A Term the RV World Has Been Waiting For
Our Voyage with MS
If you search “Cuddle Camping” online right now, you are going to find a lot of fairy lights. Wool blankets. Steaming mugs. People using words like “snug,” and “cozy,” and “intimate glamping experience.”
That is not what we are talking about.
We are talking about pulling into a wide open lot, picking your spot, setting up, exhaling, and then watching another rig roll in and park so close to yours that your neighbor could hand you their coffee through your window without either of you moving.
The RV world has been living this for years. It just never had a proper name.
Sound familiar? You might be a Cuddle Camper if:
🚽 Your morning coffee view is a 4K close-up of your neighbor’s sewer hose.
👃 You can smell what they had for dinner through your vent.
😎 Their awning is basically your awning at this point.
👀 You have accidentally made eye contact through each other’s windows more than once.
Until now.
Kuschelcamping = Cuddle Camping
The Germans named it first. Of course they did.
I have German roots. My brother RVs all over Germany and talks about this regularly. I am part of German RV groups online. So when this term shows up in conversations and posts, I don’t even think about it, I know what it means. I had been hearing it without thinking much about it.
In the German RV community, the phenomenon of parking uncomfortably close to another camper when there is plenty of space available is called Kuschelcamping. Literally translated: Cuddle Camping. It has been a recognized and widely discussed behavior in European camping culture for years, with its own dedicated forum threads, blog columns, and more than a few heated opinions.
The natural home of Cuddle Camping in Europe is the Stellplatz. A Stellplatz is a designated overnight parking area for motorhomes and campervans, often run by local towns and cities. Germany alone has over 4,300 of them. Some have fresh water, waste disposal, and electricity. Some only have a payment machine and a sign. I personally call it a glorified parking lot. A very organized, very German, very practical glorified parking lot. You pull in, pick your spot, pay your fee, and spend the night. No reservations. No assigned sites. First-come, first-served. Wide open pavement, room for everyone, and yet there is always that one rig that pulls up three centimeters from yours.
Someone in those groups once put a name to the instinct behind it. He called it the Fluchtdistanz, the escape distance that every living creature instinctively maintains. When another camper crosses that distance without a reason, Cuddle Camping has officially occurred. It sounds exactly like something my brother would say. For all I know, it was him.
He also laid out two theories for why it happens. Theory one: the newcomer is being considerate, not wanting to waste space in case the lot fills up. Theory two: pure herd instinct. There is already one rig there. It feels safer to be near it.
Theory two is more common than most people want to admit. And as you will see, it is not always wrong.
America Has Been Living This Without a Name
In the US, the experience is just as familiar. Pull into a boondocking spot on public land with room for twenty rigs and watch someone set up six inches from yours. Roll into a Walmart parking lot at midnight, pick the far corner, and wake up with a neighbor. Same behavior, same puzzled look from the rig that just arrived, same lack of a word to describe it.
Until now, the American RV community has had to describe it the long way. The guy who parks right next to you when the whole lot is empty. The neighbor who did not get the memo about the buffer zone. The rig that somehow finds yours in a field the size of a football stadium.
We would like to propose a simpler solution.
Cuddle Camping.
Two words. Immediately understood by anyone who has ever spent a night in a rig. No further explanation required.
The Exception: When Cuddle Camping Is the Point
Not all Cuddle Camping is accidental. Sometimes it is the whole reason you are there.
Upper Teton View is one of those places. This boondocking spot near Grand Teton has a stay limit of a few nights, specifically so that everyone gets a shot at it. No assigned sites. No reservations. The resource is shared, and the community manages itself. Getting close here is not an imposition. It is how more people get to experience something worth experiencing. When newcomers rolled in, they did not just pick a spot. They came over and asked if it was okay to squeeze in. Was there room? Would anyone mind? It was the first time we used the term Cuddle Camping out loud with other people, and everyone knew exactly what we meant and laughed.
At Upper Teton View, not sharing is what gets you the side-eye. The person who strategically parks across a spot that could fit two or three rigs, just spread out enough to make it awkward for anyone else to pull in, that person is the problem. Not the Cuddle Camper. The space hoarder dressed up as a camper.
Then there was the RV rally at the Fairgrounds in West Palm Beach. A different kind of exception, but the same principle. The sites were 14 feet wide. Some of the rigs were 12 feet wide with the slides out. You do that math. When your neighbor bumps their head on your slide-out while walking past, the vibration travels through the whole rig. Ask me how I know. And no, I was not the one bumping my head.
But nobody was upset about it. Because that is what a rally is. You are not there for the personal space. You are there for the people. The conversations at the back of someone’s rig that turn into two hours you did not plan for. The shared meals. The comparing notes on routes, repairs, and the best dump stations in four states. The community that forms when a bunch of people who all chose the same unusual life end up in the same place at the same time.
Two completely different situations. One view worth sharing, one rally worth attending. Same conclusion: sometimes Cuddle Camping is not the problem. It is the feature.
So Now You Have a Word for It
The Germans figured it out first. My brother has been living it for years. We are just bringing it across the Atlantic.
Cuddle Camping is not always a complaint. Sometimes it is a story about a lot that was too empty and a rig that pulled up too close for no good reason. Sometimes it is a story about a view too good not to share, and neighbors who asked before they parked. And sometimes it is a story about a rally in West Palm Beach where 14-foot sites met 12-foot rigs, and nobody cared because that was never the point.
Context is everything. The term is yours now. Use it wisely.
Let’s see the world, one charge cycle at a time. 🧡⚡