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As always, many unused panels, lines, and other artifacts from the production of this strip post two hours after the original in tiers 2 & 3! Upgrade for a month and read them all!

We went camping for the Fourth of July, and it was the type of camping where you get one of three dozen lots on an asphalt loop, and everybody else has an RV and a generator and the world's Least-Behaved Dogs. But the bad part was, of course, as always, the pit toilets. If Hell has an extension campus, it is these Lovecraftian latrines. I barely even show my ass to my wife, let alone to the mixed tailings of so many double-battered Claim Jumper suppers.

We agreed that if we are to go camping again, it will be the "dispersed" kind, where you hike into woods so deep even the stoutest RV cannot be pulled in by its snarling team of mentally disintegrating German Shepherds.

How do you go camping such that the experience is not ruined by beer-swollen cacklehags and their daysnoring menfolk?

Files

Comments

Josh Egbert

Ray has changed his tune on camping I see. Wisdom takes time.

b.zap

Samsquanch, I hate that sonofabitch

Julie (HiDeeHoGal)

I don't know how I will use "turdbog terror frog" but I definitely will.

s b

think I saw that frogman splayed on the cover of a dark romance book at Target

GruntyGinMan

T isn't describing camping, he's describing being homeless while your car is right over there. There is little more miserable than "camping", during up to the site, and listening to every other moron who wanted to be one with nature and blast whatever shitty little bullshit music they are listening to.

GruntyGinMan

You should always, always hike in not drive up. Do the backpacking thing.

GruntyGinMan

Oh I see from the accompanied text Chris already covered this.

Ryan Boyle

Literal LOL at "Why don't I just go on Twitter"

Achewood

This is exactly what I am saying. Back in the city, I have walls all around me all day so I do not have to learn information about people who have two quarts of Fireball sloshing around between their ears. Why would I want those walls gone. Camping is like Society, Pantsed

Achewood

I'm trying to find an image of this bizarre character I'm seeing in my head. I swear it's from some 60s comic book, but "frog man vintage comics" only brings up a guy with an actual frog head, not this creepy old-timey adapted diving helmet guy

Daniel M Ford

I camped quite a lot as a youngster; Eagle Scout, and many a bluegrass festival camp out with my first very serious relationship. Preparation is everything, but even that won't let you outrun the RV people. In 2007 I married a woman whose idea of 'camping' is a hotel that lacks a bar, and haven't been out since. I miss it, but not enough to spend the thousands of dollars necessary to make it viable again. All the gear that made the bluegrass festivals possible is moldering in the ex's basement.

Achewood

It stayed in because of the tite rhyme

Achewood

I live in Oregon. For some reason people still want that to be a thing up here. The only place I see figures remotely that lopey and awkward is at the driving range.

Bob the Fish Productions

I assume the phenomenon of "glamping" is known of in the USA. It's been enough of a thing in the UK the past twenty years that America probably wiped its residues clean of its collective buttocks. Much as I despise camping and will never set foot in a tent again - the only time I did, I was forced to by my school, and came back with the top layer of my skin sheared off by autumn Atlantic coast winds - I cannot brook glamping either. It just seems like cheating. Just go to a sodding hotel, you rich twats.

Condorito

I have to second the backpacking thing, though. Although I haven't been in long enough that there could be a line everywhere like the summit of Everest

Achewood

I think it's been nearly a quarter century since that road trip where Beef was worried they'd be spooning with spiders on their faces? Even Ray can change a bit given enough runway.

Achewood

When I got that line, I knew I had a strip

Achewood

Hey, as long as everyone's deucing in a ziploc, it's like your own private everest

Achewood

"'camping' is a hotel that lacks a bar" I'm going to use this, it's tite

Bruce Wright

You have captured the camping experience perfectly, except you forgot to mention the paralyzing boredom of it all. When a fire is your home entertainment center, things have gotten dire indeed.

lake

Ray, no long armed frog monsters hide in campground toilets.

Bungus Bronbo

A part of me wants to see Teeodor go round to everyone and get a personalized response as to why none of them will go camping because of the toilets. His heart might've been in the right place, but in no world is it ever ever ever a good idea to look down those vault toilets, and any conversation that results in such a suggestion should be abandoned. Also, I go in the offseason.

Matthew Miller

If during the course of this week I’d invented the term of art “turdbog terror frog,” I’d be going into this weekend’s barbecue obligations feeling pretty chuffed. There would be no nagging sense of subordination keeping me from draining four hop waters from a six somebody else brought.

Douglas Wykstra

Drive-in camping has its place, but I feel like it increasingly self-selects for the RV crowd. Probably the further you go out into the wilderness and the middle of the week, the better the tent camping. I think of it like, "there are 3-4 hikes that would individually be a 2-hour drive each way; better to just do the drive once and stay there for a few days to hit them all."

Achewood

Oh yes, glamping has been a thing since before Covid. You know how some people show they're sporty with a roof box for their gear? There are people who have installed a huge disproportional eye sore pop-up unit on top of their subaru etc and it stays there year round, like the final boss of the Sportier-Than-Thou flex game. It looks horrible and I bet only half of them even get used more than once a year.

Paul

What's in the bottle? Did Delirium Tremens come out with a delicious beverage that circumvents the delirium tremens? Or *gasp* is gentle Ray back on the sauce?

Josh Egbert

One of my favorite Achewood rarities is the "T pursues an idea with someone who was sick of his shit six panels ago". Used to great effect here.

Achewood

I apologize for not being in here to chat last Friday. Sitting down and mixing it up with you all is a sincere highlight of my week — ask Lauren. Unfortunately, last Friday we were camping and well out of service, but at least I was gathering source material.

Achewood

Imagine camping during a burn ban. How would that be any different from being lost, but knowing the way home?

Achewood

You can't prove that unless you get a flashlight and really Go On Twitter.

Achewood

That's a cool idea for a strip. I would have enjoyed writing that. Now I'm wondering if I should have used vault toilet. Makes it sound more castle-y, though, like it's built with arched brick like a great parisian sewer. The kind of sewer you wouldn't mind Twittering around in with a flashlight.

Achewood

I think King Arthur used to hear these in his big moat at night. Hop waters are the greatest beverage invention since the cancellation of zima.

Achewood

The only problem with dispersed camping is that every cracked twig or misheard hoot owl has you reaching for the pistol you never even bought.

Brian Sutton

Being married to a woman from a small French town I've endured 25 years worth of these conversations trying to be convinced that I'd enjoy having unknown things crawl on me while I wait to be eaten. Have never felt more aligned with Ray.

Achewood

It would appear Ray dabbles now and again. I wouldn't want to outline the byzantine harm reduction / therapy / pharmacopoeia that makes this possible because it'd be a boring sideline, and it goes against the received wisdom of how drinking problems work and are solved, but it's hard to not have Ray party like old times now and then.

Achewood

I didn't know the French enjoyed camping! I wonder if they're looking for something different out of it, like a context where it's okay to always insouciantly sport four days of beard growth. (I mean, outside of France.)

Achewood

Coming out in December from the Achewood Cinematic Universe

Spyguitar

Camping and running: the two hobbies people will leap at the slightest chance to tell you they hate. We usually look for the cart-in sites, which keep the RV crowd at bay, though last summer we rented a pop-up camper and towed it all the way around Lake Superior. I don't mind telling you, that trip was _awesome_

Matthew Miller

We grow Cascade in our yard. I soak hops in Everclear for two nights and filter that extract into a stopper bottle. One squirt transforms any seltzer in a way nobody likes but me.

Jonathan

Yeah, I feel like you have to find the place with no RVs allowed, campsites spread far apart, and pit toilets with no running water. The toilets keep the families with kids away, but are better than pooping in a hole that you just dug in the ground.

Brian Sutton

French Canadian Chris, a very different species.

Achewood

I like running, but in a different way while I'm doing it vs. after. While I'm doing it, I'm like, "it is good that I can handle pain." After, I'm like, "Look at the baaaad-assssss" (nobody thinks a guy who ran six flat miles is a badass at all)

Achewood

Man, a campground with flush toilets is basically a Rest Area. I've also seen ones that have showers. This must be where gnarly blistering toenails come from.

Elyse Renée

Oh, this one tickled me but good

Theo Freedom

If a realm of ass is eaten in the forest, does Teodor make a noise?

Jenn

💀 why don't I just go on Twitter I read that to my husband in the car and we're still laughing

Paul

I'd be a hypocrite to judge a person who's grown and learned to dabble in their vices without harming themselves or others. It's a victory that I deeply respect.

Jenn

So good, like Chris Isaac guitar notes

Achewood

Hopefully not Frogman-Tickled

Achewood

probably a slight gagging/choking sound, unless the forest has showers

Achewood

Seriously people, stay off Twitter. It's just robots arguing with idiots

Jay Y

Teo taking the L in consecutive weeks. Rough times for the guy, but not "back of Pete's van" rough.

Oppido

Damn near every individual panel here is audible-giggle funny.

Achewood

The torture of the fail-to-launch Everyman is really emerging as a theme in Achewood, isn't it...just noticing it myself

Achewood

Thank you. Sometimes when writing strips I wonder if I'm just going from one "writer's line" to the next without advancing an idea or story, but I console myself that at least it's better than Garfield (imho)

Daniel Burt

Great to see Kid Rock catching strays in yet another medium. Staggering Trump voters sided with him over Springsteen.

Asherdan

In SoCal, the only safe way to avoid the Terrors of Humanity is to take fire roads into the mountains far enough that the insect burden overwhelms the cellular connectivity. Then your only fears will be illicit weed growers and the crunchy-granolas that prefer to 'disconnect', both of which will generally leave you alone if you do the same.

Conor Nelson

"all men know not to audiocast. Few answer the call."

Jay Y

If we were tallying wins and losses, I think Teodor would come in firmly last. There were times when I talked Achewood with my friends and we wondered about his role as a punching bag, especially given how central he was in early strips.

Achewood

That specific dichotomy is evidence of a terrifying, widespread misunderstanding of the American spirit. Apparently now it just means sticking your middle finger up at anything you find challenging.

Achewood

Yeah, out in that territory you're definitely stumbling into the Vision Quests of a lot of twentysomethings who are just trying to forget the time Anthony Kiedis assumed they wanted to get into his Trans Am.

Achewood

Where did the second part of that quote come from?

GruntyGinMan

I feel as if I should say, car camping can be done but only in the most truly remote areas, and then you may still run into the Townies. You find a property owned by the Army Corps of Engineers in Deepest West Virginia. Odd, for the entire year there have been no reservations on any of the drive up spots. Yes, this will allow for ease of driving up and no worries you think. You ask your good friend, who grew up in Long Island and moved here to join you. Boys weekend. You arrive after the 6 hour drive, entering a worn chain link fence advising of a historical marker declaring the dam was constructed in 1943. The spots are empty, the only person appears to be a strand man who wears a uniform with two name tags on it, walking from trash can to trashcan, and emptying them even as they are empty. He continues this for several hours. No one else arrives. He disappears. Returns, driving up a 1995 forest green Ford Taurus Wagon. Glancing at your own truck a flicker of confusion crosses his face. "We don't get many out of staters here." "I found out about it from my in-laws, a ways away. The Town With the Covered Bridge." He nods, and looks at your friend, scrutinizing him. "The Mummies. I have seent them." He scrutinizes your friend some more. "You are from The Ridge?" A shake of the head. "No. But I know Emeril." Another nod. The Melungeon. Your friend, who is now wondering if the liter bottle of Blackberry Manischewitz in his hand has given away the plot, remarks that this is a beautiful little resorvoir. The man nods again, says be safe. And ambles to his wagon. The sickly headlights turn on and he drives off. It is cool enough that you are glad you could justify the hoodie, and the G19 under it. The night passes uneventfully. You both wake up to a a man dropping his JOhn-boat in thye water. He goes fishing, then returns an hour later. The groundskeeper does not return. The second night is uneventful, The drive home Sunday morning takes longer than expected, but the transit is safe enough.

GruntyGinMan

Incidentally, when I got out of the navy and section-hiked the AT form Blacksburg-PenMar I def had an abiding fear of long-armed Frogmen. At one point I had "Trail buddy" who like me had recently left the service and had resolved to walk-the-war out of him. He used a multifuel stove and kept his big red fuel bottle full of everclear, and would consume it thusly when people tried to chat him up.

Oppido

Teodor feels due for a win soon... although knowing T, he'll find a way to turn it into, at best, a wash.

Daniel Burt

I'm going to pass that quote off as my own at some point in the future, lovely stuff.

zoë

I usually search for a "rustic" campsite that doesn't have RV hookups or is far away from them at a bigger park ! ReserveAmerica is great for this because you can see where RV sites are easily and what amenities are available at your campsite.

GruntyGinMan

Speaking as a guy who used to pull a lot of strange with my "axe murderer in the middle of the night while camping" story in my dating profile, as a rule you ain't gonna find too many things (people)to worry about once you're a mile or so away from the trailhead, unless it's Grizzly country. I do understand why it's worrisome tho.

GruntyGinMan

Just get a little pocket rocket Butane stove.

Achewood

Say more about pulling the strange with murder stories

GruntyGinMan

Yoooo what was your Eagle project?

Achewood

This eerie mash up of lonesome camping and an Emeril reserve feels like the start of something new. Well done. What is a strand man?

Bungus Bronbo

Regrettably, vault toilets are basically a port-o-potty on top of another port-o-potty, and the bottom port-o-potty is filled. You only encounter 'em in places that are WAY out there and can't rely on a steady water supply for the plumbing. On the worst day a truck comes and empties them. That said, Glacier National Park is worth it.

Achewood

Damn, everclear as antidote to socializing…quick, powerful, honorable.

Achewood

A life hack! Now, is there a camping site that shows where you can’t bring a dog you never socialized correctly?

Daniel M Ford

Researching and then creating a historical marker for the location of the harbor in the colonial version of my hometown, which had been the original colony seat of Maryland. And also writing and printing up leaflets held at the local library/at a nearby park for interested parties (I was naive enough to believe there would be some)

Jonathan

The showers are nice if you're only camping so you can hike or climb during the day though. Wear sandals of course

Bruce Wright

Oh yes! Better than Cathy, even.

Bruce Wright

Plus lots of cute cats, dogs and the occasional wombat

Song Club with John Krane

"Engage with any great art lately?" "Well, lately I've been really blown away by the use of the English language in this comic where a cat and teddy bear argue about shitting outdoors."

Matt Thurston

I’m mostly with Ray on this. There’s splendor to be had in a nice campground, but I don’t ever want to go overnight.

Ben Wilinofsky

You have also managed, separately, to capture the Twitter experience perfectly

Clench and Cheese

We always must remember that Ray is a cat and grew up shitting and pissing into a box full of rainbow scented sand so now that he has access to the Japanese toilet that has a heated seat and plays music while he craps no talk of s'mores is ever going to bring him back to the box.

“Cool Mayonnaise” Hank Spurlock

Kid Rock and sleeping in dirt, 10 feet from the car reminds me of my misspent youth in central North Carolina. One time a friend and I passed out under a tree after a large and chaotic bonfire party in the woods and woke up, having unknowingly slept on a batch of poison oak. I was ok, but quite literally gasped upon awakening and seeing him swollen up like a pubescent facsimile of Joseph Merrill. Bawitdaba, indeed.

GruntyGinMan

It's a man who should be a strange man but I misspelled it because how else are you going to show you have an MA in the Humanities from an R1? This story inspired by listlessly going through Recreation.gov sites in WV and wondering why a lot of ACE properties in Deep Appalachia have no activity on the reservation page(and then rolling the dice).

Nathaniel R

Solid gold, particularly the first six panels. Especially panels 4-6. Most hysterically, panel #6 🏆

Conor Nelson

It’s you … think from an alt text back in the day. I found it somewhat recently because my son made it known that he did not appreciate my urinary splash noises. My wife is like is that what people call it? Im like no I’m pretty sure that’s an achewood original. I’ll find it again ….

Walter Biggins

I’m a person who loves day hiking but dislikes camping intensely, so Ray hits all my vibes.🤣🤣🤣

Walter Biggins

Exactly this. I was at a KOA campground in Niagara Falls last month, and the laissez-faire attitude about dogs was insufferable

s b

highly recommend availing yourself of the lore of the Xanue! A Licensed Clinical Psychologist has written the definitive account on getting adopted by psychic evangelical bigfoots from space.

Peter Griffiths

Yep that's the one. This was affirming to me as I innately avoided audiocasting before I knew what it was. All I wanted was to deflect the piss at an obtuse angle to take the energy out of the stream and thus reduce splashback to the shins and surrounding areas.

Walter Cooke

I once had the delightful experience of digging a cat hole in the tundra while camping in Greenland where there are no trees or bushes to hide behind and you can watch the tourist vans bouncing along the dirt trail a mile away while the tourists have their binoculars trained on you (perhaps thinking it's a reindeer, musk ox or a polar bear) while you take a cr*p.

Peter Griffiths

That sounds like a low bar but given it's *you* it's actually far, far higher than 99.99% of other people's bars. However, If you were to Accept this then the quality of your output would plummet to Cathy levels.

Peter Griffiths

T will never win. It is his first, his last, and it is his density.

Peter Griffiths

Literally perfect and with his face all like that and such etc.

Peter Griffiths

They're obsessed! There are countless sites throughout France and, as we camped up and down the west coast of the Scottish Highlands around Gairloch and Ullapool, the French and Germans were in equal abundance in their campervans and motorhomes. I used to listen to their chat to see if I could pick out any English words and if not then try to work out where they were from if their number plate on their van wasn't readily available. Magical times imagining how far they'd travelled to get there compare to our 3 day odyssey from the West Midlands of England 😄

Oppido

Chilling in a chair with a bottle and a... broadsheet of some kind (?) seems like a very mellow/responsible form of "partying," anyway. (Shout-fucking-out to Ray for keeping print media alive.)

Achewood

Lowest of concepts given the highest of treatment well, sort of

Jonathan

I dug a hole like that in the desert of Joshua Tree, preparing for the inevitable the next morning, but decided to walk over a mile back to the pit toilet instead.

Achewood

What is a good term for just camping during the day, then going home?

Achewood

This is exactly how everyone describes those new digital bidets to me. Life before, and life after

Achewood

If nature wanted us to be outside all night, it would have built flush toilets into our bottoms.

Achewood

Thank you. And I completely blanked on that Téodor is suggesting Ray mitigate his audiocasting.

blair

Farting around in the woods?

Chris Warren

Ray is wise in so many ways.

blair

"Fuck Camping Friday"

Clench and Cheese

I hate to admit it, but I've crossed the threshold and am never going back. I even have a portable one called a happy po that I take traveling.

Achewood

You take your own bidet to hotels. This really does indicate there's a life before, and a life after, that first dance.

Achewood

Hey enough with the potty mouth, guy, read the room

Achewood

That story is a legitimate winner of young times. I wonder if you may have meant Joseph Merrick, the "Elephant Man," and not Joseph Merrill. Although it would have been fascinating to awaken and see that a friend has transformed into an earnest old Mormon leader.

Achewood

Monday's strip is Ray likes a certain food to the exception of other foods, but also does not like that it is the first day of the week. Jon certifiable idiot lusts for Liz the joyless veterinarian.

Andrew Gillies

Didn't Ray have some Colonel named Ephraim sticking matchsticks up his heiny, causing doody to come out of him, onto the ground?

Achewood

I would also have walked a mile from a small hole just the size of the previous night's oatmeal and tortilla chips

Achewood

Did they all have four-day beard growth, even the little French babies and tots? To complete this image, look for the Serge Gainsbourg video where five dozen schoolchildren dressed like him and holding fading gitanes and scotch sing his song while he cries

Achewood

Knowing Ray, it's probably just a large folded galley of mostly-empty newsprint with like small halftone photos of a young Sting on the center of each page.

Achewood

Ah okay I thought a Strand Man was more of the military lingo with which you often pepper your posts. I am going to imagine that ACE properties are part of the foundering American Camping Excellence program started by William McKinley

Achewood

I really can't get into things like that right now

Achewood

Thanks. Sometimes achewood is just domestic banality, captured dutifully

John Robinson

I have never been camping, and (should the Fates allow) I never will. I inherited my father's definition of "roughing it": any hotel where Room Service stops after 2AM.

Achewood

Civilization didn't happen because we loved squatting behind trees

Clench and Cheese

when you're a jet you're a jet all the way, from your first cigarette to your last dying day.

TaxoBob

Damping (obviously)

Conor Nelson

Someone much more clever than me (Chris?) can complete this old Achewood line to coin a new maxim: “Chicks are the chess of deucin’, but guys are the …”

GruntyGinMan

ACE= Army Corps of Engineers. Since they developed/operated a lot of dams and reservoirs in the Eastern US, they maintain a lot of the properties for recitational purposes. At West it's mostly the Bureau of Land Reclamation that maintains those sites.

Conor Nelson

Maybe “men are the mutes of micturating”?

Achewood

From your first bottom-blast to your last asshole spray

Achewood

Yeah, it would go into the astroturf of the pen, stark in its crushing shame against the perfect green.

Achewood

Chicks are the chess of deucin’, but guys are the Michael Bay

RJ Carmine

Fuck everything about camping. I want a bed with an outlet next to it for my Gen X CPAP machine, indoor plumbing, and motherfucking air conditioning.

FactWino

Frogman or The Frogmen were some of the vintage titles.

Strange Matter (edited)

Comment edits

2026-09-20 10:00 I love camping, but camping at car campgrounds is not included in what I think of as camping. I do that more as a way to pay less than a cheap hostel and still be able to sleep in an area I don't live close to. Camping becomes fun when you so it as the result of some other goal, like climbing a mountain or hiking a long trail or being in a national park. The froghemoth in the shitter is real, but is not worse than twitter. Maybe some of you will enjoy this column by Cedar Wright for climbing magazine, top five climbing poop stories: https://www.climbing.com/culture/crappiest-column-ever-cedar-wright
2025-07-14 05:10

2scrogz

I like to think that Michael Bay is the Michael Bay of deucin'. His movies make so much more sense that way.

2scrogz

It never made any damn sense that Garfield hates Mondays. He's a cat, he does the same thing every day, and doesn't know what day it is. Why would he hate Mondays? Is it that Jon goes to work? But also, he hates Jon, so... wouldn't Jon leaving be a good thing? Basic core themes of the entire strip were at odds with each other.

AzureSP

I think that panels 10 and 11 are my favorite Ray Smuckles since the G.O.F. ... Slamming Twitter, Kid Rock, and Car Camping in 2 panels is pure "chef kiss."

Achewood

Does a Gen X CPAP machine play The Police down your throat?

Achewood

So, is Twitter officially the Coprophiliac Frog Monster of the Internet? Also, I will read that article after writing this week's strip, so the content doesn't "bleed across."

Achewood

I mean, he's getting Gilmore Girls-level overwordy, but he (I) had a lot to get off my chest.

Achewood

Is Xitter (I'm hearing it as "Chitter," or possibly "Shitter") growing in popularity as the new name for Twitter? Because it should be. That's grand. Ah, Stromae, the Maestro. I went through a period of understanding him.

Teri Aitch

(Currently [trailer] camping in Maumee Bay State Park in Ohio)

Commodore Frenchie

My girlfriend's bestie followed us two hours north to a "Regional Burn" in the woods of Vermont. After towing an over-laden red wagon several miles into the underbrush she took one whiff of the portos and opted to do a full retreat.

Achewood

Is that like a Burning Man thing? I just saw how at the main Burning Man a big gust of wind destroyed the Orgy Tent. Fingers crossed that those people are still able to find someplace to orgy.

rickward

When my ex-wife and I would camp at Kirk Creek in Big Sur I would plan my meals so I would only need to do a 2wo during the daily excursions to “nearby” villages with “antique” shops and running water