Most unusual night

In a sleeping bag on top of a picnic table on a hillside next to the ocean on Hwy 1 in southern California when I was 17. My friend and I were driving down to San Diego from SF, we couldn’t afford a hotel, we didn’t have a tent and the car was too small to sleep in comfortably. Slept pretty well surprisingly!

On the miniature golf course at South Of The Border resort (aka tourist trap) inbetween North Carolina and South Carolina.
https://www.sobpedro.com/our-history

Front seat of a rental car in the parking lot of a Wal-Mart equivalent near the Ironbridge Gorge in England (12-year-old daughter got the back seat) -- we were doing a book-as-you-go driving trip and I hadn't taken into account that it was a Friday night and hotels might be booked. DD made sure to remind me mid-afternoon of each succeeding day that it was time to find a B&B.

I‘m not sure „resort“ is the word that comes to my mind when I think of South of the Border.

Midnight sun in Norway on Varanger island, close to Russian border. I made a 4 hours road trip with my car starting at 2.30 am in golden sunlight alone at the end of the world. Nature spent magic moments in wondeful warm polar night sunlight: for me as hobby-photographer one of the best experiences ever. Will never forget it.

Large dorm room (with about 15 other people) at a post-Soviet camp in Ivanova, Russia, while working a camp for kids from a Russian orphanage.

Conference room of a hotel somewhere in Wyoming near-ish but not very close to Yellowstone. High season, everything was full but I had managed to find this random hotel with one room free, theoretically. Arrived in the later evening, and they had given my room to another guest. But they let me sleep on the floor of a conference room for free. Marginally better than the car - it was pretty hot outside!

For some reason, this just popped into my mind: During my hitchhiking days, sleeping in a sleeping bag on a narrow concrete shelf under a freeway overpass in Portland, OR, right in town. Plenty of traffic noise, but I actually slept well enough, and in the morning quickly got a ride to Seattle.

Not unusual - but probably one of the worst after the absolute worst. I ended up sleeping in the front seat of our car at a camp ground in upstate NY on July 4 in 2001. I'd managed to slam the trunk on the air mattress, so it had a hole. And Americans really like their fireworks, so they were shooting them off into the wee hours. Hubs somehow managed to sleep in the tent. The next morning - the car battery was dead because we'd had the headlights on while trying to set the tent up in the dark.

When we got home, I sold the tent.

(The absolute worst was a few nights before, outside Toronto - Canada Day weekend...people partying at the campground until, like, 2am. I went to the office to complain. The partyers of course shut up when the office did the drive by. Started up again. Twenty minutes after they finally stopped, the skies opened up, it poured, complete with thunder and lightning. Divorce was imminent.)

Not counting spending nights in a chair or on the floor in an airport, my two most unusual nights were on the overnight ferry between Sweden and Denmark so our son could visit Legoland, and in some kind of naturalists' shack in the rainforest mountains of Puerto Rico with our kids and my parents and a large quantity of damp, mold, mildew, bugs (both flying and crawling), and small wildlife --- my allergic and nervous mother ended up sleeping in our car.

In a tented camp in Damaraland, Namibia, after hearing fireside stories about the last time the lions came wandering through, but fortunately the worst I saw was a scorpion...

Sounds like many of us were fairly young when we had unusual sleeping experiences. I was taking a survival course. Our overnight training trip was in the mountains of northern Idaho. Made a bed of pine needles and a cover from a big black plastic bag. Selected a flat sight and had a good nights rest. It was part of a group so I wasn’t lost. We even had a hot spring pool nearby. We did bring our own simple food and water. No scrounging for food. I have never used this bed making skill since then, even though I have camped all over North America. A heavy weight black plastic bag is a survival tool with many uses. We fold one up in our travel suitcase.

Back seat of my rental car in the parking garage at Sea-Tac airport on the last weekend before kids were due back in school. Very poor (non-)planning on my part during the pre-Internet era. Still, I slept better than I did in a couchette on the night train from Rome to Sicily.

90 minutes north of Calgary we have an incredible museum called the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology. The highlight of the museum is the Hall of Dinosaurs with the skeletons of many of the dinosaurs found in the area. My daughter had an overnight school trip that I volunteered for where we got to camp out on the floor in the Hall. I was just a big kid that night having a great time being watched over by these beasts.

Just pretend I’m Allan starting one of his threads.....

Tammy, I laughed when I read this, because when I saw the thread listed on the Forum page, I said to myself "Oh, good; another Allan thread!"

Most unusual night? Hmmm.... Probably in our sleeping bags in a truck stop parking lot in New Mexico, circa 1970. Our first camping trip; we were going to visit Carlsbad Caverns on spring break. While we dug deep to buy a couple of (cheap) sleeping bags, we weren't yet able to afford a tent. (That came a couple of years later.: $19 at Sears! We used that tent for over 40 years.)

We also couldn't afford a campground, so we slept in rest areas when we could find them. This night we couldn't find one, so we squeezed our VW bug in between 2 big rigs (that dieseled all night long!) and put our sleeping bags on the ground behind the car.

Stan had grown up traveling and camping, but this was my first time ever; I'm surprised it wasn't my last! But we still go camping, and love it.

Decades ago (1978), setting up our tent at the end of some road, someplace between Toledo and Segovia, Spain. The one campground was full and it was getting dark. Parked the car in front of the tent in case another car came down the road.

Second, was sleeping on the ground in a driveway in a small town near Odessa, TX in 1974. Was on our way from Monterey, CA to San Angelo, TX when the car broke down and we had no money for a hotel. Someone was nice enough to help us by letting us sleep in their driveway. The next day they drove me to the bus station in Odessa so I could continue my trip.

My friend and I were young and neither of us had much money to spare. We splurged on concert tickets to see one of our favorite artists who was going to be at a casino at Lake Tahoe. There wasn’t money for a hotel room, but we thought we could hang out in a casino bathroom (they had comfy chairs in a lounge area) and get a bit of sleep there before driving home in the morning. Our plan was foiled when we were asked to leave. This was in the middle of winter and it was about 20 degrees outside. Maybe colder, who can remember that long ago. We ended up sleeping in my very small car that was parked in the casino’s parking garage. We each had a very lightweight blanket to try to keep us warm. It was my car, so I slept in the driver’s seat and she slept in the passenger seat. There wasn’t room in the back seat for either of us. At least the seats reclined. We were just reminiscing about this a couple of weeks ago.

The front seats of a 1960's MGB, V. with college boyfriend, after our borrowed/brand-new/not-yet-waterproofed tent with rubberized floor & baseboards became a rain-collecting cistern during the night. Even then my back ached next day. Not to mention the contortions of trying to wring out sodden sleeping bags.

Fast forward, 1990-something, a Swiss place that a friend had heard of - "so cheap!" - that turned out to be a barn converted (barely) for humans - bunkbeds, no heat, latrine bldg down the slope, & cows outside that breathed heavily & grazed allll night.
A cow ripping up grass two feet from your head is LOUD.

This night came to mind after reading Stewart&Vicki’s post... how could i forget (!)... Young and dumb camping at Yosemite in a 2 person, very cheap plastic tent with my bf... we left our large Coleman ice chest right at the door of our tent. I know, i know (now)... A very large bear came for dinner in the middle of the night and sat leaning against our tent for hours eating everything in the ice chest... even slurping up every ounce of mayonnaise in the glass jar. And the mustard. And the ketchup. He was loud and we were shaking in our boots the whole time... we were sure we would end up being dessert. : /

In a cemetery in a small town in Minnesota.

In my early teens with parents, brother and large dog. We had been camping and the car broke down. The car couldn't be fixed until the next day. There was a fair or carnival in town and the camp ground and motels were full. The garage mechanic drove us to the cemetery along with our tent and we camped there for the night. The mechanic returned early in the morning to get us out of there before found by authorities.

I know my most unusual night is pretty small beer compared to some of these - I was on a business trip to Dallas and the only room I could find was in a hotel that was once owned by Jack Ruby, and hadn't changed much since then. It was so creepy that I slept on top of the covers with all my clothes on, including shoes.

Yes, young. :) On a trip to Mt Fuji, where the leader dumped us off at 4:00 to climb. It got dark, we got lost and ended up way off the path climbing up real mountain in the dark and the group of 18-20 year olds got separated. I wound up at Station 9, almost at the top, and shared a futon with one other girl in our group - it was the last one left and, SO cold we begged to share. Lol. I woke up nearly face to face with whomever had the futon next to me on the other side (think a line of single size air mattresses laid out in a row). My husband of 5 months climbed the rest of the way and spent the night in the stairwell of the weather center at the top. But he had a great view at sunrise (and I was warm)!

Next might be a trip last year driving to Atlanta. I wanted to camp in my car (wasn’t ready for a hotel yet) and reserved a spot in a horse barn. I pulled my car inside and spent the night next to the horses in their stalls. The place was really available for people driving cross country with their live-in horse trailers and horses, but it was a fun night and no one there acted like they thought I was crazy!

In the front seats of my Honda hatchback during a heavy rainstorm in Vermont. We were camping, for the first time, in a small tent with two dogs. The tent leaked, everyone and everything got soaked. We took to the car, dogs in tow, and spent a rather miserable night. The campground, such as it was (it was in the late 80s), became a mud hole. Fortunately, though, it did not put us off tent camping.

Glasgow Airport in 2004.
I was visiting Edinburgh, and my friend there and I went to Glasgow to have dinner with her daughter.
My flight home was at 06:00 the next morning, so she dropped me at the airport around 10 pm.
I found a long bench and barricaded myself in with luggage carts, my purse under my head.
The lights were mostly on all night, and the cleaners polished the floors nearby.
I think I slept a little.
No one bothered me though.

Cross-country trip with one of my sorority sisters a year after we graduated. We wanted to see Yellowstone but had no money for lodging and figured we'd sleep in the car, which we did. However, it's COLD in Yellowstone in early June!

Casco Bay, Maine. In a motor boat with a small enclosed bow with H, 11 year old step daughter and her friend, we attempted to get to in-laws on Great Diamond Island, but as we started out the fog was soupy and got worse. Shortly, we could not be sure of our direction. When a white light, high up in the air appeared just in front of us we stared in horror. What was that? There were no running lights. (We both quietly thought it was a front bow light of the ferry and felt doomed as we were directly in its path). Then it appeared out of the fog ten feet away, the light was the top of its mast and it had no running lights (hence no red or green lights to help us). We knew we were in over our heads. We turned around and hoped we would hit the mainland (rather than the open sea). Fortunately we spotted the mainland, followed it around and tied up on a dock and stayed all night. Four people in the bow of this tiny motor boat, with me as the separation. Nonetheless, considering what could have happened , I didn't care if I slept.

"tdw": You win my vote for most unusual night.
Our most unusual night: Driving home to Cheyenne, Wyoming from Denver, CO on a snowy, blizzardy winter night years ago, with husband and 2 children under age of 5, we experienced car trouble and called for a tow truck. When it arrived, all four of us piled into the tow truck, and asked the driver to take us to a motel in town. The driver looked at us; came to the conclusion that perhaps a motel room was not in our budget, so offered to let us sleep in his apartment. His reasoning was that he would be working all night towing cars off the freeway, so his apartment would be vacant.
I really didn't want to accept, but didn't know how to graciously refuse, so that's where we spent the night.
When I reflect back on that incident years later, I appreciate the tow truck driver's random act of kindness to a young couple.

Getting stuck in an airport or train station overnight isn't all that unusual, but sometimes the experience can be.

On my 1st trip to Europe in 1977, I arrived after dark in Fulda, West (then) Germany too late to find the hostel. After walking around pretty lost, I made my way back to the train station. There was young couple there. There were no more trains that night, but it was warm and there was a bathroom so we weren't too concerned.

Before too long, an older man in a long overcoat joined us. He spoke English quite well and asked us where we were from. When I said that I was from Texas, he was thrilled.

It turned out that he had been a German prisoner of war in a camp near Dallas. He absolutely raved about how well he and his fellow POW's were treated. That was definitely not what they expected. He was most impressed by how much they had to eat. That was also very different from what they experienced as soldiers in the German army.

Since so many have reported sleeping in challenging situations, here's something of possible interest.

Our son is a pilot and often takes his family on trips that require standing by for flights and potential nights spent in airports. They pack light, but have been known to carry their own beds with them. These 1.8 pound unusual inflatables are what they use for beds. It never hurts to be prepared.

I know he used them enroute from Salt Lake City to and back from Japan with his oldest daughter. And to and back from Indianapolis with the other 3 daughters. That time they had to spend the night in the tiny Tri-Cities Airport in Pasco, WA.

Lo, what a great tip. I’ve seen these advertised and thought they looked good, but it’s nice to hear they actually are. Description though says they weigh 2.2 lbs.

tdw wins for most unusual, and Lo for most useful tip.

Just pretend I’m Allan starting one of his threads.....

Tammy, I laughed when I read this, because when I saw the thread
listed on the Forum page, I said to myself "Oh, good; another Allan
thread!"

😀

Enjoying the posts everyone! Lot’s of nights spent in one’s car, some train stations and a cemetery, oh my! Susan, a bear eating next to me in my tent would make me quiver and shake too! Being eaten by a bear is not the way I want to go!

Me neither! : )

One of three that come to mind:

Overnight train from Varna, Bulgaria to Bucharest, Romania. We 3 had a 4-person sleeping compartment to ourselves. At one point, there was a knock on our door. Lots of officials with rifles. I’m not sure we were even asked for passports, tickets, or other documentation. The train had stopped, and remained so for a long time. Lots of voices in the hallway outside our compartment. I don’t even remember whether we had to answer the door any additional times, but it seems as if we did. Maybe it just seemed that the officials were checking on other compartments, but, again it seemed to take forever. And we wondered if there was going to be a shakedown or other confrontation. This must’ve been at the Bulgarian/Romanian border. We made it to Bucharest, so it worked out fine, but was unsettling for quite a while.

Number 2 of 3:

Belgium. My husband and I were on the first night of our bike tour, having set out from Brugge on rented bikes in the morning, carrying our clothing, and rents and sleeping bags we’d brought over from the USA. We were prepared to camp if necessary, but would look for a B&B at whatever place we decided to pull in for the night. The gales blowing on from the North Sea made pedaling very difficult, and even on pretty flat foods, we were in first gear, going very slow. When we reached one town in late afternoon, we checked at its one B&B, but they were full. There was a tiny strip of lawn in back, and they let us pitch out tent for something like €5. The owners’ children were fascinated by us setting up our tent, as if we were frontier pioneers or something. They even let us join the group inside for dinner at their long communal table. The next morning, stepping out of the tent, we were 6 inches from a pile of old dog droppings, and had somehow managed to avoid stepping in it that whole time.

And the third:

OK, this wasn’t the entire night, but the night before we returned home from our first Ireland trip, we checked into a B&B in Sixmilebridge, basically next door to the Shannon Airport. This was in 2011, at the end of our second bike trip in Europe. We’d returned our rental bikes in Limerick, but still had bread and cheese that we’d carried while cycling, and that made up a large portion of dinner that night, in the kitchen of the couple who owned the house. The wife sat with us, and we commented his much we’d enjoyed Irish brown bread, especially spread with Irish butter. She said she never ate sliceable cheese, and used something like cheez whiz instead. We were astonished.

Anyway, after night fell, the man of the house invited us out to the lush back yard (garden), and broke out a bottle of whiskey, and glasses. He poured several that night, and we managed to meet him glass for glass. Not quite expected, and not a usual last night!

Nothing overly exciting for us. We like to backpack in the mountains, so that is about it.

The bear thing made me remember one car camping trip. My husband could not join us once, so I packed up the kids and we went anyway. We had a wonderful walk in camp site. The tent was right next to some trees. In the middle of the night I heard a strange noise, like someone walking in the brush under the trees. I figured it was some drunk person trying to find their way to the bathrooms. It went on and on though, and then I could hear the tree bark getting ripped, and the branches being torn off. This was literally maybe a foot from the side of the tent. Then I could see/feel a big round thing brushing against the tent as more tree limbs were being torn down. I realized then that it was a bear. Our son slept through it, and our daughter thought it was me being restless, lol. The entire time I kept wondering how in the world we would escape this if the bear would figure out we were in the tent and if it decided to check it out. In the end, he wandered off. In the morning you see see huge paw prints in the ground all around our camp site, but thankfully nothing was left out for him to get. He did have fun in the next campsite though as there were two men, one in a one man tent, but the other was sleeping on the picnic bench seat. They had left everything out and from I could see, everything was strewn all over. We decided to pack up that morning and head home, two days early.

When our son was doing his study abroad term while in college, he had a few interesting nights. This was just in 2015, so fairly recent. One night he took the bus back home after being at the bars, but he fell asleep on the bus and ended up getting dumped out at the last stop, which was something like 45 minutes from his town. He had no jacket with him, so he slept on the park bench until the buses started running again in the morning. This was in November in Denmark, so not warm! Another time he and his friends were hanging out at an underpass with a case of beer and they fell asleep there waiting for the rain to stop before heading back to their dorms. I am glad I found out about these things after the fact.

Two nights came to mind ...

1) In a net hammock in the rain forest in Queensland, Australia. I don’t think I got a wink of sleep which made the hike out the next day a real slog.

2) In a 24-bed dorm room of a Naturfreundehaus in Hallstatt, Austria in the 80s. This was only unusual in that I was the only person in the room.

OK, one more, and it also involved a bike trip and a tent. We were on our way by car to the 2009 RAGBRAI ride in Iowa, and were in the middle of Nebraska, and it was late at night. Rather than find the next town a long way away, and with no official campground around, we pulled off on a country road, and set up the tent next to a cornfield. We were gone around sunrise, in case a combine might be coming by soon. Wouldn’t have been doable in Europe, I believe, although this was short-term, low-impact camping.

Then you have this poor soul - this happened close to where I live...

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/cape-breton-road-trip-camping-gone-wrong-cobequid-1.5718982

Nicole P, the moral of that story is: Never sleep naked when camping. A rule I've always followed in the 50 years we've camped.

Jane, Amen to that!

Turns out the most unusual place isn't so unusual at all. The backseat of a VW Bug somewhere in Germany. Since I was 6, I don't remember the details. Same trip, same vague memory, but somewhere in France sleeping at a place I called Dirty Pierre which apparently was so bad I refused to use the bathroom. Apparently I "held" it for 12 hours.

But the most unusual night was summer camp in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. Someone was shaking me awake. I kept telling them to leave me alone. Then they propped me up in my bunk and told me to open my eyes and look out the window. Bright orange flickering light filled the window. The bathhouse across the path was totally engulfed in flames. Needless to say, I jumped out of the bunk.