Camper behaviour

We are sure that we are not the first campers to enjoy watching the behaviour of other campers. It seems to be a time and place in life where being a nosey neighbour isn’t considered to be rude or annoying, but expected and accepted. And your neighbours constantly change! So there is always something/someone new to see/watch/talk about. Highlights for us so far include the man who literally did not step outside of his motor home for the three days he was parked next to us, a guy with a semi-permanent caravan who scrubbed his few paving stones with something that was not much larger than a toothbrush for an afternoon, and anyone with a friendly dog.Hence, the subject of this post. Here are a few behaviours we’ve noticed that seem common to almost all campers that we’ve observed (watched nosily) on our travels:

• Satellites finding signals. So far, we continue to be the smallest camper in the campsite/free parking area and most of our neighbours have mobile homes, rather than camper vans. And all of these mobile homes have a satellite dish on top of the vehicle. As soon as the vehicle is parked, the dish starts spinning and the occupants quickly move on to…
• Leveling. No matter how level we perceive the ground to be where we park, you can be sure that the next motor home that parks in the same area will crack out their little yellow wheel ramps and make sure that they are parking spirit-level flat. When a completely perfect degree of flatness has been achieved, campers can continue on to…
• Territory marking. This is very important, and the priority as soon as parking adequately has been concluded. It is usually comprised of setting out chairs, a table, often extending some kind of roofing from the side of the vehicle, sometimes laying down a rug or carpet of some sort and then immediately sitting in said chairs and enjoying the view.

  

• Sitting within the constructed outdoor living room. Obviously, the point of camping is getting into the wonderful outdoors, so it’s not the sitting outside that we find quirky here. It’s the fact that it only takes place right next to the campervan or motor home. The parking spot can be next to a lake, on the coast, by a forest or anywhere else beautiful, but you can guarantee that the chairs get unpacked and set up next to the camper, never carried to a different spot. We like to do this too! Our van is our home, and it’s always nice to sit at home.

  

  Something that so far has been very particular to our daily routine that we are sure other campers have enjoyed observing is switching our van from living room to bedroom, and then back again in the morning. We haven’t seen anyone else with this arrangement in their mobile homes, no doubt because no one else seems to be living in something as small as we are. Pretty much all the vans we see on Instagram too have a permanent bed set up inside. Is anyone else building up a bed each night?

Also, our territory marking behaviour is seriously lacking. All we have to claim space outside is a doormat. Which we do enjoy laying down on the ground outside our front door as soon as we arrive somewhere. We have lately conceded that the idea of chairs might be worth pursuing, so perhaps we can join in with the more established territory marking that we commonly see very soon. Stay tuned with us on Instagram to see if this day happens soon!