That one ranger who laughed at my tent setup at Yosemite

I was struggling with a rainfly at Yosemite last summer and this park ranger walks over, watches me for a solid 2 minutes, then just says 'son, that ain't gonna keep a squirrel dry' and helped me fix it in 30 seconds. Has anyone else gotten roasted by a ranger or is it just me?

3 comments

3 Comments

rodriguez.diana1mo ago

Jumping off what @ryan_ellis said, it seems like folks in any job with some authority have a way of cutting through the nonsense with a quick joke. It's the same pattern you see with a good teacher who calls you out for not reading the book or a mechanic who looks at your car and just sighs before fixing it. That ranger probably saw a hundred tents like yours that week and knew a little roasted would get you sorted faster than being polite.

ryan_ellis1mo ago

Ha! I saw a TikTok of a ranger roasting someone's tent. That tracks.

iris_davis901mo ago

oh actually I don't think that was a ranger roasting the tent haha. Most national park rangers are super professional about that stuff even if they think your tent placement is dumb. The person in that tiktok was probably just a campground host or a volunteer. Rangers have to follow strict rules about how they talk to visitors, they can't just publicly make fun of people on social media without getting in trouble. Plus the uniform kinda looks the same from a distance, I've mistaken volunteers for rangers before too. But yeah the whole making fun of peoples tent thing is definitely a real thing that happens, just usually by other campers or the volunteers not actual federal employees.