NWCN mentioned, in passing, ‘blue tarp camping’. Apparently this is a PNW ‘thing’, especially on Memorial Day. Rain or shine, people will camp. I haven’t found a definition or encyclopedia entry on it, but I guess the idea is that you erect some blue tarps in addition to your camper and/or tent so that you have a dry place to enjoy the outdoors when it’s raining. This is the first time I’ve heard the term. Are you familiar with it?
Opening day of fishing season at Mineral Lake just south of Mt. Rainier, every year for the past 20 or so years. The past couple of years we have strung up some 40 by 60 foot tarps and covered quite a bit of area.
Memorial day weekend for me. 5 days and nights. Tarps or portable car ports are required gear.
We did in several times in Colorado. Never exactly planned, it just isn’t that rainy, but most experienced campers had several tarps and rope and string and extendo-poles in a duffle in the truck case it did look like rain that would last.
Usually one for your tent and one added to connected common area near the fire at a minimum.
The inexperience campers were usually pussies who just went home ;).
Not familiar with the term, but I always bring a tarp when camping/backpacking. I don’t carry one of those blue, heavy, woven-polyethylene babies, but one of the fine, billowy, nylon units. Numerous times have they saved the trip when it started to turn rainy.
As you suspected, JohnnyLA, it allows for a dry area in which we can hang-out while the rain has us sequestered.
I see this often at multi-day music festivals in the Southeast. Just tie a rope from a truck bed to a fence, tree, etc., throw a tarp over the rope, stake down the corners and it makes for a pretty decent sleeping area.
Pemco, an insurance company in the PNW known for their ads profiling stereotypical Northwesterners, had a Blue Tarp Camper spot in 2008. I don’t know if they popularized the specific term or if it was already in use back then, but either way it’s been around a while.
I’ve lived it since I was a kid. I’m a native and lifelong resident of the Puget Sound area, and have been an avid camper/backpacker since childhood. My dad was a scout leader, so we were active in the outdoors throughout the year, which mean a lot of camping in the rain. The only way to not be entirely miserable was to use tarps, and plenty of them. Stringing them up became an art form.