How to Successfully Reserve Popular Campgrounds

First, plan ahead.

• Many American campground reservations are made 6 months in advance. Sometimes that means 6 months to the month you want to go, but more often, it’s 6 months to the exact date you want to go.

Book American campgrounds earlier than the booking window allows

• Yep, you read that right. This is my BIGGEST TIP for you. It’s a little long to explain, so bear with me. Let’s say you want to book a campsite for July 4-8. That means you can start trying on Jan 4, right? Wrong! You can try earlier! Many sites let you book for 7 nights at a time. So try on Jan. 1 and try to book July 1-8. Then, a few days later (or any time before you go), you can cancel the first 3 nights, but keep the 4 nights you wanted. Didn’t luck out on Jan. 1? Try on Jan. 2, and now try for July 2nd for 6 nights. Make sense?
• Some American campgrounds let you book for 14 nights at a time. That means you have more than a week extra to try! Unfortunately, if the campground is one that books out to the month, not the day (like Yosemite), this won’t work for those.

Don’t be afraid to cancel

• I know, paying a cancellation fee sucks. Trust me. I lost $20 out of my pocket one evening and it ruined my night. I hate wasting money. But sometimes, when it comes to camping, it’ll save you a headache later if you plan for the MAYBE trips. My life is filled with kids sports and a husband’s firefighter schedule that seems to change all the time, so it’s impossible to know what I’ll be doing next week let alone 6 months from now. But I plan for the what if’s. If we don’t have any soccer tournaments or playoff games in 6 months on this particular weekend in May, we’ll go camping at the beach site I just scored. If we do have conflicts, I’ll be sad to cancel, but oh well, I’ll do it. Or you can always find a friend who will gladly pay you to take the site.

Know how to look for cancellations

• Use an app that can help scan and book sites for you. Yep, I just discovered this camping app and it is AMAZING. Not only will it scan for cancellations at the hard-to-get campgrounds, it will actually put it in my cart for me. That way, I have 15 minutes to finish booking the site before it is released. It’s a game changer!
• Check for cancellations frequently yourself–especially if you have a flexible schedule and can leave be avilable if something pops up next week.

Finally, be willing to try other great American campgrounds

• We used to camp in Yosemite every year, but when we stopped getting lucky with sites, we switched it up. Now, we have a ton of campgrounds we absolutely love that we wouldn’t have tried if we had gotten Yosemite. Great American campgrounds like Pinecrest Lake Campground, Meeks Bay in Lake Tahoe and Oh Ridge in June Lake, to name a few.