# Reserve (If You Can) America



## ejr11 (Sep 9, 2009)

Trying to reserve the choice spots at one of my favorite campgrounds feels a little like combat these days. The Reserve (if you can) America site is the battleground. I line up my army of premium ocean bluff site reservation pages (for a weekend in late September) and wait for the 8am call to duty. At exactly 8am I send the troops to battle. "Book Now! site 73", "Book Now! site 75"! The hourglasses are spinning, the troops are marching. Then the bloodbath begins. INVENTORY NO LONGER AVAILABLE, "no, not you site 78", INVENTORY NO LONGER AVAILABLE "site 79, you were so brave".

There's two sections to the New Brighton State Beach campground in Santa Cruz, screenshot below is of the more popular section. Reservations went up at 8am yesterday, the screenshot was taken at 8:04. At 8:20 all but one handicap spot was taken. As of this morning both parts of the campground are full for the weekend of September 17th (is Yom Kippur a big camping draw?) I guess raising the rates at California state parks isn't slowing down demand.


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## Fanatical1 (Jan 9, 2006)

The internet sure has changed things! I also have experienced crazy efforts to reserve prime sites on prime weekends
at both National parks and State parks. We recently spent hours and hours trying to book sites at a National campground,
and we were willing to be flexable with dates! My wife, and friends were hitting the "reserve the site" button the second 
the sites they were released each day for 10 days before getting two sites booked during the same 3 day period! We ended
up booking sites for the maximum 14 day stay just so we could try to get overlapping dates with our friends for 3 days. 
We just planned to cancel the extra days and pay the cancelation fee to be able to get two sites booked that overlapped 
for 3 days.


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## Lmbevard (Mar 18, 2006)

I have had mixed with being able to reserve sites. It's great if you are traveling to go camping so that you are sure you've got a spot, but it also causes problems if you live close by and want to take a quick trip. thank goodness that one of the local campgrounds isn't used very much so I can go camping any time I want. But then I have seen first come first serve not work at all when the campground host allows their friends to call up and reserve them a site and then the rangers allows others to reserve the same spot. My problem is that I don't know if I'll be asked to work a weekend until late in the week so I can't always plan ahead enough to reserve a spot by the Wed. cut off time. I did enjoy it when I worked shift work and had my weekend in the middle of the week. I could always find a spot then.


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