Finding Your Place Under the Stars: ‘Gay Campgrounds: The Ultimate Gay Camping Travel Guide’

When Upton Rand set off to help heal his broken heart out in nature, he wasn’t expecting such a life-changing whirlwind to knock him off his feet. But that’s exactly what happened when he experienced gay campgrounds, and now, he’s sharing his experiences — the wild, the tender, the heartwarming, the messy and everything in between — with the whole world in his new book, “Gay Campgrounds: The Ultimate Gay Camping Travel Guide.”

After finally pulling himself out of an abusive marriage, Rand did what he’d been avoiding for so long: visiting gay campgrounds.

“I’d heard for years that I needed to check out gay campgrounds, but I always avoided them,” Rand says. “I think part of me was scared of what I’d find — or maybe what I’d find out about myself.”

But with a little extra courage and the desire to find community and care after his divorce, he packed up his adorable pug, Max, borrowed some camping basics and set out on an adventure that, even though he didn’t know it yet, would fundamentally change his life for the better.

“I wanted to experience it like any average reader might — no filters, no agenda, just me and the open road,” Rand says.

“Gay Campgrounds: The Ultimate Gay Camping Travel Guide” is written like a traditional travel guide, but with personal stories and high-res photography blended in, to make it a guide for more than just the literal campgrounds. It’s a guide for comfort and community, too.

“I wasn’t just charting campgrounds — I was charting a transformation,” Rand says. “This book isn’t just a guide. It’s a memoir in disguise, and also hauntingly beautiful in full color … It’s healing, hope and hookups — all under the stars.”

In the book, Rand shares wild stories, like the time he “… ended up trapped in a tent during a thunderstorm with a leather pup and a Mormon who had just come out. Lightning cracking, rain pouring and the three of [them] talking about trauma, trust and whether jockstraps were acceptable sleepwear. (They are.)”

He includes funny (but real) advice like “Definitely bring lube and bug spray — but maybe don’t store them in the same pocket.”

There are touching stories about true care. For example, he shares, “… the wildest thing isn’t the sex or the stories — it’s the care. One night, I watched a man quietly clean up a stranger’s spilled drink at the pavilion. I asked him why. He just said, ‘Because someone did it for me my first time here — when I was new and scared.’ That kind of quiet grace? That’s the real magic.”

It might seem like Rand knew exactly what he was going to write when he first went to the campgrounds, but actually, it was the exact opposite.

“I didn’t go to a gay campground to write a book. I went because I needed to remember what it felt like to be free — to laugh without bracing, to be touched without fear, to exist without apology,” he says. “I was crawling out of something dark, and I found light in the most unexpected place: around a fire, under the stars, surrounded by strangers who somehow felt like home.”

Then, from this place of healing, he decided that he wanted to write “Gay Campgrounds” to share these stories with the world.

Rand’s writing process was very intense: he says, “When I get home [from gay campgrounds], I talk it all out into a tape recorder — the whole thing, like I’m telling it to a friend. Chronological, messy, real. Then I transcribe it, sort it into folders and start storyboarding it like a film.”

Then, from there, he wrote his guide, in its full glory of the good, the bad and the beautiful. He talks about working full-time while he wrote the book: how he’d wake up at the crack of dawn to write, go to work and then write again for hours after he got home.

“That’s what I wish people knew,” he says. “Writing isn’t always poetic. It’s not always magical. Sometimes it’s chugging Monster at 3 a.m. next to a snoring pug and trying not to cry while you write about hope.”

And that’s just what Rand has created. “Gay Campgrounds: The Ultimate Gay Camping Travel Guide” is so much more than just a camping guide. It’s a guide to hope and reinvention.

He also notes, “I dedicated an entire chapter of my book… to the U=U movement and PrEP education… Additionally, a portion of the book sales were donated to Cleveland AIDS Task Force, an amazing organization that brings life-saving and soul-warming hope to hundreds of our community. It’s my sole mission that we stay a quality-focused organization first. If we can’t do it right, we don’t do it.”

Rand also writes a weekly blog on gaymensfieldguide.com, a bilingual, screen reader-accessible website that covers all things queer.

“I’m proud to say we’re an NGLCC-certified gay-owned enterprise,” he says. “Plus, we have a pretty amazing apparel shop I design myself. Visibility matters. So does doing it right. So while I’m still here, I just want to make the most of it, for everyone. The people who never had a voice or still don’t. The misunderstood, the unaccepted, the adventurers and sometimes the heartbroken.”

And on top of all of this, he’s already deep into his next book, a fictional novel about AI.

“Gay Campgrounds: The Ultimate Gay Camping Travel Guide”is a love letter to healing, to hope and to queerness. Rand says it beautifully: “You’re not too broken. You’re not too weird. You’re not too late. There’s still space for you — in this community.”