bigfootford wrote:
What we are discovering is that many Campgrounds from various states use a reservation website either their own or other, to offload the needs for the CG admin. No answering phones etc.
In turn the states and local county campgrounds have to reserve XX number of sites for that website reservation website.... So even if there are no one reserving from those websites reserved sites they will remain empty!
You can not just arrive at them and get an empty site.. SUCKS!
Jim
I haven't decided if registrations hurts or helps. There are times when it is nice to know you have a spot (or at least supposed to have) you can count on. But thirty years ago it didn't seem like campgrounds filled up anyway.
The downfall is spontaneity is no longer a thing you can just do anymore and access to open areas is getting closed more and more. On our summer road trip a couple of years ago, there was a fantastic county park near Carnation Washington that I had stayed in previously by myself. I hyped it up to the travel worn family and when we arrived, I was estatic that there were several sites available. I pulled in to one and went to the registration kiosk to reserve the site, only to find out that the kiosk had been removed. Yup, you had to reserve online and get this, you had to reserve at least 7 days in advance. Even though the spot we had was open, we were literally forced out of it and ended up at the KOA in Tacoma.
It seems that as the Forest Service has aged, it no longer is aggressively building new campgrounds but rather expanding existing campgrounds and packing more people into tighter spaces. The quality of the camping experience in these mega campgrounds has gone down as more people seem to think that they are doing a community service by sharing their music with everyone else and the fire pits are less than 20 feet away.
My ideal system would be a mix I think. Maybe 2/3rds of the sites would be reserved via online but the other third would remain open for drive up visits. I would also want to see a LOT more campgrounds opened up with clear effort to offer some space between sites. I like being neighborly with my fellow campers but I don't want to be 10 feet away from them.
