GordonThree wrote:
I'm against reservations, so I avoid tourist traps aka popular destinations and seasons.
I guess it depends on what you call a tourist trap. I hardly think that Yellowstone, Yosemite, Arches, Grand Canyon or Zion NP's qualify as tourist traps in my book. (Places like Branson come to my mind when I hear tourist trap.) Yes, there are some first come first served campsites in those NP's, but you'd better get there early on a weekday to hope to snag one of those places. For some of the NP's, if you can't get a spot in the park, it's a fair drive every day just to get to the scenic wonders.
I've noticed than in these discussions, there's a marked difference between those who are retired or are full-timers vs. the working families who have to reserve their time off at work months in advance and then might have two weeks for their vacation if they are lucky. Those families don't want to travel hundreds or even thousands of miles without the comfort of knowing they'll have a place to camp once they get to their destinations.
We kind of fit in the middle. We have the summers to travel, so, for instance, we always avoid the week of July 4th. For our June trip this year, we'll be gone for 28 days and we have reservations for 9 of those nights in places where we want to stay close to certain NP's. For the other places, we're either going to out of the way places to explore or we're arriving on a Sunday through Wednesday morning to snag a spot.
The area where we live (Glenwood Springs, CO) is an example of not enough camp sites for the demand. Lots of people want to visit Maroon Bells or see Marble. Some of the (few) private CG's around have quite a number of spots used as full time residences. There are NFS CG's here and many of the reservable spots are all booked months in advance either for weekends or for the whole summer. Another issue with the NFS CG's is that they aren't designed to handle large rigs. Many sites are tent only. The NFS is talking about closing a couple of lightly used CG's in the area. Lightly used because with difficult access, they aren't very RV friendly CG's. These closures would result in the loss 13 tent sites.
We have had a couple of private CG's built in the last few years. Over by Gypsum, they put in River Dance which has 42 sites. To the west, they just opened a new KOA in Silt with 62 RV sites and seven tent sites. These are both a 20 to 30 minute drive from Glenwood, but still give some additional camping along the corridor. Land is just way too expensive to put in new camping facilities up valley toward Aspen.
