Talk:Car camping

Protential
In researching the historic fate of Cucamonga Junction, Arizona (article currently under draft), I decided to look for the term car camping on WP. In the 1970s, the USFS reversed its encouragement of recreational residences, evicting and demolishing private cabins in favor of establishing "drive-in campsites". For example, in the Kaibab National Forest Motor Vehicle Use Map (2022)] I see the old Cucamonga Junction homesites on earlier Forest Service maps are now designated for "Dispersed Motorized Camping" on both sides of the Forest Service "highway". The intended use is that the public drive into the forest with a highway-legal vehicle, pull off the side of the road, and set up camp on undeveloped ground next to the road (no availble potable water or pit toilets with cooking fires subject to USFS policy). While this use is generally illustrated either by RVs or pull trailers, I have been thinking that it would certainly fit the bill for "car camping".

I learned the term from Scouting for the form of tent camping at residence camps and similar public sites, for outdoor events where the scouts and leaders sleep overnight in tents and cook out-of-doors, but in drive-up campsites where all of their equipment is unloaded and loaded directly from a road vehicle. Even though the specific term is not used within the organization, almost all event camping in the Society for Creative Anachronism is car camping (because RVs aren't Period). I also think of this sort of residential "camping" in places like Jackson, Wyoming, where workers commute by motor vehicle every night to campgrounds in the National Forests because they can't afford the local housing. See also the sort of roadside camping portrayed in The Grapes of Wrath.


 * Car camping refers to a form of camping practiced in sites that are directly accessible by highway-legal motor vehicles. All shelter, sleeping, and cooking equipment and supplies are directly unpacked from the vehicle onto the camping ground, and campers do not cook or sleep within their vehicles, which may be parked away from the campsite once it is set up. This form of camping is often practiced recreationally, but historically has also been practiced by travelers and workers unable to afford the cost of overnight shelter.

I had the above thoughts, and this text might be useful within the redirect itself, but I am not up for writing an article (or section in Camping) for this myself.

IveGoneAway (talk) 19:36, 11 February 2023 (UTC)