What's your strategy for landing a campsite in the Needles Campground at Canyonlands National Park?/Kurt Repanshek file
Being able to visit a website and reserve a campsite in the National Park System six months before your visit helps take the anxiety away of wondering where you'll stay. Unless you're thinking of camping in Canyonlands and Arches national parks in Utah, and no doubt some other units of the system.
The problem arises in campgrounds with a relatively small number of campsites. While the Watchman Campground at Zion National Park boasts 176 campsites, the Bridge Bay Campground in Yellowstone National Park lists 432 sites, and Tuolumne Meadows Campground in Yosemite National Park shows 304 sites, at Devils Garden Campground in Arches there are just 51, and at Needles Campground in Canyonlands there are just 26, of which only a dozen can be reserved, with the remainder first-come, first-served.
On recreation.gov you can reserve a campsite six months out from your travel...unless, of course, you plan to spend more than one night in that site. While individual campsites don't technically open for reservations until six months ahead of your desired date, if you claim a site six months out, you can extend your stay for a number of days. In the case of Needles Campground, you can book a seven-night stay, and that's where problems of securing a campsite intensify.
Recreation.gov releases sites for reservations at 10 a.m. Eastern, six months out. So if you live in the Pacific Time Zone and wanted to stay in Needles Campground on March 23, 2020, you needed to be ready to reserve your site at 7 a.m. on September 23, 2019. But your initiative wouldn't have been rewarded, unfortunately.
That's because at Needles you can relax in a campsite for seven consecutive days. And so folks who were able to latch onto a site on September 22, 2019, for March 22, 2020, arrival, could, in theory, reserve it through March 29, 2020. And so if you logged onto recreation.gov on September 23, as I did, you would have found each of the 12 sites booked through March 23, 2020, and some beyond that date. While there was one site available for March 24, you'd have to wait until September 24 to reserve that...if it was still available.
"If someone reserved for 3/22, they are allowed to book several days out," the chat room folks at recreation.gov told me when I mentioned all the sites had been reserved for March 23, 2020, before September 23, 2019. "The next available date is for site 27 and only for 03/24/2020. For 03/25/20, sites 18, 24, 25, 26, 27. I do apologize the sites were taken for today."
"But if you can't make a reservation until six months out," I replied, and someone reserves for a block of dates, how does one lock down a reservation?
"It is a relatively small camping area," came the reply. "I can only advice to check on the recreation.gov website to see which dates may come available 6 months out."
Now, there are those 14 first-come, first-served sites at Needles Campground, but the campground is a far drive for most folks, lying about 75 miles from Moab, Utah. From Salt Lake City, it's about a 5-6 hour drive.
Would you gamble on finding one of those 14 sites vacant after a long drive, knowing that if they were all filled you would 1) have to see if the private campground just outside the Needles District had space, 2) you had to drive 49 miles to Monticello, Utah, and hope there was a motel room available, or 3) drive all the way back to Moab with hopes of finding a vacancy?
What's the solution? Is there a solution? Do small national park campgrounds need to move to a lottery system? Do parks with just one small campground need to build more?
The answer, for now at least, concerning Needles Campground is to be flexible and broaden your search, Karen Garthwait at Canyonlands National Park told me. There currently are no discussions to enlarge the campground, she said.
"What I typically encourage people to do is plan ahead for something for their first night when in the area," she said. "Whether a private campground that you can book in advance, or a hotel room, or whatever people feel comfortable with as their lodging option. But having a reservation for that first night then lets you travel here with the security that you have a place to land, you can pop into whichever visitor center of whichever unit who are wanting to go to, find out the lay of the land, and then find out how early you need to be there the next day in order to get one of those first-come, first-served available sites."
Garthwait also noted that, in terms of Needles Campground, there are a number of campgrounds along Utah 211 just outside the Needles District that are managed by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, "(A)ll of which are first-come, first served, and they have been adding to them practically every other year the last couple of years."
Those BLM campgrounds are the Hamburger Rock Campground (10 sites), Creek Pasture Campground (32 sites), and Super Bowl Campground (37 sites). Those campgrounds are more rustic than the Needles Campground, with no running water and offering vault, not flush, toilets.
If your heart is set on Needles Campground and you are blocked from landing a site during the popular spring and fall seasons, there's always the brutally hot (100°+) days in the heart of summer or the cold (lows of 0°-20° Fahrenheit possible), short days of winter when all sites are first-come, first-served.
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Comments
Yosemite camping reservations are different. For the prime months, reservations become available on the 15th of the month 4 months in advance. That's only for the beginning of the reservation though, with a 7 day limit.
https://www.nps.gov/yose/planyourvisit/camping.htm
I've done it a few times and it's crazy. They typically sell out within minutes, and the prime sites are gone within seconds.
However, there is nothing else quite like Yosemite camping reservations. That's where bots have been set up by scalpers and they've tried all sorts of ways to discourage that, including requiring not allowing reservations to be transferred. Then the scalpers would reserve, cancel, then rebook immediately. They took care of that by manually placing "inventory" back so it would be difficult to figure out when they could be rebooked. Heck - I remember getting my campground SNAFU sorted at the Yosemite campground office where they released on one computer and then immediately booked it for me on the other computer. I was told it becomes available online and they needed to sync it perfectly.
Just like most things that have a higher market value than what's being charged, scalpers are ruining it for the rest of us. Helping to solve the problem would have to be multi-level.
I like the idea that if a campground is historically booked within 1 day when the sites are released, then cancellation fee should be high enough to prevent the cancel/rebook scenario - like $100. And if you don't show up on day one of your reservation, you also get charged as if you cancelled.
Prevent transfers by having you put your license plate in the reservation system. I'm also not sure how they prevent transfers, I've NEVER had anyone ask for my id when checking into a campground. I also don't think the campground hosts are necessarly equiped and able to get someone removed from a spot because their ID didn't match.
Also, if when a cancellation is put forth, that site just goes into the first come/first serve bucket. In this scenario, for places like Yosemite where scalpers are ruining the chances, you might have 50% of the spots available for first come first serve.
It's just unfortunate that you have to do so much work and put forth so many resources just to enable people acting fairly to have a fair chance at a spot.
We too struggle every year with booking. I just booked glacier 6 months out, would like to stay in a first come campground instead because I like it better, but I'm not going to travel > 1000 miles and hope.
I have yet been able to make a reservation via recreation, gov. To make a reservation I must call them. The site just does not function. I have reported the problem no less than 10 times and yet it continues to fail when making a reservation. Unbelievable! Why is this so difficult????
Were you using Safari? I was told you have to use Google Chrome. However, the website is extremely difficult to figure out. Good luck.
As of March 2021 it is no better. The programmers have no decent management. In cases like this of dysfunctional websites it is typically because the programming staff is under some unrelated department, e.g., Human Resources. Such managers have no interest or accountability for programming quality or accuracy. They are also the ones that mandate the requirement to hide behind layers to avoid having to answer to their real customers, the general public. Instead they serve their incompetent management for fear of losing job security. Sad but true and no end in sight. Stinks like the days of monopoly only this time it is the government itself. Sigh.
I fight this every year with a campground in Oregon (and we have hundreds!) but this one is a 3-4h drive so it's dangerous to depend on those first come-first serve ones (even though they are beautiful). Every year some rule-breaking jackwad always books the site we want and then they keep scooting their dates down the line. I have a group of friends who have been doing this same trip every year for 10 years and we've NEVER been able to secure the site we want. And this year, it looks like Recreation.gov "updated" their site but it's just even more cumbersome and clunky. It's so bad, I'm wondering if it's broken. I wanna pull my hair out! Vacations should be relaxing - I'm glad I have 6 months to calm down before we get there because that's how bad it is. I'm not sure what the answer is - maybe flag the accounts of people who push, change, or cancel then immediately re-reserve sites. Fine them. Ban them. I don't care, but we gotta cull the herd somehow.
I just got up early on President's Day to reserve a Hoodview, OR campsite that was available August 17 last night before I went to bed at midnight. this morning (Feb 17) at 644 am I logged in and discovered the campsites (we would have been thrilled with either site) were already reserved. This is before 7 am Pacific time. There is no way that could happen according to the rules. Sadly, it appears that someone "inside the system" has an advantage. It's been years that this has been happening. I'm going to call today and try to find answers.
That exact problem happened to me this morning Two ossible sites were going to be open today but when I checked prior to 7:00 a.m. they were both booked one additional day. I thought that maybe the people with the reservation ending yesterday could get on after midnight and extended one more day. Have you learned anymore about the problem?
Exactly what I have been saying for years. The sites are there late at night..and poof...they are gone! What's the deal with this. I have been going to this campground for 38 years. It was first come first serve..but you travel 3 hours or so with all camping equipment...and it was hard to get a site. Then Recreation.gov implemented the reservation site. I struggle for days on end, every single morning before 7:00 a.m. pacific time to make reservations, and they're gone overnight. It is so frustrating. I am heading towards 70 years young, and I am not as fast as a lot of the youngens. It makes it that much more difficult. I won't call because I am on hold for over an hour. I wish there was something we Seniors can do. it's getting frustrating.
I have that same problem every year while trying to book a campsite at Raystown lake in Pennsylvania, this morning we knew of 3 lake front sites that were booked up to yesterday and were to become available today, when I logged on,at 7:00 am, eastern time, all 3 were now booked up to the 24th. It has happened every day for a week of us trying for sites we like, the morning it is to become availble, it's gone before the reservations even open up. A lot of people have inside information or know somebody on the inside, really is frustrating whe you don't even have a chance.
Well now I'm curious. Did you find any answers how that could happen when/if you called? That was a year ago, but enquiring minds want to know. Thanks!
I find that to be a true statement.... how does that happen ? the rules dont work n all the tips ns tricks I got from reserve.gov dont work either ! So whats a person to do ? I'm in Oregon also n am referring to same camping area at Timothy Lake.
Would like to know what you have found, we likewise have have felt there is something going on with insider's.?
What did you find out when you called?
This year you cant keep "scooting" your dates down the line. At the end of your booked stay you must have a four day interval before you can try to rebook that site and then you have to compete with all others trying to reserve that site. But I will second your opiinion. Rec.gove and the whole reservation system is broken. I am my daughter have tried to reserve campsittes in Idaho repeatedly, and yes, I know you have to be on line ready to click at 0700 PST or you're SOL. Many times I've driven to campgrounds and found half or more of the reserved sites empty. People that can afford $250K RV's apparently have money to book 14 days stays at $30/night just in case they want to go.
I am so sick of trying to plan trips and make reservations in our national parks!!! It is a totally ridiculous situation. They spend paragraph after paragraph describing the parks and all that you can do, but good luck when it comes to making an actual reservation. It could be very simple and something you could do in just a few minutes, not hours! How about a site map with amenities, availability, fees, rules, and dates of when reservations will be taken. You could then just make the reservation and go on with the rest of your day. No! it can't be simple, it has to be frustrating and difficult creating more questions with no answers. After all, it is a government agency. I am not the only one having these experiences. So, a detailed letter to my congressmen is in order but then again congress does not work either!
My thoughts precisely. Even worse since 1/10/21
I agree this is getting ridiculous I'm about to just stop visiting the national parks
Does anyone know how often the system is "gamed" by early reservation and the cancel the days before the desired camping dates. i.e You want to camp March 23 through March 26 but with the 7 day limit you go in and reserve March 20 through 26 and then cancel the 20,21,and 22 dates?
It doesnt work that way.
Canceled days become First come First serve campsite
If you get the first day you want, you can then take whatever days you want up to the limit of that park. You do not have to take all seven.
The federal parks need to take back and run their own reservation system
YES!
Hoorah for the Parks and change out recreation.gov!!
Every American should have an opportunity to stay at a national park at least once in their life. Clearly the reservation must be changed. 2 night stay then your out for the year during peak season. Didn't realize this system was so F'd up. I think it's actually rigged.
Recreation.gov is a thorough mess. Went to make reservations yesterday in RMNP- showed 4 nights available for site A52, last week of May.
Then it would not let me reserve more than 3 nights of that block of 4. Could not figure out why. Gave up and reserved the 3, a Mon,Tues,Weds.
Came back later and the 4th night, a Thurs, was still shown as available- so I made a 1 night reservation for it.
Why could I not reserve all 4 nights in the same site when it clearly showed an A (available) for 4 nights? Don't see anything about a 3 day limit.
Thanks to Covid 19 I just canceled reservations for 11 National Parks this year. It took hours of work and preperations to get these sites, not always the ones I wanted.... hopefully I will have the patience and good fortune to do it again next year.... Good bye Covid!
Several of us have been trying to modify our reservations since our park is not opening until June 1st. It won't let us make the modifcations--just defaults back to the original dates which were all in late May. Anyone else having this problem?
We were so fortunate to get a site in Yosemite May 10- 16, but it was canceled by the NPS due to Covid 19. In summer 2018 our Yosemite reservations were canceled by NPS because of fires and poor air quality. I guess we are not one of the lucky ones. Getting the reservation is only half the battl.
Cancelation charges should escalate rapidly for "serial" cancellers. In my experience, some corps campgrounds near Nashville are full every weekend with locals who game the system. The sites are nearly empty Sunday through Thursday, but full of local repeaters every weekend. They reserve when first available, then cancel with a low penalty. It puts the hosts in a difficult position. Surely with a little computer effort, abusers can be identified and face high cancellation fees. The concessionaires have no incentive to change this system. Their contract would make an interesting read.
When can I start to make spring reservations for Zion National Park. I have been trying for 6 months out but everything already full both before and after any date. Recreation.gov is not answering their phone
I do not understand, for days we watch the reservation site for Robinson Point at Norfolk lake and find a site that we like and wait for the morning of the available to book only to have it change overnight. Site 23 was booked thru July 9, got on the morning of January 10 early at 8:00 CSt and overnight the booking showed it was booked thru the 10th. You can not do this thru the web site, so somebody must be calling and getting thier reservation extended before it is avilabe. It is so hard to get a reservation when people must be calling and getting around the date restrictions. I like the web site but it is so frustrating when the design of the system allows it to be gamed somehow.
rec.gov was sold to Booz Allen Hamilton in 2018 and has been worthless ever since. Big donor to Republican Party...go figure.
It has nothing to do with a political party - BAH simply isn't the best contractor, and sadly they do a lot of government work. You get what you pay for, and it's unfortunately our tax dollars paying BAH for a subpar solution.
Complete crapshow of a reservation system. I totally agree with charging "no shows" something substantial. Sleeping Bear Dunes last fall had "no availability" but driving through at around 7pm showed about half the sites empty. Of course, no campground hosts, only on-line reservations.
Would adding one more level of action that requires one to click "I am not a robot," remedy this? We've been trying to get reservations for Redfish Lake ID for the past week. I'm convinced that scalpers or others are securing these.
Trying to reserve a spot at Garnd Canyon North Rim. Punched the RESERVE button as fast as my finger could move at the stroke of 10. Sorry, that campsite is already reserved. As was, of course, every other site in the campground. GRRRR, so frustrating!
This is a totally frustrating sitjuation. I have tried for weeks to reserve at spot at Many Glacier in Glacier. I've hit"Book" a second before the time 2 seconds before, right at that the time, and all the available campsites are reserved with 5 seconds, and there could be up to 20 available. The only fair way to solve this is to have a lottery for all these campsites that are so desireable. Right now, there is something happening that doesn't create a level playing field. And many of the National Forest campgrounds could be expanded and new ones created in the areas that have pressure from campers. Does it make sense that a business has people trying to book 6 months out, and not getting a site, and the business doesn't expand to meet the demand? I'd love to hear from a technical person that could explain what computer gets picked up first by the Reservation.gov site. That would be insightful.
Bottom line up front: The system is broke. I spent days last year (pre-COVID, Feb2020) trying to master Recreation.gov in order to reserve a water front sight at Raystown Lake, PA. I did manage after many days and hours to get a site reserved by installing Google Chrome, ensured Chrome was updated, syncronized my pc clock, made graph paper charts of available sites for 3 months, logged in at all hours of the day and night and checked for availability, spent hours on the phone with Customer Support...chatted with Customer Support. Summary of last year: I had more days/hours invested in getting a reservation than the 10 day reservation itself; but, me, the misses and our friends truly enjoyed our water front camping site, jetski's, and fishing boat on the lake. This year, they changed various rules. Today is 21Feb2021....I have tried every day since 12Feb to no avail. I have tried everything I could think of to get a reservation: late at night, early in the morning, scour for cancellations, 1 minute before 10am EST, 10sec, 5 sec, 2 sec, 1 sec, crack of 10am, 1-5sec after 10am, update my window right at 10am and try again...one window open, two windows with two sites open, close all other software on my pc, tried using MS Edge instead of Chrome, I kept one window open with one site's dates and kept clicking book it now hoping someone didn't book in 15-20minutes. I'm done with this reservation system and national parks......only the Federal Gov could screw this up so bad with a multi-million dollar contract. I do not make the foregoing statement without cause.....you see, I'm a federal employee. I'm rather convinced that savy pc hackers have a back door into the system? I generally do not complain without offering a plausible solution(s). Here's my only solution: everyone needs to write thier Congressmen and we need an unhackable reservation system that is fair to all the honest people playing by the rules?
It should not require a forensic review to sort this out. Should be simple to figure out the who's of who has gotten those reservations just a second before other people who are trying. My best guess is that someone, SOMEONE, may well have a flame-red face when the results are posted.
Camping is a great way to unwind and get away from all the "modern" problems, at least for that duration
https://campinggears.ph/outdoor-excursions-the-five-best-campsites-near-...
Getting a campsite in Arches is a joke. I am convinced that a computer buys them up. The show available at 9:59am EST and at 10, I add to my cart and they are already gone. The has happened with several different days. It might be helpful if you can book any site, rather than a specific one. At least you might have a chance getting somethin.
So...if scalpers are buying up spots, where do they resell them? Craigslist?
I recently went to Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, and was told that I would be fined $500 if I tried to stay in an empty camp that was reserved, even if it was late and the people did not show up. We tried to reserve a campsite on Recreation.gov before heading out but everything was already reserved. We made the decision to go anyway and hoped we could find a way to camp when we got there. There were only about 4 sites occupied when we arrived and it was apparent that many people were just not going to show up. There must have been at least 8 to 10 campsites that sat empty all night while we were forced to leave and drive several hours to find a place to stay. We had money and there were many, many empty campsites, but there was no way for us to take over a vacant site. I went through this same scenario 3 years ago at Chaco and there were even more empty camps that stayed that way all night. We slept in the car and someone finally gave us their reserved spot the next day that had another night or two on the reservation, so we were able to stay. Perhaps we broke the "law" back then? Outlaw campers? That is what it felt like this time. I was being threatened with criminal consequences for wanting to sleep in one of many empty camps as night was falling.
Recreation.gov has changed the way we connect with the land and not necessarily for the better. We should want local people to feel like they have access to their local lands, This is how we increase the likelihood that people will support preserving these special places instead of despising such efforts. We should recognize that this system has great potential to prevent access to these opportunities for people of lower socioeconomic status who may not have a computer and good internet service. This is becoming even more of an elitist system of access. One's ability to successfully reserve river permits and campsites is often a matter of having really good internet service as things frequently get taken very fast when open or unclaimed reservations are released.
On average, I apply for about 5 river permits through the lottery every year and have done so for the last 11 years. To be fair, most were before Recreation.gov came online. However, I have never been successful in winning even one permit through the lottery in those 11 years and it seems like things are getting worse and worse each year. Most people I know are also not successful most years. This year, no one I know was successful in securing a permit through the lottery and I was the only person who was successful in securing a late-season cancellation or unclaimed permit on a short river section.
Recreation.gov has taken what was generally a simple process and made it a chaotic and stressful process. The system works well for people who have their life planned 4+ months in advance. Many of my friends are medical and mental health providers and I largely work with at-risk youth. Some friends have been on the front line working in emergency rooms through this pandemic and need places to decompress without more stress. That has not been the case. Recreation.gov has made access to wilderness experiences a commodity where the only thing that seems to matter is profit, even at the expense of the experience. It's like selling tickets to get a seat in your local church or packaging nature like a bottle of water.
Recreation.gov has the potential to expand access without degrading local access or the experience. There should always be some first come first serve sites available in campgrounds. There should always be a way to access permits at the site. There should be significant consequences for people who do not show up for their reservation, which means you need a system of accountability. This means a significant financial loss if you do not cancel within a week or two before your reservation and consequences (like being banned from making reservations for a period of time). The river permit system needs to be weighted so the same people are not the only ones running a particular river each year. The Grand Canyon was able to improve its reservation system when it implemented a weighted system. It is inevitable and will become more and more obvious each year.
Like most things, we are not going to see Recreation.gov going away anytime soon. However, we need to make adjustments so we do not destroy the very essence of the experience we are trying to protect.
Some campgrounds have loops that open at 6 months out, 2 weeks out, and 4 days out...see Olympic Peninsula campgrounds in Washington State.
This is the answer...satisfy long term planners, medium, and "nearly last minute" folks.
Also max # of days per year at a site...stop a lot of gaming.
Quit having kids..you really think the problem is everyome else???? ITS YOU! Where are all these people gonna go..just disappear so we can pretend like were so special? Did your book of procreation idiocy tell you that???
Does anyone know what's happening with the new going to the sun highway ticketed entry? I'm not having luck on the site Thanks
Try this page, Beth:
https://www.recreation.gov/timed-entry/10087086/ticket/10087087
I spent an hour trying to navigate thei clunky website. Finally I got what I wanted only to find the system has tacked two days on that I don't want. There is no phone based customer service and as of this moment I have waited an hour for a chat.watching a message saying the *average * wait is 25 minutes. Crazy and wasteful.
rec. Gov is useless. Forget getting a site at any COE campsite on east coast. At any time..
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