"Walk Up Only" in State Parks

Depends on which state, location in state, time of year and day of week.......

Popular states/places, summer/major holidays, Fri-Sun.........forget about it.

And reservations for those places are made 8-11 months ahead.

As for overflow........that is why there are public campgrounds (commercial/business)

I seldom have a problem finding a camping site if I check in on a sunday afternoon or on a Wednesday at a State Park

As far as Kentucky State PArks the weekends fill up and you can be out of luck, however I did find a "Walk up" site on Labor Day Weekend on a Friday morning at Zilpo.

Again as mentioned earlier it depends on the time of year, which park...etc. Not uncommon in some of the parks out here.

X2 on Sundays thru Wed. Sometimes I have had to wait on the Sunday for the site to open up. Some folks are still packing up to leave past the check-out time which is a not a problem for us as we do the same thing alot of times...

Most campgrounds become a ghost town after noon on Sundays thru Wednesdays. Our local state park at Westmoreland is usually pretty empty even on Thursdays...

NO WAY would we show up on Fridays and Saturdays and expect to find something without earlier reservations during the season... We like checking in on Thursdays nights and leaving on Sunday afternoon for our weekend trips.

Roy Ken

I camphost at a state park during May and then again in August. We are usually booked solid for Friday and Saturday nights when I check on Tuesday.

On Friday mornings, we have usually had at least one cancellation, maybe more. By Friday afternoon, those openings are gone. This is assuming that the weather is going to be good.

On Sunday through Thursdays are usually pretty open.

Most Gov CG are only 6 Mths reservation.

In MN, the state parks with campgrounds have a 12 month reservation window. However, they also have some electric and non-electric sites set aside that are non-reservable. Get there early enough in the week to secure one of these and you can keep going back to the ranger station before noon and pay for another night to secure the site for that day.

This works really well for those that are not tied to traveling only on weekends... Checkout time is 4:00 on your last day...

Good luck

Walk up site are tent sites that you carry your gear to.

narcodog wrote:
Walk up site are tent sites that you carry your gear to.

No, depends on the state or province on how the wording is used. For some "Walk up" means just that. Walk to the site. No RVs. Others it means "no reservation sites". First come first served.

Can be confusing. Wish there was standard phrasing for everywhere.

Always best to have reservations on busy weekends, but on several occasions we've managed to secure a non-reservable first come first serve site by arriving mid-week. There's nearly a 50-50 split of reservable and first come first serve sites at most of the state parks in our neck of the woods. Good Luck!!!