Best Camping Games for Adults
When you’re camping, you’re hopefully unplugged from technology and taking some time to relax with friends and loved ones. If you’re used to always having something to do, like watching your favourite TV shows on Netflix and endlessly scrolling through social media (or whatever else occupies your time on your phone), you might find it challenging, at first, to find things to entertain yourself while in the wilderness. I’ve spent a lot of time camping, and here are my suggestions for the best camping games for adults.
What Makes a Good Camping Game?
There are so many amazing games to play, but many of them require several intricate pieces or take up a lot of space with a large box.
The best camping games take up little space in your bag and don’t have a lot of pieces that can get lost or blown away.
You also may want to consider how impactful it would be if your game were ruined because of the elements.
Best Camping Games for Adults
Card games are a great go-to because it’s easy to carry a deck of cards in your backpack, but depending on the weather, cards could blow away.
Card Games
The best traditional card games that are great for camping are; crazy eights, go fish, and war (war is a great two-player game). Or, you can entertain yourself with a game of solitaire.
What's your go-to camping card game? Let me know in the comments.
One non-traditional card game that my partner and I love to play while we are camping is exploding kittens. It’s easy to learn and only takes a few minutes to play.
Conversation Games
Conversation games are great for camping because they don’t require you to bring anything extra, and they can help the group to get to know one another.
Some classic conversation games include;
- Two truths and a lie
- Would you rather
- Never have I ever
- Truth or Dare
Other Great Camping Games
1 Yahtzee
Yahtzee is a simple game that only requires dice and a pen (and, of course, the score cards - make sure to keep them in a plastic bag so they don’t get damp).
2 Who am I?
All you need for ‘who am I?’ is a pad of sticky notes and a pen.
Each person writes down someone they think is interesting, who they also think others in the group may have a chance at guessing.
Once everyone has picked a person, or character, trade sticky notes and stick them to a person's forehead or back without letting them see who it is. The goal of the game is to ask the other people questions, like 20 questions, to determine who you are.
Ideally, you have a minimum of 4 people to play.
Other Activities To Keep Yourself Busy While Camping
Camping games aren’t the only ways to keep yourself entertained while out in the wilderness. Here are some other great
- Reading (don’t forget to bring a headlamp or book light)
- Go for a nature walk
- Take pictures
- Whittle a stick to make hot dogs or smores
Camping is a great opportunity to escape day-to-day life and unplug from technology. Camping games can make it an even more enjoyable experience; it doesn’t matter your age.
Last year while camping during Halloween at Fort Boonesborough State Park in Kentucky, my family and I developed a digital scavenger hunt game. All the campsites in the campground were decorated for Halloween, and each one was unique. This set the stage for an interesting scavenger hunt.
First we broke down the campground into different areas and assigned one to each player. The players then went to their assigned areas and used their cell phones to take unique snapshots of different campsites and record the site number for each picture. Once everyone was finished taking pictures, we all met up and texted our pictures to another player. Once everyone was assigned their pictures, we all were given fifteen minutes to identify our campsites by picture and report back. The winner was the person who identified the most unique pictures by campsite number.
It was an excellent way to get out and look around, and we managed to get quite a collection of unique Halloween camping pictures to remember for always!