Camping Trivia
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267 free Camping trivia questions with answers — nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
49 free Camping trivia questions with answers. Camping trivia is perfect for the campfire itself, a scout meeting, a road-trip game or a lodge quiz night. This set covers the whole outdoors: the Victorian tailor who founded the first camping club, the year Yellowstone became the first national park, who first published a s'mores recipe, why the world's largest campground chain charged $1.75 a night, where you are legally allowed to pitch a tent on private land, and how a five-pound bear cub became the face of wildfire prevention. The questions run from easy warm-ups any kid who has toasted a marshmallow will get, to genuinely hard ones about the Euklisia rug, the Ten Essentials and Apollo astronauts quarantined in an Airstream. Difficulty is marked on every question so you can pick a round for the group in front of you. Every answer has been checked against Wikipedia and the primary sources it cites, and each explanation adds one more thing worth knowing.
30 of 267 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01A classic s'more sandwiches a toasted marshmallow and chocolate between what?
Graham crackers
The name is a contraction of 'some more', which had fully taken over by the end of the 1930s.
Q 02A 1927 cookbook from which youth organization contained an early 'Some More' recipe?
Girl Scouts
A Connecticut newspaper had already described Girl Scouts eating 'Some-mores' two years earlier, in 1925.
Q 03On which date does the United States mark National S'mores Day?
August 10
National S'mores Day is August 10, an unofficial US food holiday that falls in peak campfire season.
Q 04Recreational camping is usually traced to Thomas Hiram Holding, a Briton who worked as what?
A travelling tailor
Holding was a travelling tailor by trade; his 1898 book Cycle and Camp in Connemara led him to found the Association of Cycle Campers in 1901.
Q 05Possibly the world's first commercial camping ground, Cunningham's camp, opened in 1894 on which island?
Isle of Man
Cunningham's camp on the Isle of Man opened near Douglas in 1894 as a tented holiday camp for young men, years before any camping club had a site of its own.
Q 06Which founder of a youth movement became president of the UK's National Camping Club in 1919?
Robert Baden-Powell
Robert Baden-Powell, founder of Scouting, became president of the Camping Club in 1919; the club had absorbed the Association of Cycle Campers in 1910.
Q 07US camping is often traced to W. H. H. Murray's 1869 book on camp life in which region?
The Adirondacks
Murray's Adventures in the Wilderness; or, Camp-Life in the Adirondacks (1869) drew so many tourists to the Adirondacks that they were nicknamed 'Murray's Fools'.
Q 08Ford, Edison, Burroughs and Firestone popularized US camping under what group nickname?
The Vagabonds
Calling themselves the Vagabonds, Ford, Edison, Firestone and Burroughs took well-publicized car-camping trips in the 1910s and early 1920s that made auto camping fashionable.
Q 09Which country enshrines a right of public access to privately held wilderness in its constitution?
Sweden
Sweden wrote allemansrätten into its constitution in 1994; it lets anyone pitch a tent on uncultivated land for a night or two without asking the owner.
Q 10Under Norway's freedom-to-roam rules, how long may you camp on uncultivated land without the owner's permission?
Up to two days
Norway's Outdoor Recreation Act allows camping on uncultivated land for up to two days without the owner's consent; in the mountains and far from settlements you may stay longer.
Q 11Which 2003 Act gave Scots a broad right of access to the countryside, far wider than in England and Wales?
Land Reform Act
Scotland's Land Reform Act of 2003 created a statutory right of responsible access, so you can camp on most unenclosed land in Scotland whether state or privately owned.
Q 12'Glamping' is a portmanteau of camping and which word?
Glamorous
Glamping blends 'glamorous' with 'camping'; the word surfaced in Britain around 2005 and entered the Oxford English Dictionary in 2016.
Q 13The 1520 Field of the Cloth of Gold summit featured around how many tents and marquees?
About 2,800
About 2,800 tents and marquees were erected for Henry VIII's 1520 meeting with Francis I, some with fountains that ran with wine.
Q 21A pup tent, meant for one to three people, is a small version of which basic design?
Ridge
A pup tent is a small ridge tent: two end poles and a ridge line give it a rectangular floor, a triangular profile and very little headroom.
Q 22The Sibley design, with a circular floor and a single central pole, is another name for which shelter?
A bell tent
The Sibley tent is a bell tent, patented by US Army officer Henry Hopkins Sibley in 1856; single-pole conical bell tents go back to around AD 600.
Q 23The word 'hammock' reached English via Spanish from a word in which language?
Taino
Spanish hamaca came from the Taino people of the Caribbean; Columbus recorded islanders paddling out to trade cotton and 'hamacas, or nets, in which they sleep'.
Q 14Which outdoor brand grew from a gasoline-lamp business set up in Wichita, Kansas in 1902?
Coleman
Coleman grew from W. C. Coleman's Wichita lamp business; in World War II it built the compact multi-fuel Model 520, the original 'G.I. Pocket Stove'.
Q 15Kampgrounds of America was founded in 1962 in which city?
Billings, Montana
Dave Drum opened the first KOA campground in Billings, Montana in 1962, charging $1.75 a night to travellers heading for the Seattle World's Fair.
Q 16Karl Elsener began manufacturing knives for the Swiss Army in 1891 from a business in which Swiss town?
Ibach
Elsener's cutlery workshop in Ibach, canton Schwyz, became Victorinox; American soldiers after World War II popularized 'Swiss Army knife' because they could not pronounce Offiziersmesser.
Q 17Hans Meister's 1991 giant penknife, a Guinness size record-holder, has how many blades?
314
Meister's knife has 314 blades and weighs about 11 pounds, which is why Guinness listed it as the largest penknife rather than the handiest.
Q 18The 'Euklisia Rug', a sleeping-bag ancestor patented in 1876, was made by a mail-order pioneer from where?
Wales
Pryce Pryce-Jones of Newtown in Wales, a mail-order pioneer, patented the Euklisia Rug in 1876 and exported it worldwide; the name is Greek for 'good sleeping-place'.
Q 19A sleeping bag that tapers from the head to the foot to cut volume and hold heat is named after what?
A mummy
A mummy bag is named for its resemblance to a wrapped Egyptian mummy; most have a drawstring hood with a cord lock so warm air cannot escape.
Q 20In a sleeping bag, how does down fill compare with synthetic fill?
Lighter and warmer, but costlier
Down is lighter and warmer, but costlier; synthetic fill wins in the wet, barely absorbing water and still giving some warmth when soaked through.
Q 24Which nation's navy formally adopted hammocks in 1597?
Britain
Britain's Royal Navy formally adopted the sling hammock in 1597, and its sailors slept in them on cramped gun decks for centuries afterwards.
Q 25The word 'bivouac' is French but ultimately comes from an 18th-century usage in which language?
Swiss German
Bivouac came into French from Swiss German 'Biwacht', an extra night watch; the clipped form 'bivvy' spread through troops of the British Empire.
Q 26Which agency developed the metallized 'space blanket' in 1964?
NASA
NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center developed the space blanket in 1964 for the US space program; the film reflects up to 97 percent of radiated heat, which is why marathon finishers get wrapped in them.
Q 27The insect repellent DEET was developed in 1944 for which organization?
The United States Army
Samuel Gertler of the US Department of Agriculture developed DEET in 1944 for the United States Army after its jungle campaigns; civilians could buy it from 1957.
Q 28Which Scottish scientist invented the vacuum flask in 1892 but never patented it?
James Dewar
James Dewar devised the vacuum flask in 1892 to store liquefied gases; two German glassblowers sold it as the Thermos from 1904, and he later lost a lawsuit against their company.
Q 29Which knot is nicknamed the 'king of knots' and taught with a rhyme about a rabbit, a hole and a tree?
Bowline
The bowline appears in John Smith's 1627 Sea Grammar as the 'Boling knot', and a similar knot was found in the rigging of Khufu's solar ship.
Q 30Which campfire lay stacks kindling in alternating crossed layers around the tinder?
Log cabin
A log cabin fire stacks kindling in crossed layers around the tinder like cabin walls, leaving air gaps that keep it burning steadily and evenly.