Singing Campfire Songs - Keep it Reasonable!

I'm all for camping with family and friends. Group fun for everyone, right? Well, that's the theory anyway...

So this last weekend I’m up camping with a group of friends and their spouses. We had a great time chatting around the fire, making smores and generally goofing off. We all went to bed at a reasonably late hour, sometime around 11:00 PM. As I’m drifting off to sleep I hear the strains of a guitar not so gently strumming Kum Ba Yah and a whole group of well intentioned college kids singing along with the song. Now, mind you, it could be worse. Could be a group of crazy bikers listening to heavy metal music, yelling, carousing and drinking into the wee hours of the morning. But my point – When you come a public campground, are you just not thinking about the dozens of other campers around you and the noise you make? I mean, seriously, I thought 11PM was pretty late to be going to bed around the campfire. Playing guitar and singing at midnight is a little inconsiderate in my book, especially for those campers who have kids with them. This summer is going to be the golden age for camping too. There will be more people camping this summer than there ever has been before. The economy situation has driven people to the point where they are looking for any low cost alternative to taking a vacation. I’ve heard the word staycation being coined lately, where people are just staying home, but I think more likely than this will be taking the family outside to the great outdoors and experiencing a low cost vacation in the relative wilderness. If that is the case, then it is more important than ever to consider your fellow campers and be polite. Stop and think – if you were someone else, would you find the behavior you wish to engage in disturbing? If the answer is even a maybe, then don’t do it.