10 Things Everyone Who Hates Camping Understands

For many people, camping is a lovely way to spend a weekend. You can enjoy the great outdoors, roast marshmallows, and go fishing. It sounds like a blast—except it’s usually anything but. Here are 10 things that you can totally relate to if you’ve ever ventured into the wilderness and resented every minute of it.

1. Tents are the WORST.

The only good reason to sleep in a tent is if you were evicted for not paying your rent. If you want to take a vacation, take one in a hotel with room service. At least in a hotel, you will get to sleep in a bed. No one wants to spend three hours fighting with a tent just to sleep on the ground all night long.

2. You can be eaten in your sleep

People sleep in houses because houses are safe. You can lock your doors and keep unwanted creatures outside. When you’re in a crappy tent in the woods, bears can just wander over and gobble you up for a midnight snack.

3. Wi-Fi is far, far away

The worst thing about camping is having no one to complain to about your horrible camping trip. You can’t get on Wi-Fi to remedy your terrible cell signal when you’re out in the boonies. You can’t even get on Facebook to make a woe-is-me status, or Instagram a picture of the bear that plans to eat you after you go to sleep.

4. You wake up earlier than you ever thought humanly possible.

The best part about being on vacation is sleeping in. When you’re camping, that’s not an option. Birds are chirping, the sun is blaring, and kids at the site next to yours are screaming at 6 am. Being miserable and dirty is bad enough without getting a head start on it.

5. You smell like Pig Pen

Remember Pig Pen from Charley Brown with all the waviness next to him to show how bad he smells? That’s what you smell like when you’re camping. Even if you find a place with showers, they’re probably about as clean as an outhouse.

6. There will always be rain.

Just because the all-wise weatherman says there is no rain, doesn’t mean it’s true. If it starts pouring while you’re camping, you’re completely screwed. You can’t just hop in the car and leave if you decide to go home. You have to stand out in the monsoon and tear down your campsite. Even if you've used all your Orvis coupons on the highest quality waterproof boots and fleece, you are still going to end up soaked and cold after just a few minutes in the storm. And getting dry? That's for people who live in houses, silly!

7. If you forget toilet paper, it’s Game Over

It’s bad enough that you have to squat against a tree to do your business. If you forget to bring toilet paper to wipe with, you’re in big trouble. You better start gathering some leaves to wipe your nether-regions with, but first, learn how to identify poison ivy.

8. Poisonous plants everywhere

Speaking of poison ivy, even if you can identify it, it will sneak up on you. If not, you’ll get poison oak, or some other horrible poisonous plant. Life will find a way…into your epidermis.

9. You can’t get away from bugs

It’s bad enough when a spider sneaks into your house. When you go camping, you’re in the spider’s house. Bugs are everywhere. You always wake up to some in your sleeping bag, hair, socks…nowhere is safe.

10. Everything requires work

If you think you’re going camping to relax, you’re wrong and that’s all there is to it. You’ll spend hours setting up your campsite. By the time you finish, you’re starving. You can’t microwave food, so you have to build a campfire. By the time that’s done, you’re so hungry you could eat your own arm. After you eat, you’re so tired from all the work, you go to sleep, just to wake up and do it all over again. Don’t forget, you have to spend about an entire day tearing down your campsite once you’re finished.

Camping is the worst way to spend a vacation. You end up doing a ton of work just to get some type of poisonous plant reaction covering your body and hope you don't get eaten in your sleep. If you want a real vacation, book a nice hotel on a beach somewhere. What's the worst that could happen, a shark attack? Still beats camping.