Context: Me and my friends (we'll call them J and I) had planned a backcountry trip to Kings Canyon for the memorial weekend. We were supposed to set off at 5am sharp. Due to a mishap we had to spin up plans on the fly and decided to hit up Pinnacles instead. My friend assured me we'd have lots of public lands for camping available nearby.

As we leave the park, of course we have no service. We're driving north in search of service so we can navigate to these public land camping grounds. It was getting close to dusk and by the time we got service we were an hour away from the park and the grounds were another hour south from there. Meaning, it'd be past sunset after we got there and it would also increase our drive time back to the city up north a lot longer.

So we decided to just keep going north and find public land for camping in that direction. To our tough luck, there were none. All south to the park. We looks hard on camping apps, reddit, and just every resource to find a spot to camp (yea we really wanted to camp, I had brought grill and prep as well). So after all tries, we decided to just keep going north and see what we find.

Now here's the tifu. The mishap I mentioned earlier was a car break in to my friends car. We are talking about how the way law deals with shit happening to people makes you want to just not obey law *I know, not the ideal direction to go in*. We said f*ck it and that we're gonna go to the nearest national park and see if there's a spot untaken. We're not gonna be harming anyone, just taking one of so many spots that are unused every single weekend because people just don't show up. Fair enough.

We drove to the park and circled around the camping ground. "There's one!", I exclaims. I drove up and surely there is. As we're trying to think our next step here, J cries out in sheer joy, "There's another one bro!" pointing at the neighboring spot. J suggests we should take spot 2 (spot 1 was right on the road so perhaps that's why? remember this because it's going to be relevant later). We park and walk up to the spot to see the Reservation tag reads "Reservation for the Yang's 5/28 to 5/30". It's 5/29 today. If they were gonna come, they'd have been here yesterday? I say let's stick to spot 1 and we wait until dusk to completely assure no one is showing up. At sunset, I jokes "That's it boys we're the Yang's now" Lmao. Alrighty.

We set up our camps and notice some people standing staring at us (probably because none of us look asian. I'm from the middle east so technically I'm asian but not what the name on the reservation implied for sure). My friend jokes they're the Yangs and I doubt it because no one came up to talk to us. I ask my friends to just continue with our set up like nothing is going on and not act suspicious.

We started cooking and got batshit high. In the midst of it, a car pulls up to the spot 2 and it was basically their spot. I tease J about how he wanted us to take that spot lol. Anyways. It took us 1hr to cook, eat, enjoy delicious chicken shashlik I had prepared with ice cold beer under the starry night sky. Today had been very eventful (for reasons I won't go into detail since they're out of context) and it really was something, to be having this experience after so many things tried to go wrong and we made the best of it. My friends absolutely loved the meal and that made me think this was so worth it.

We clean up, head to our tent to play some never have I ever and by the time we're heading off to bed its past 2am. Me and my friend in 1 tent, my other friend in his. Night has come to an end. Seems like it all worked out, right? Uh, maybe not just yet..

We're all laying in our sleeping bags, ready to doze off, still talking through the tents since our tents are close to each other we can still communicate. I suggest we continue with another round of never have I ever. Its my turn. Before I go however, I was high, hence I have a sudden urge to ask J, who's in the other tent "Yo, have you ever cuddled with another man?", I don't get a response and I who's laying with me chuckles. "If you've to think about it then you've definitely done it". Now while I was saying all this crap, there was apparently a car driving up to our spot and only my friend in the other tent had his eyes open to even notice that. My friend next to me is literally dozing off, he's at the edge of falling into deep serene sleep. My friend in the other tent anxiously says "Guys I think it's the Yangs". While I'm realizing how unsure I am about what to feel about this comment, I next to me whispers bro "don't f*ck around bro" half asleep. This is when I started to question if it actually was them..

The car door opens shortly and I hear someone say "This is f*cking f*ccked dude, they took our spot." Oops. "SHould we kick them out??", another person said angrily. I asks me to just lay down and pretend we aren't listening and/or are asleep. "Dude f*ckt his they took our spot, I'm calling the sheriff". Alright time to go out. We head out and have a face to face convo with them explaining we thought they weren't coming. Who shows up to a camping ground 2am the day of? :O

Anyways. I apologized to the crew and he said we're even thanks for leaving. It took us 10 min to throw everything in our car and we ended up driving all the way back to the city that night, laughing about the timing of the occurrence after we had done everything we wanted to at the campsite. What a day. One for the books indeed.

Tl;dr: we decided to camp in a spot that had a no show, ended up taking the spot reserved for Yang's and after we had set up tents, cooked, smoked, hung out, ate, and went to bed, they showed up @ 2am and were about to call the police and we had to nope out of there