TIFU by blowing up a campsite

Obligatory, this happened over 20 years ago.

My friend and I noticed that his son who was about 13 at the time had never been camping so we decided to correct that error on his part. I lived a couple of states north from D and his son C so D packed up his car with "stuff people take camping" having likely also never been camping in his life. They arrived with the contents of their cabinets (in terms of food) and a large pile of things like tools and luckily some coats and stuff like that. I added in my camping equipment which was a bit more normal and I had spare stuff for them as well.

Off we went driving to Canada because I wanted to share my love of the Bay of Fundy with my friends kid. We make it there and all is well, we find a very nice campsite off the beach right next to the river where the Tidal Bore rolls in, really nice place. The campsite was cars only and had a very nice little fire pit, ringed with metal and pretty full of ashes from old campers. So we're having beers and making fun of the food stuff that he'd brought which D realized was a little ridiculous, lots of caned stuff and pasta and just weird food. We were particularly enjoying this really large can of baked beans, it was out of date but probably half a liter and for some reason that struck us as very funny.

Engage the fuck up.

I tossed the can of beans into the fire pit where it vanished into the ashes and was totally forgotten.

Later in the evening we built a fire, a big one, quite a big one really, rather a larger fire then we'd intended but it was warm, the tent was set up and ready for napping and the three of us were enjoying a relaxing evening watching the stars and spotting satellites as they went over. The fire burned down pretty low and there were LOTS of ashes in the fire pit now, hot ashes. VERY hot ashes.

Then the world ended. An explosion that is difficult to comprehend occurred in that fire pit, the entire, FLAMING, contents of that fire pit (recall that it's a metal ring) blew straight up and then mushroomed into a pillar of fire which rained down on everything for at least 30 feet around the pit. Luckily most of it was small chunks of wood and we were able to put out every tiny little fire over the next 15 or so minutes. The reverberations from the explosion were still ringing in our ears as we hears several other campsites clapping and cheering. Apparently we were camping on a holiday in Canada and everyone thought we were celebrating with fireworks.

We went to bed because, jesus christ! The next morning when the sun came up we discovered the extent of the fuck up. Every single surface for 30 feet at least was covered in a light coating of baked beans and ash. The tent was never the same, it took a lot of time to get the car driveable again as bean juice doesn't just wipe off of the windows, it smears literally everywhere. Another campsite next to us was also smeared in bean juice but they hadn't woken up yet so, of course, we packed up immediately and hauled ass out of there like the cowards we clearly were. All in all, it could have been worse.

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TL;DR canned beans blow up if you heat them, we heated them in a fire and blew up a campsite.