My wife is a camping card and board game player in search of an opponent. No sooner is the RV hooked up and the awning out, than she’s suggesting we set up the cornhole board. Later, after dinner is cleaned up and the fire has burned low, she’s rattling off board or card games to pass the evening.
This is deeply ingrained in her camping DNA. Many of the same games we carry today – Sorry, Uno, Rummykub – are the same ones, I mean the same actual games, her family carried across Ontario, Canada, in their RV five decades ago. We added Yahtzee, a few decks of cards, and National Parks Monopoly.
So it was when we passed by Cracker Barrel a month ago to fetch some biscuits that I grabbed a game of checkers, the one with the oversized checkerboard and pieces. I’m pretty sure it might find some love on our music festival circuit, if / when / assuming we get out next summer.
The hit series “The Queen’s Gambit” did more than tell the tale of a young woman who [SPOILER ALERT] kicked ass in the man’s chess world.
It revealed the marvel of the common board game. At least to me it did.
Stay with me here… You want challenge, excitement, camaraderie and conversation with others – in something you can pack up to play somewhere else tomorrow, and whose batteries, loss of service, or drenching in a spilled beverage at the campsite won’t render it useless?
So that got me thinking… Enter the board game. Hell, in the months following Gambit’s debut, chessboard sales were up triple-digit percentages and game makers couldn’t keep up with demand for chessboard.
So I wondered: What games do other campers either keep on board or bring along to pass the time and gather with others, either when the hour is late, the kids (of almost any age) need entertaining, or the weather is frightful?
To see what others do, I shared this post about games to the #FunRVStuff Facebook page: “I shared this a month ago about buying checkers from Cracker Barrel. Got me thinking about a blog on what games people keep on board (Uno, Sorry, National Park Monopoly, a deck of cards – or two, and outdoor games like a Frisbee and cornhole). What games do you bring (and do you keep them on board, or shuttle them on and off with each trip)?”
For some, music festivals are no different. People break out cornhole to play at the campsite. There are drinking games (drinking itself can be a game), and maybe some Frisbee in the meadow before the grass fills with music festival goers. It’s always convenient to carry a disc in the drawstring bag.
People were eager to respond. In a day, we got about 25 responses on the Facebook page and elsewhere. Our unscientific list, in order of preference, includes…
Dice (7), including a new one to us, LRC (Left, Right, Center); Yahtzee (6), which is kind of a dice game; Dominos (5); cards (5), including Angry Kittens and one bloke who brings a felt poker table cover, complete with chips, and not including Cards Against Humanity (Pro Tip: never in front of the kids – they could scar the parents with their knowledge of the humanity’s unseemly underbelly).
Four people mentioned cornhole and Jenga, including the oversized one that uses small logs as pieces; Uno and Connect 4 (3); Cribbage (2); and one each for Absolute Zero, Bananagram, Ten Fish, Scrabble, Monopoly, Chutes and Ladders, Candy Land, Tenzies, Trouble, Wheel of Fortune, Sequence and Skipbo, Spoon, Mancala; Oregon Trail; Wahoo; Farkle; Backgammon; Phase 10; Timeline; Quirkle; and Checkers and Chinese checkers.
One guy keeps a putter and golf balls on board, in case the campground has a putting green or putt putt course.
Kim Monsue keeps card games and dice games in the trailer. “They are small and easy to store,” she said. Another suggestion: Hit the card game aisle and find card game versions of board games like Yahtzee, Monopoly, and Trouble. “There’s also a dice version of Monopoly.”
Julie Kroupa has a host of “real” board games – Sorry, Chinese Checkers, Connect 4, Monopoly, Chutes & Ladders, Candyland, card games, and Tenzies, Jenga, cornhole, Yahtzee, Trouble, Wheel of Fortune, Uno and Uno Attack, she said. “We cycle them throughout the season.”
You might have noticed something with the list, I mean, aside from games you haven’t played in years and might even be planning to launch your shopping app the moment you’re done with this piece.
Chess was not among them. While chess board sales have grown in the triple-digit percentages since Beth [SPOILER ALERT] kicked that Soviet chess grandmaster Borgov’s ass, many campers seem to choose games that bring more than two people to the table.
Me included – on two accounts. We don’t have chess, and we almost always have more than two players (except for the times I mercilessly crushed Robbie in checkers). We might have no chessboard on board our rig. But I’m gonna change that quick.
<thumb twitching in confusion whether to launch Amazon or the iPhone’s chess app>
What games do you bring along? When do you play them? In your book, is “camping” any place for games anyway, when exploring the woods and waterways, playing in a music circle, tending the fire, stargazing, and or just chilling out would otherwise keep you busy?
Let us know.