There's a mod OIO that flags up when camp events are queued. Act 1 has an absurd number of them. Even doing long rests whenever I did something I still had something like 4 queued up at one point.
It is unintuitive I agree but once you get into the habit of doing them often it becomes more second nature.
I get to a new bit of the map, I set up a camp. I move back to original area I set up camp. I think about it as if it was real life, you wouldn't really be involved in a major crash, and not want some rest afterwards, you wouldn't go into a fight with some thugs on a street corner and not feel a slight desire to go back home and have a hot drink and a nap etc etc. And as for some of the major fights - in real life you'd probably need a weeks R & R afterwards.
You can actually pop into camp more or less at any time when not in combat even if just to swop over a companion or change a weapon load out , and use the camp menu to leave camp (which takes you and party back to wherever to were before you went to camp) it becomes very useful.
