Dealing With Noisy Neighbors

At some point in your RVing life, you will encounter noisy neighbors on the campground. They play their TV too loud, their dog barks at everything that moves, and they stay up late into the night around a ginormous campfire talking and laughing. Whatever your noisy neighbors do, the one thing you don’t want them to do is spoil your camping trip. So, dealing with noisy neighbors directly, as undesirable as that prospect might be, can be the more desirable of alternate options – like calling the cops, complaining to management, or storming around your RV with a reddening face and smoke coming out your ears.

The most effective method for dealing with noisy neighbors, is to not park your rig next to them in the first place. This requires a bit of profiling of your potential neighbors before you pull into a campsite. If you are an older, retired couple that goes to bed by 10 o’clock, you might want to choose a campsite between other similar RVers who are unlikely to party around the campfire into the wee hours.

If you are not pet lovers, avoid setting up camp next to RVers with a dog that barks a lot. The type of campground or RV resort you choose to camp in can also increase or decrease the probability of having noisy neighbors. You are less likely to find noisy neighbors in a remote forest service campground. When possible check out the campground or RV resort rules before making reservations, as some resorts encourage RVers with pets or others may have no curfew rules. You cannot expect noisy neighbors to abandon their activities if there are no rules against those activities.

However, if you visit your noisy neighbors and politely remind them of the rules they may be breaking and why it’s important to you, you will often find that they will voluntarily tamp down their activities in an effort to be considerate. If that doesn’t work and the noisy neighbors are in flagrant violation of existing rules (or you have safety concerns), a call or visit to management may be the only recourse. Unfortunately, there will be times when dealing with noisy neighbors has no favorable outcome and you have no other choice than to switch campsites or abandon it completely and seek a campground more in tune with your lifestyle.