How many make park reservations vs find as you go.

We always make a reservation. We like to know where we are going and that there is a place for us.

If I am going to a destination for a certain event I will make reservations well in advance.

If I am on a trip consisting of many overnight stops I usually don't make reservations but I may phone the campground of choice an hour or so ahead of our expected arrival. These trips are usually planned as we go and our destinations often are not known until only a day or two in advance.

Holiday weekends or mid summer trips in busy areas may be exceptions and we may make reservations a day or so in advance. It all depends.

If all else fails, there's always a Walmart.

Redwoodcamper wrote:
If you were making a cross country trip from mid September to mid/late October would you all consider reservations very important? Yellowstone in September. New York in the end of September. Grand canyon middle of October.
I really hate the idea of making reservations. It actually turns me off to camping with a trailer. Spent my whole life real camping away from people. Trying it this way now...

By real camping I guess you mean you backpacked from one spot to another in the past and are planning to sell your RV as soon as you can get the "filth" off your hands;):B.

Once the children return to school most popular areas become less crowded.

If you were making a cross country trip from mid September to mid/late October would you all consider reservations very important? Yellowstone in September. New York in the end of September. Grand canyon middle of October.
I really hate the idea of making reservations. It actually turns me off to camping with a trailer. Spent my whole life real camping away from people. Trying it this way now...

We tend to make "destination" reservations and wing it from there. We definitely are not destination campers, rather just bop about as the wind blows. Example, our recent trip to St. Augustine, FL; we wanted to see the area and spend some time there. So we made reservations. Knew when we had to arrive and depart. To and fro were what ever we saw that was interesting and available.

Could vary tremendously. For southern and coastal Fl. state parks reservations are a must IF you can even get them. Generally same for heavily visited national parks but there are some really big campgrounds in both Grand Teton and Yellowstone which usually don't fill. For parts of the country not coastal or heavily visited, just wing it. But, there can be unexpected fishing tournaments or big events which change everything. Only experience can answer your question but reservations remove a lot of stress for me.

I will go to Reserve America and snoop around at different times and see what campgrounds are getting filled up for a particular time and which ones are not. I use that as a guide whether or not to make a reservation or if it looks like there will be plenty of spots available.

I will also use Reserve America to give me an indication of where to stay away from. Full all summer? I need to go somewhere else.

Since we primarily camp on the West Coast, we always made reservations.
Too few campsites for too many people.

We're currently on our first long trip since retiring. Started in March and will be back in May.
Thought we could "wing" it, without reservations, since was not even close to summer.

What we found was Spring Break now runs from March through May, due to schools staggering the times.
So everything coastal was totally booked up.

Even some private parks were somewhat upset that we wanted a site without reservations. One had a guard that wouldn't let us in since we hadn't reserved anything. Another told us that we could only choose from a pool of 5 campsites, since we didn't reserve.

So we had to piece together places to stay, with us having to pick up and move numerous times.
Just to stay for 10 days in the San Diego area, in April, we have to move to 3 different campgrounds. And at one we have to move twice.

So next year we'll definitely make reservations.
We naively thought we could travel this time of the year, without reservations.
Boy, we're we wrong.

Of course, if we went more inland, away from popular areas, reservations wouldn't be necessary.
We're currently in Palm Springs and had no issues getting a site without reservations.
But we're 150 miles inland.

I generally make reservations, though often it's not very long in advance. I don't like the idea of arriving in the evening and not having a place available to camp in. Sometimes I could have done just fine without a reservation, and other times it is very good that I have had one. Whatever the case, I don't at all like the idea of arriving and finding no room at the inn, so to speak.

A fair few of the public campgrounds in this area have pretty small or otherwise constrained sites, and there are a good many in some parks that I would not fit in comfortably if at all (with a 32' class C motorhome).

Needless to say, the necessity of having reservations depends a great deal on where you are going, on what season it is, on what time of day and day of the week you'll be arriving, and on how picky you are about what sites you can use. There are advantages and disadvantages either way.

When I started rving 13 years ago I always made reservations for the first 4 years. Since then I rarely make reservations. I like the flexibility.