Camping and caravanning developed on a large scale in the middle of the 1950s. The image of camping was progressively reduced to its popular and mass character. However, although the practice of camping is marked by socioeconomic determinants, it is likewise motivated by financial considerations. Using the example of the campsites on the island of Noirmoutier (Vend?e), we highlight mechanisms of transmission and apprenticeship that have led families and individuals to choose camping as a mode of accommodation, and we stress the contradictions on which camping is based today: putting the town in nature, associating island adventure story with the consumer society; sharing a collective experience within a predominantly individualistic society. The symbolic power of camping is expressed through a form of egalitarian and hedonistic utopia that directly refers to the main characteristics of "the Island of Utopia or the best of Republics," as imagined by Thomas More in the sixteenth century.