[RockyMtnRay]

Originally Posted by Windbreaker

I really dislike reserving campsites! To me this goes against the whole idea of camping. You drive until you find some place you think you might like then find a place to camp. I've seen many good campsites go unused because someone "reserved" them for a night and then did not show up.

Sorry Ray but I just think this is wrong, and so do a lot of other folks. I know we are going to have to learn to live with it but that does not make it right. I guess reservering a site in a selected campground could be right but it should be first come first selected on the site itself. The only reason I'm giving in on the reserve a site in a campgroud is there are just too many folks now-a-days wanting to do the same things that makes that a requirement.

One of the better things about being a little older is remembering there was no such thing as reservations and there was always an open slot or 10 open slots.

You sound like the guy (a full timer) who was complaining about reservations in the latest issue of Trailer Life. Wanted to just wander around at will and plop down for the night whereever they had a whim to do so. Hated seeing unoccupied campsites that they couldn't have because they were reserved for someone who would arrive much later in the day.

Yeah, I too remember there was once a time (maybe still is in places like low population density places like Montana) where you could always find an open campsite on a Friday evening for a spur-of-the-moment weekend get away.

But that was back in the 50s when the nation had barely half the population it does now...and in a time when pretty much the only people who went camping were avid outdoorsmen (hunters, fishermen, etc.). The problem...at least with regard to public campgrounds is that very few new ones have been built or even expanded in the last 50 years...meanwhile the population has roughly doubled and the outdoors oriented population has roughly increased ten-fold.

If it weren't for the reservations system, people who only can get away on weekends would not stand a chance of getting a campsite in any public campground if they couldn't arrive before noon on Friday. Somewhere around a third of all public campgrounds here in Colorado are still first come-first served and you'd better show up Thursday afternoon if you want a weekend campsite in any that are within a 150 mile radius of Denver or Colorado Springs. With roughly half a million people heading into the mountains every summer weekend...and only a few thousand public campsites total...demand greatly outstrips the supply.

And it isn't just the public campgrounds where "plan ahead" is mandatory. Mainly because I can now finally get high speed wireless internet in a couple of commercial RV Parks, I booked stays at two of them. One was for the week of Sept 6th (after Labor Day)...a Tues-Friday midweek stay in Estes Park (right outside Rocky Mtn NP). When the lady called this morning to get my CC number she said she's already about 70% booked for that week and expects to be completely booked up for all of September by mid-May, it not earlier. The other commercial reservation is for a KOA that will have WiFi and that's right outside a major state park in remote northern Colorado...and it's the only commercial RV Park within a 50 mile radius. That booking was for a Mon-Thur (not even a weekend) in mid-July (3 months in the future) and I managed to get almost the last site they had available for that week! Now admittedly these are both high-quality campgrounds (4W's each in Woodalls guide) and they are in extremely high demand scenic areas.

Given that demand for these primo areas continues to grow...and the supply of new campgrounds is NOT growing (at least not in Colorado's resort areas), then reservations and planning ahead are unavoidable. I don't think any of us would expect to just show up at any hotel or motel in a busy resort area during high season and expect to be able to get a room for several nights. So why should it be any different for camping in these areas???

And quite frankly, I like reservations anyway...they allow me to plan and schedule. And equally importantly, having "reservations" with security deposits automatically causes my business associates and clients to have much greater respect for my scheduled travel dates. If I don't have reservations, I've sadly learned that it's much, much harder to fight demands like "you absolutely have to stay here and fix this problem because we have a deadline to meet" So one of the things I'm doing today is emailing my business partner my travel dates for the entire summer with an admonishment that these dates are "hands off" confirmed reservations and are not subject to change.

Quite frankly I see public camping campsites in states like Colorado eventually going to a lottery system similar to the one used for canoeing in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area of Minnesota...or for the backcountry campsites inside Rocky Mountain National Park. Basically you would have to submit a request during the winter for the days you want in the following summer and all requests would go into a lottery. If your request for a given period at at a given campground wins, you get to camp; otherwise not.