
- two camper vans ? Weird
- two simple automobiles ? It’s the right way to park even if the lot is empty . You make sure to align to the other parked cars.
It’s easier to park when there’s another car already parked, for reference.
Because parking is such a difficult activity?
Not saying I’d do it, just throwing one more option out there.
I think your shock and confusion is 100% valid. The whole point of trekking out to remote camping spot in a National Forest is usually to get the hell away from other people, is it not? That seems… rude at worst, and ignorant of them at best.
