Lot of Rope Light Under RV's While Camping All Night

[TinShanty]

OK... I understand both sides, but...
We love rv-ing. Love boondocking. Love glamping. The campfire smoke, screaming kids (I admit to missing those nites...) drunks, loose pit bulls, loud music at 2 AM, bugbites, sewer smells, rude campers, incessant Diesel idling (why? are they THAT fragile???), impact wrenches, recalcitrant service pylons, left-behind trash, people walking thru an occupied campsite(my personal pet-peeve), uber jingoistic campers, well, you
get it. It’s all good! And then some! Have had all the above. Do lites keep midnight ramblers at bay? Dunno. Don’t care. Lived in Phoenix for years. Spent “months” at Lake Pleasant. Spiders, burros, chewing critters, flies, crawling things own the desert. Had em all .Love it all. If the lites/noise/smells/critters et al bother you, I get it. But it’s all part of the experience. Sometimes not so fun, but, hey, look at the upside: it’s better than not going, right? Don’t like football? Go to a tennis match. Anyway, can hardly wait until we hit the road again!

[Airwave503]

Originally Posted by CKent

Welcome to the desert! We are chock full of a very cute but destructive animal called the pack rat.

CKent, are the rope lights always white light? And if so do you think they need to be? Seems like blue or amber would be less annoying but would it still deter the critters?

I know the original intent of this post was that the light are obnoxious. When I camp at a CG or even boondocking with other people near I am generally ready to be annoyed. But I will take rope lights any day over diesel spewing generators and campfire smoke.

[featherbedder]

We don't have pack rats in Illinois but camp grounds look like a carnival w/allkinds of lights.

[kscherzi]

Here's a mythbusters video showing that rope lights don't deter rats. They ignored the rope lights and crawled all over them.

https://youtu.be/EVN9JXUJXdY

[BayouBiker]

Cute video, but they should have used non domesticated desert pack rats for the test.... may well have the same result but this is apples to oranges so we don't know.

[WhereStream]

Originally Posted by featherbedder

We don't have pack rats in Illinois but camp grounds look like a carnival w/allkinds of lights.

Yes, I'm seeing the rope-light (and other lights) phenomenon in campgrounds all over the Southeast.

Recently at a campground in Florida, someone set up a neon palm tree, 6 feet tall.

[rucos]

Originally Posted by mojo

So I have been camped down at Organ Pipe NM on the AZ border. Got in my truck and started up and noticed the clock had been reset by a good 8 hours later than the real time. I am convinced that the pack rats have graduated from chewing on wires and are now hacking vehicle computer systems!

you'll know its true when the rope lights start pulsating to Iron Maiden playing on your stereo

[BayouBiker]

We have an LED light palm tree. Goes with the pirate in paradise theme and the Margaritavile LED lit bikes. It's a big hit with the kids at the more domestic RV parks.

[moosetags]

I love the neon palm trees. I wish I had a place to carry one.

Brian

[QC TORPEDO]

I cannot resist any longer. What I see in these posts is people staying in $100,000 trailers complaining that they cannot be with nature.

[Halford1]

https://youtu.be/EVN9JXUJXdY

please watch this video. there is evidence to show whether it works or not.

Thanks kscherzi for posting this.

[Escape_Plan]

Originally Posted by mojo

noticed the clock had been reset by a good 8 hours later than the real time.

Well, you are close to the NM border . . . missing time? Could be aliens. The kind from outer space . . . just sayin'

[Sojourner69]

These silly rope lights have been available for what, 5 years? Before that, I'm certain that trailers and TVs were overrun with packrats and other attacking rodents. How did we ever get by without them? How did this myth that lights repel rodents get started? In the case of packrats, they are sometimes are out and about in daylight. I lived in Tucson; the packrats cleaned up the dog poop in my yard, they never nested in my cars which spent their nights in the dark. Leave the LED ropes at home, turn off the lights--dark skies for camping.

[Hittenstiehl]

So it was after dark as we pulled into a Tucson Desert campground recently. DH wondered why everybody (80 %) had their vehicles hoods up. He also noticed many had lights under the vehicles. I said, funny you ask and expounded on the pack rat info and the current thread. As we settled in DH wished we had some kind of light we could also put under. I had some small solar low light multi filiment sparkle lights with several mode selector switch. We ended up using them. Many folks opted for minimal lighting, some did no lights with just hood open and there were a couple of folks afraid of the dark.