Campsite Security Revisited
Some of you may remember a thread I started a few months ago, wherein I sought to make my campsite a little more secure against theft. This was at Mojave Narrows in Victorville, CA. Here is a link in ...
Forum Discussion
Heymon wrote:valhalla360 wrote:
That sounds anything but relaxing.
Constantly being worried, being woken multiple times in the middle of the night...if it makes you happy go for it but that's not our goal when camping.
Don't miss my point, I wanted to see what the actual overnight situation was, to see whether I was safe or not in this spot. My efforts showed me that I was safe, and now I feel better about camping here than I did before. Yes, the first night was annoying, but I feel like it had value.
Do you know if anyone has ever gone through your campsite at night, looking for stuff to take? Unless you have done something like I did you probably don't. So all you are doing is telling yourself you are okay because no one has done anything to you yet. That's how I was until last year, and honestly I hope more people are like you and experience only good things camping. But now that I am more aware, I evaluated what I should do to be more secure, and my conclusion is that just putting items away at night is sufficient. As I said, I feel better now, not worse, but it took this evaluation to get to this point.
1 weekend and 1 site doesn't prove much of anything in terms of safety...if 10% of sites experience theft over a weekend, that would imply a very theft prone area but there is a 90% chance, you wouldn't see it.
Your sample size is so small that it means nothing statistically.
Also, with the spot light constantly being turned on, if they were scoping out your site, they likely moved to the next site over. If you leave the light off and return to a normal relaxed camping mode, your risk is likely to go back up.
Can I guarantee, I won't have theft? Of course not but by staying in places where there is obvious evidence of bad behavior, your risk is much higher and to achieve the same level of risk, you have to employ additional high hassle procedures to minimize it.
Again, if that makes you happy or there is so other reason that you absolutely must stay there...more power to you but for us we don't see the point in putting ourselves in a bad situation.
