How can I travel without making reservations

I prefer to make reservations for popular spots during summer camping season. I am not comfortable looking for cg's, and driving from place to place - seems like a waste of precious touring time. We don't make reservations for overnights, or in the off season. You need to find your own comfort zone. You don't mention if you are traveling with wife, kids - but after a long travel day, hunting for a cg site can make for some cranky folks :)

Even if you don't want to make reservations, we've found that certain major target points for a planned trip need them. The major national parks almost always require a reservation made as much a 6 or 7 months ahead. Yosemite the most difficult of all, is a lottery that's over in less than an hour, months ahead of the dates reserved.

And thinking about Yosemite, Bahia Honda is just as difficult (in FL Keys), reservations open 13 months in advance and are quickly filled.

So make a few major reservations and be spontaneous in between. Not much of a problem knowing that you need to be at Yellowstone on this date and Grand Canyon on some other date.

BTW the 'best' campground in Yellowstone. The only one with hookups (Fishing Bridge) is a parking lot. But getting in that parking lot can save you 3 hours a day driving time if not more. We only got to the CG late in the afternoon anyway so it's not like you are hanging around the CG all day.

BK

1775 wrote:
If you are going to a popular spot any time that others may want to be there - summer vacation season, school breaks, weekends no matter when - you are going to find that you need reservations. If it is a holiday weekend or week - there is no question that you will need reservations. In the middle of the week on an off season you may find sites available - sometimes also in the summer at the beginning of a week but in really popular areas you are shooting dice to find vacancies.

Unlike the parks near major cities, Yellowstone tourism does not drop during the midweek. If anything, Saturday is the least crowded day of the week. It makes sense if you consider that Yellowstone is at least a two day journey from almost any populated area. People get off work on Friday and then drive the two days arriving either on Sunday or Monday. Then they need to leave on Friday to be back at the Cube Farm on Monday. People local to Yellowstone avoid the summer season like the plague. You won't see the locals in the park except in May and late September. And even then, the entire population within 100 or so miles of the park boundary wouldn't constitute much more than a mid sized town.

We find that when we travel, most of the time if we stopped by 2PM we were always able to get a spot.
I can probably count on one hand the times we could not get a spot in over 20 years of RV'ing.

Maybe now things have changed with parks closing, but we are still not making reservations and just winging it with no problem.

I have traveled across the U.S. and Canada without making reservations, including the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone, and always managed to find a place to stay. One day my luck almost ran out in Canada when I needed a place to stay during the Canada Day holiday, but still managed to score a nice FHU spot at a golf course.

Good luck!

If you are going to a popular spot any time that others may want to be there - summer vacation season, school breaks, weekends no matter when - you are going to find that you need reservations. If it is a holiday weekend or week - there is no question that you will need reservations. In the middle of the week on an off season you may find sites available - sometimes also in the summer at the beginning of a week but in really popular areas you are shooting dice to find vacancies.

If you know when you are going to be somewhere, what is the problem with making a reservation? It is not like you are just going to stumble on to either of those parks while just be-bopping down the highway. With Yellowstone, many of the campgrounds start to close down in September. Even though there are less people, there are also less sites. If you get there and there is no room at the inn, it can be 50 or more miles to a park with availability In the summer I have seen the park where we stay telephoning other parks looking for a vacancy for a last minute guest needing to go out nearly 100 miles before finding said open site. You will probably find a site with little or no notice, but why chance it?

Yellowstone is a giant parking lot. The campsites are tight and the traffic can back up for miles because of a bear sighting. I actually saw traffic backed up over 5 miles due to a bear on the side of the road.

We happened to get a last minute reservation or we wouldn't have stayed there anyway. My wife had never been there and she wanted to go so I monitored the reservation site for a few days and someone cancelled about a week before our trip.

I do love staying on the Greys River Road southeast of Alpine. There are multiple National Forest campgrounds there. Generators allowed. Additionally there is an almost infinite number of places that you can just pull over and camp along the 60 miles of dirt road that runs alongside the Greys River. It is about 2 hours from Yellowstone but still easy enough. There are of course several other choices outside of Yellowstone that are closer including National Forests and private campgrounds. West Yellowstone area has a lot of nice campgrounds and is convenient to the park as well.