Through the wizardry of the Internet and computer software, your ability to reserve one of more than 100,000 campsites, cabins, or even fire lookouts that are no longer used as fire lookouts is just a click away. Or so you hope.
Indeed, if you like to vacation on the public lands empire you more than likely have had at least one less than satisfactory experience with recreation.gov, the portal for reservations across the National Park System, the U.S. Forest system, U.S. Bureau of Land Management, and other public lands locations.
You've decided when you want to visit your favorite national park campground, and even which campsite you want. You've seated yourself at your computer minutes before 10 a.m. Eastern when the reservation window opens so you can grab what appears to be an available site on recreation.gov. Less than two seconds after 10 a.m., you've click to reserve the site.
... And then you've gnashed your teeth when you get a message that the site has already been reserved.
It's a frustrating, but not entirely uncommon, experience these days. As wonderful as recreation.gov appears at first glance, the system has its foibles.
"We do see recurring complaints about how the system is overrun by bots," said Rick DeLappe, a Park Service employee who manages recreation.gov for the federal land management agencies that use the site for everything from reserving front country and backcountry campsites to tickets for scaling Half Dome at Yosemite National Park or going underground at Mammoth Cave National Park.
"We have a very active security team," DeLappe continued. "We have eyes on the screen watching for suspicious activity. We’ve incorporated the CAPTCHA features for making reservations. There are algorithms that they use to recognize people who may have built a bot or something to improve their access. We’ve got an extensive security plan to protect against this and all the other factors of security that you would think of for protecting private information.”
But more than a few people who use the site believe it's been taken over by bots or some other nefarious blueprint for dominating the reservations platform.
"I am so sick of trying to plan trips and make reservations in our national parks!!! It is a totally ridiculous situation," Rick Leroux wrote in a comment to a Traveler story back in January 2020. "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."
More recently, on February 12 of this year, "rb2" vented his/her irritation with the reservation site in another Traveler comment:
"This is a totally frustrating situation. I have tried for weeks to reserve at spot at Many Glacier in Glacier. I've hit 'Book' a second before the time, two seconds before, right at that the time, and all the available campsites are reserved within five seconds, and there could be up to 20 available."
"I'm done with this reservation system and national parks," Rick Weber added in a comment on February 21. "Only the federal government 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 backdoor into the system."
Some History About Recreation.Gov
The rumor that recreation.gov was run by a Canadian company carries some truth.
"It started off in the garage in Ontario by a couple of guys, called ParkNet, then Reserve America,” DeLappe explained last week during a conference call that included Janelle Smith, a Forest Service public affairs specialist who works with DeLappe. "They were housed in Canada, but their office of record was in Saratoga Springs, New York. Over the years, they were purchased by TicketMaster, and then they were part of the Interactive Corp. for a while. Like Hotels.com, that group. And then they were later purchased by the Active Network."
In 2015, the land-management agencies sought a new contractor to build a new reservations system and operate it. The winner in the bidding process was Booz Allen Hamilton, which Outside Magazine once described as a "management consultant giant..."
Once the contract -- $182 million for ten years -- was signed, Booz Allen Hamilton built recreation.gov's online presence, a security system for it, handled the marketing, and subcontracted call center services.
"If you go online to make a reservation right now, their system is what’s allowing you to see what’s available, allowing you to select your days and so forth," DeLappe said. "Your payment actually goes through their system, through their secure system, and then into a Treasury account. So the finances are all handled by the government.”
The revenues pay Booz Allen Hamilton's monthly invoices to the government with the rest returning to the respective land-management agencies where the campsites and other reservable services are located.
About Those Bot Theories
We're overrun by "bots" -- programmable software applications -- that thrive on the Internet, coursing across websites and maybe even your computer to collect information for good, and not so good, purposes. More than a few users of recreation.gov have over the years complained that bots must be the reason it can be difficult, or seemingly impossible, to reserve a campsite when you want to reserve one.
But that's not the case, both DeLappe and Smith say.
“We always learn of new ways that people can game the system," said DeLappe. "I remember a number of years back there was quite a bit of traffic about people buying Yosemite campsites and reselling them on Craig’s List. And so whatever pops up, we go after it in whatever way is available. During that one it was very tough because current regulations, not policy, but regulations, didn’t support us taking some very proactive actions against that.
"But when it comes to all the different kinds of bots, there’s a new one every day. I think everyone in software knows that, and as soon as you build something to protect against it they will come back and fix it.”
For the majority of campsites in the system, reservations can be made six months prior to your desired visit. That, too, contributes to the difficulty in landing your preferred reservation, she said.
If you were able to grab a site six months out, you could also extend your stay beyond that six-month window. In other words, someone could reserve a site today, March 3, for September 3. With that reservation in hand, they also could extend their stay up to two weeks in some places. So if you looked at the booking window today, March 3, for September 4, you would see that the site is not yet available; you might think it would be available tomorrow, March 4. But when you log into the system March 4, you might see that the site already has been reserved, by that person who reserved a site on March 3 and extended their stay for a number of days.
"It’s not that somebody had beat them to it that day in that moment,” said Smith.
But, said DeLappe, "(T)here was a problem there. People would book out into the future, and then before that reservation was done and before it became available to everyone else, they would change it and scoot it down the road two more weeks. And they would keep doing this until they got the exact dates that they wanted."
To end that behavior, the booking window was tweaked.
“Basically, if you book out into that window as we’ve described, you cannot change or cancel that reservation until it has become available to the public for at least four days," he said. "Say I booked through the 25th. I was leaving on the 25th, so that site should be becoming open on the 25th. I can’t really change it for seven days. And that means that I can’t scoot it, and everyone else will have fair access to that on the morning of the 25th.”
And there certainly are a lot of people hoping to grab those sites when they do surface. Covied-19 drove crowds of people to the public lands last year, many of them newcomers to national parks and forests and BLM landscapes. And many of those folks also logged onto recreation.gov to find a place to pitch their tents or park their RVs. New recreation.gov accounts last year -- more than 2 million -- represented a 45 percent increase over 2019, said Smith (who long has been dogged in her attempts to land a campsite at Redfish Lake in the Sawtooth NRA in Idaho).
"At the end of FY20, we had 16.4 million user accounts, vs. 14.3 million at the end of FY19," she pointed out.
Getting The Most From Recreation.Gov
The solution to booking woes could be to build more campgrounds. Don't expect that to happen overnight. However, all is not hopeless, say DeLappe and Smith.
While booking six months in advance long has been the standard approach, those behind recreation.gov now allow campground managers to play around with booking windows.
"What we found is that a lot of people still prefer first-come, first-serve, they aren’t thinking about camping six months from now. They’re thinking about it the week before or whatever," said DeLappe. "So we changed our system to support variable booking windows."
At Zion National Park in Utah, campground managers last year utilized a 14-day advance booking window.
"Anecdotally, what I heard was that the locals were very happy about it, because they could think about going camping the week after next, instead of six months from now," he said. "That’s just one thing that we’re trying to give them tools to manage their campgrounds as they best see fit."
Implementing a lottery system, as some have suggested, is not as easy as it sounds.
"It’s one thing to say we’re going to run a lottery for, say, a permit on Half Dome, because it’s one permit for one person. If you win the lottery, that’s what you get. A distinct piece of inventory," explained DeLappe. "In a campground, you have all kinds of variables. Do you just want any site in this campground, or are you looking for a specific site? What are your dates? What if all of your dates aren’t available, maybe one night is not available. Can we split that up? It introduces a lot of complexities. So, we are right now looking at options for how you could run a lottery and fill up a campground, but in a fair way and not create a confusing user interface.”
With such heavy demand, usually falling during the summer months, Smith suggested travelers look to the shoulder season when competition for sites isn't so great, or look for mid-week arrivals, which are less popular than weekends. She also urges account holders to take advantage of the "Trip Builder" service on recreation.gov.
"You can plan a route, and then what it does, you can set anywhere from ten to 50 miles from the path that you’re taking, that highway that you’re traveling, and it will show you all the available federal recreation sites along the way," she explained. "That’s what we’re really trying to do, too, is have people think about going to these other places that aren’t the Yellowstones and Yosemites and Grand Tetons that are in such high demand.”
There are other nuances on recreation.gov that can be used to get the most out of your getaway. Campgrounds on the site are rated by users, who can bestow one to five stars for the site. Click on those stars and you'll be taken to comments left by those happy, or unhappy, campers.
"This is a very special place. We were here in late October 2020, and woke to the first good snowfall," wrote Nora N. about her stay at the Needles Campground in Canyonlands National Park. "Hiking and views in every direction are stunning, campground was peaceful, and the visitor center well stocked with goodies. Loved it so much we are heading back in the spring."
Across Utah at Capitol Reef National Park, Lorette E. didn't have as nice a stay at the Fruita Campground last August.
"It wasn’t camping but more like RV spots, and we were all on top of each other as the sites were too close together," she wrote. "And there are two sites with no fire pits, and we reserved that one and that was so disappointing, not to have a campfire. Additionally there were so many flies it was unbearable..."
Next to the star-rating line on campground pages in recreation.gov is a "Major Issues" link. For campers looking for WiFi or cell phone connectivity, this link can be a great assistance, or bring depressing news. At the Fruita Campground, for example, cell phone coverage was poor for all the major networks (AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile). Stay at the Big Meadows Campground at Shenandoah National Park in Virginia and Sprint and T-Mobile have some coverage, according to those who have stayed there.
Something else users can look forward to a bit down the road is the ability to drive into a campground without a reservation, find a vacant site, and book it through their cell phone.
Recreation.gov continues to add new locations, too. Yellowstone National Park officials announced Tuesday that as of March 24 you'll be able to make advance reservations at three additional campgrounds in the park. The Mammoth, Slough Creek, and a portion of Pebble Creek campgrounds will change from first-come, first-served to the advance reservation system. Reservations will go live on recreation.gov at 8 a.m. Mountain Standard Time on March 24. You'll be able to book campsites up to six months in advance.
No doubt, we still will be frustrated at times when trying to make a reservation. But those frustrations are being heard and solutions are being debated.
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Comments
Very good article. Lifts the curatin on many fasehoods about the system. I have always found it useful and it is the way of the world so folks should probably get used to it - there is no turning back.
"Way of the world?" This system has effectively ruined parks for locals (who are the most requent visitors), roadtrippers, and moron seasonal vacationers alike. Try going through hell to reserve a crappy site only to find that most of the other sites that were reserved are empty b/c of no-shows. Rec gov makes money either way, so they don't care if a site is actually used or not. This leaves half of camp spots empty when people were told they were reserved and left unable to find a spot. Way of the world? You're world view isn't as all encompassing as you have convinced yourself it is, or you support a worldview that people are generally idiots.
I live six miles away from a national Wilderness Area that you have to have reservations to visit even for a day. I just don't even go there anymore because of the reservations. There's many other places that you don't need reservations and I would prefer not to deal with the hassle even though I would love to visit again.
I really dislike making reservations. Some of the fun of road trips is to do things spur of the moment. I do understand the problems of too many people. "Find Your Park" campaign was one of the worst things in my opinion. The parks were already too crowded.
Social media is largely responsible for the over crowding of state and national parks. People posted about their stay and who knows how many people read it ! Hopefully, many first timers will return to their previous vacation plans and the wilderness will get to recover from too many people who know nothing about how to be a respectful visitor.
Agree "Find Your Park" sure turned into a Pandora's Box. Getting reservations just about anywhere is an exercise in totlal frustration. It has actually caused us to change plans, stay home more (even without covid), and just camp litterally in our own backyard. Spontenaity and the fun of a road trip adventure have vanished. Lots of the money we had saved for retirement travel will now just be passed on to our kids so they can pay the mortgage on a piece of country property to camp on, no more parks needed. Recreation.gov is shooting itself in the foot.
Many Glacier used to keep half the campsites available for first come, first served. Now it's all reservation only, and it's impossible to get a site. You now have to plan your every hike six months in advance, and even then, good luck finding a campsite.
This is not true. They still have half the sites first come, first served.
One of my favorite places to camp is Grand Teton National Park. I was very disheartening to read that most of the campgrounds that were first come first served have been placed into the reservation system. I am a Wandering nature photographer who goes with the seasons. Spending hours online attempting to secure a reservation six months in advance does not work for me in any way. The end result is I will most likely never again be able to camp or possibly even visit Grand Teton Yellowstone complex due to the requirement for Advance reservations. In the Yellowstone area all but one of the surrounding Forest Service camps on the westside are now 100% Advance reservation and are booked within minutes of becoming available. I surveyed camp hosts at 6 FS camps and they said between 25 and 30 percent of reservations were no shows.. My fear is that the last one on the west side of Yellowstne that is first come first served will enter the reservation system as well. Last Summer I stayed in Idaho where a few of the forest service camps still have first come first serve sites. I am sure there are millions of people who prefer to travel in this way and we are quickly becoming locked out all of our parks and Forest areas. While I understand the reservations are wonderful for people making a once-a-year trip to a park I think it would be much fairer to offer 50% Reserve 50% first come first serve.
My only response is that its impossible to plan without making reservations. Try traveling across the country the last two years. You need to make reservations to make sure you have a campsite. First come first served doesn't work if you show up and there is nothing.
I've had it with first come first served. Why should a local person at a major park like the Tetons be prefered over someone whose far away?
Make a plan, make reservations, and know you will have a site when you get there, just like the rest of us.
A lottery system for most popular sites has to be implemented. Sitting on a computer for hours doesn't work for most.
I agree and am also deeply saddened by the loss of accessibility of some of the most beautiful spots. I've camped at Jenny Lake for over thirty summers and am afraid I will never get to do that again. Same is true for many places out west. As a tent camper (and hoping to stay one), I find it more and more difficult to find a safe place to spend the night. Disperse sites are often occupied by locals' RVs that are parked there for the whole season (despite 14-day stay policies), and well, forst CGs are already reserved. I too am a photographer and move with the weather and seasons--leave some sites for people who need such spontaneity!
Absolutely. Many people cannot make reservations, for various reasons.
I totally agree! How about half and half!
This is the kind of content that makes national parks traveler a respected voice. Thanks Kurt, for keeping the flame. Kitty Benzar warned me about Rec.gov years ago.
Have to go to a lottery. Everyone on equal footing, hopefully no bot/cheats.
Unclaimed sites? Be there by 7pm or call, otherwise they are first come basis.
Hey! How about this: have an actual person (host) at each campgound!
Sorry to be a bit selfish but I am so disappointed to hear that Slough Creek CG will go to the reservation system. It had become part of my Yellowstone adventure to wake around 3a.m. and drive in from West Yellowstone. Seeing the sunlight slowly grow as I neared the Lamar Valley really got me excited to start my YNP adventure each summer. I've learned that arriving at Slough by 6a.m. would guarantee a spot. It wasn't always the preferred site but that didn't matter--I was in!
Now, I'll be facing off with a computer website to see if my YNP time in July will include Slough. Not very reassuring. Like other summertime wanderers I've enjoyed the spontaneity provided by walk up sites. I guess i need to be more flexible, adventuresome and curious if I want to find some new gems out there. However, it will be hard to give up on some of my old favorites if the reservations-only trend continues. Thanks for the reporting.
All of these comments create a completely false straw-man argument based on the completely unrealistic assertion that if a campground is first come first served, you will absolutely get a spot if you just gut it out and drive there to claim your site. And conversely, that if a campground is reservation-only, you can never get a campsite even if you start trying six-months prior to your planned visit. Both of these straw-man arguments are demonstrably false. A previous commenter lamented the transtion of Many Glacier campground to RECREATION.GOV, but fails to acknowledge that the outdated first come first served approach was costly and resulted in incalculable damage to the resource as prospective campers would line up outside the campground and effectively camp along the roadside waiting for a spot to open up. Additionally, first come first served management models encourage campers to pay with cash or personal checks dramatically increasing the cost of fee collections and introducing a significant risk of fraud and theft. A recent study showed that the NPS spends approximately $0.40 to collect, handle, account, deposit and audit every $1.00 of cash money they collect. The simple act of moving to an online reservation system automatically increases their revenue to the parks by 40% on day-one; and that doesn't even take into account the savings from reduced Staffing and overhead that are not needed in a reservation-only campground management model. Reservation-only is a smart business approach for campgriund management, it reduces operating costs, reduces the cost of collection, and gives the majority users the services they want. To that small handful of users who advocate for first come first served camping, I would ask if you also show up at the airport without flight reservations or tickets and expect to be on the next flight to your destination of choice? Do you just show up at a hotel without reservations ame expect to get a room? Do you just show up at your dentist's office without an appointment and expect to get right in for a cleaning? No, you do not do any of those things. Rational and responsible adults make reservations for services and accommodations that are in demand, services and accommodations like camping on public lands.
stbear, a casual reading of your post would leave one to think that an error-free rec.gov is costfree to install, operate update, and maintain. Perhaps in an ideal world, but I've stopped leaving milk and cookies with my hung stockngs on the hearth.
This is what privatization of the National Parks looks like. A couple years ago I tried to take a road trip. All the campgrounds say they are full. You drive around it and there are many spots open. At the Grand Canyon the campground was full. I took a look. There was at least 60% of the spots unoccupied. It was the last week of the year the campground was open. They don't allow you to take a site after the people don't show up for the reservation.
If the person making the reservation doesn't show up within 24 hours it should be open to the public on a first come basis. Yet the NPS really could care less. THEY PREFER THE CAMPGROUND TO BE PAID FOR AND EMPTY.
I couldn't agree more. This is just dumb. Use "Campsite Notifier" on the appstore. It works well and is free!!!
The problem is the cancellation policy.
I am a full time Rver and it frustrates me to see so many sites vacant because as the camp hosts say: "It's booked for 2 weeks, but I don't think they are going to show up." There is an easy fix for this. Once you make your reservation, if you do not show up for the 1st day, campers should be required to go back into their account and confirm that they are goning to be there the second day. If you can not show the second day, then you will have to go back in and confirm that you will be there the third day (etc) until you show up to your site. If at any time you do not confirm, then the site is released for a camper to pick up the remaining reservation.
COMPLETELY AGREE!!!! I showed up at Arches "Devils Garden" on a Thursday night and 1/2 the sites were "reserved" but nobody was there. I couldn't do anything about it and the campgrounds down below in BLM area aren't nice and full of mosquitos.
I have camped at National Parks and Forests my entire life. The only way to find a campsite at a national park like Yosemite these days in using something like "Campsite Notifier" from the APPSTORE. It is a free download (IOS only I see) and it actually does a great job of finding cancellations. I got a recent reservation at Arches (Devils Garden) which is almost impossible. Good luck and happy camping
Racing for sites at 10 AM is okay, but if I am in the site map at 10 it doesn't change. By time I've refreshed and put the right date in again it's 10:01, and I've lost the race. Is there a way to be in the fresh site map the moment it updates?
We need to have all the campgrounds have a minimum of 30% first come first serve. All of us should contact those in position of authority or petitions etc. to make that change. Camp trips are no longer the same with these 100% reservations. "We the people" are not being served well by these constrictive policies. It can changed and we need to be a part of a positive change.
Say what you will about bots, but I have a difficult time wrapping my head around seeing the same people in the same campsite year in and year out in Yosemite.
You know anything the government runs usually ends up being a clustered mess. Now they cannot even manage the National Parks system. It is sad that we have come to a lottery system which only allows the lucky to enjoy what we all pay taxes for. I am sick of it... I know there aer major masses this year, but people booked way out in advance only to not be able to enjoy the National Parks. Its really sad, it really is.
Another issue seems to be that the park officials do not check the I.D. of the person checking in. In 2020 we bought a small RV and was able to grab some great spots around Florida (beach front), and in the Smokies. By the end of the year nothing was available at any Florida park on the ocean. If these spots are being resold, maybe if the parks started checking the person checking in for the same as the person booking the site would certainly help.
So if we put aside you can't seem to ever get a date on their website unless it's 6 months out. Camping is now dead. Anytime the government contracts out anything it becomes more expensive than just hiring government employees. You already had government employees to do this exact job. Why do you need a booking online service? Because the Agency couldn't manage their funding correctly. They said they didn't have the funding to hire employees. Yet, they found funding for this? You should see how many new trucks they buy every year. How many employees they have in offices not working. I see it all the time. I think what most don't understand is this contract with Booze-Allen is in the billions. You already are paying taxes to manage the forests and the employees. Camping used to be free when the campgrounds were built. Then they started charging for campgrounds, because they didn't have enough funding. Again, mismanaged. Now you are paying more for the same service. I still see the same gov employees driving though the campgrounds so they have time to manage it, clean the bathrooms and collect the funding. Also, the website charges a fee to setup service and charges you a fee to cancel or change dates. Water turned off or bathroom closed? They don't care, still wanting their full booking.
Gee, golly, Jim Smith.
If everything else is so horribly and evilly off track as you say, tell me - does the sun still come up in the morning? I need at least that much good in my day.
i'm old. Visited many National parks through the years. Last visit to Glacier NP was in 1968 I think when the grizzlys were eating all the idiots with food on them on the lawn at the mountain chalet. I just went through the process to access/drive the Going to the Sun hwy. What a bureacratic night mare. T. Roosevelt would be apalled. We should let the grizzles loose to thin out the crowds and the recreation.com administrators. First come first served then stop access. Harsh but workable. Too many people with time, go overseas .
You can't get a hold of recreation.gov on the phone if you do you got someone who knows nothing about the camping area you're going to or what is there and what not is there except for what they read off a paper or their computer and they talk as fast as they can I take it they are on a commission I believe to get you get your reservation to get off get another reservation get off the people are very rude on a reservation. Gov I'm tired of dealing with them our national park system and State Park systems need to run their own operations the Rangers and the people working for u.s. and state for systems are very polite they're educated and give you peace of mine on your new adventure the national or state parks or national forest and State Forest
As one poster commented, how is it that some people are able to get the same campsite on the same weekend every year?
I met a family that climbed Half Dome 4 straight years on the same weekend. How is that statistically possible?
I also want to be able to camp on short notice; it's why I live in a place like Utah. I think the system is a nightmare and first come, first serve should be minimally 50%. In addition, they do things like this. I checked a campground in southern Utah; it said it was reservation only on one site and first come, first serve on another site. In addition, a noon checkout is awful. If you are hiking sometimes you don't make it back. I live here and cannot get permits etc. because they are online and gone months in advance. I don't understand why they did it in the first place.
Some of the 'smaller' NPs (or all of them) should consider limiting the total number of consecutive nights to three or five and NO MORE. Then more visitors would have an opportunity to stay. It's not right or fair that some users can hog-up two weeks and others do not get to stay at all. Tired of 'clicking' to no avail.
In 2017 we traveled across the country with our truck and small camper for 3 1/2 months. Reserved sites for the entire trip, a pain staking task. Most NPS we were unable to secure a site. If the lengths of stay were reduced to 5 days this would allow more folks the opportunity to reserve sites in the NPS.
Happy Campers!
When we are quick enough to reserve a campsite, when we arrive we are often angered by the number of campsites that remain empty through the night. No shows need to be punished, not with fines (the rich don't care) but by some kind of dimished priority.
Today is 1/28/2022 the bots that this article talks about are apparently still in use. After several days of trying to reserve sites I give up. I feel this is a form of fraud that the us government is benefiting from. The us treasury should not be collecting money from activities they know are fraudulent. I understand there are always threats, I have worled in the hospitality software industry for 15 years, including reservation systems. I have never seen such and breech from any of our products or partner products. Extremely disappointing and just another example of how our government has failed.
February here and same. All spots magically gone the moment they open up. I like that more folks can plan and enjoy trip to outdoors but hate that many are no shows and take away from rest
I managed to get sites at Gros Ventre in the Tetons, but only because it's a less popular campground. In order to get the three days I wanted, I had to book a week ahead, which I didn't want, but will go anyway and enjoy.
Recreation.gov is a joke. One of the worst sites I've ever dealt with. This will be my last time using it, and next year I'll go elsewhere. It's a total joke that we have to deal with such incompetence - slow to update, few photos of sites, slow to update and says a site is open when it's not, etc. etc. just the clunkiest thing ever, like something out of the 80s. As a system analyst, I know it's not that hard to create an effective working site, even at that scale. Disgusting incompetence.
There are a few campsites in a particular FS campground in northern Montana that I have in the past reserved through Rec.gov. I am not naming the campground for obvious reasons. Like many, I go to the Rec.gov site 6 months in advance and at 8:00am (not a second later) I attempt to reserve a particular site. Not happening....already reserved. Something is afoul! This is akin to flipping a coin, although your chances of being successful are considerably less than 50/50....maybe 1 in 100. I believe the FS should investigate how this can continually happen. Someone, some entity, something is gaming the system.
The System works very well as is. There are always going to be people who complain and people who don't plan ahead. We sit down and plan our camping trips for the year as a family. We all go to the same campgrounds and book sites in the same area but we do it 6 months to a year in advance. It takes planning now versus in years past but I do believe some of this will come to pass as the "Covid Campers" decide they don't like camping. Camping is an expensive hobby. Camping is at times a lot of work. It is not as easy as driving to your destination, getting a key, going into your hotel room and throwing your bags on the bed. Tweak it but do not try to hard to fix what is not broken.
Rocky Mountain National Park's Wilderness Permit system just opened up this morning at 8:00. I was on and ready to go. Within seconds the campsite I wanted for anytime that summer was booked. It HAD to be folks who are gaming the system. There's no other way that every single night at several backcountry campsite filled in seconds. I'm devastated.
Chuck Haver --- I'm sorry, but for someone to say the system works well as it is they are either blind to the near universal experience documented across NPT or in some manner they are immune to it. The only way I can concieve of being immune to it is that one has a way to game the system better than the system itself. The more common experience as long as I've been around is what has been widely reported in this article and others similar.
This is a national embarrassment. We are being ripped off as tax payers and lovers of our parks. Sad, or criminal. Either way, trying to book a once in a lifetime trip has been nothing but torment. Many days on many many devices at a time, on the app AND web site trying to book anything and it's always the same. Fail. I now hate 10am EST. What really pisses me off is the sites that are booked before the 10 am release. How does that happen? Bots or [screwed] up system. Res.gov is a complete joke. Pay the full price if You cancel and see what happens then May help.
'Its NOT the rush to the outdoors that makes recreation.gov awful, its always been awful.
My latest hassle was today, in trying to reserve two discounted tickets to Lehman's Cave in Great Basin NP, using our family's America the Beautiful Pass. When I enter the quanity "2" to buy 2 discounted tickets, the stupid system keeps telling me that I needed to enter two different discount pass numbers for each person. As if I bought a separate ATB pass for my wife too. To get around this stupidity, I had to enter each ticket as a separate order, going back to "continue shopping" for each discounted ticket. Only then it would allow me to use the same pass for two members of my family. At least I only had to enter my Visa card number once.
The bottom line is that the system is AWFUL and always has awful. Bots didn't ruin it. The user interface has always been confusing and ugly. The system has always been notoriously slow and it has never been able to handle the number of users on it, even when there were few users.
But what should we expect? Just look at how bad the web sites are for the agencies that use recreation.gov. NPS is pretty but largely uninformative and vague in so many ways.
I was a federal employee for 35 years and was a member of numerous IT devevelopment teams. The problems are endemic to the organization. It's not creative or innovative. Its conservative, slow and risk adverse. And worse Federal IT and contract management staff are both outpaid and outnumbered by the contractor's team. Most crazy: they have to put up with all sorts of regulations and requiements that have nothing to do with getting the best system in place.
I agree--trying to reserve a site is tremendously frustrating. And the timer does not help! I've timed out more than once to return to an empty cart. Cancellation policies are punitive at best.
no such thing as an "Interagency." Its either a government job or its not. Recreation.gov is a private buisness.. I really dont get how this is allowed. Its so corrupt. AND Bill Gates is involved.
Can our country have any worse people to run things?
I use campsite finders to get reservations. Here is a review that helped me find the good ones -
https://huntandpeckblog.com/best-campsite-trackers/
At least this private corporation or government should be refunding the money for unsuccessful lottery applicants. Seems either booze or government taking profits from unsuccesful lottery reservations. Need investigation into leeching off lottery money.
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