Do you love to camp? My wife and I do. Sadly, we have discovered that gone are the good old days of showing up and securing a camp site on the fly.
As experienced tent campers for over forty years, we thought we knew how things worked.
Times have changed. The last fifteen years have seen an exponential growth in RV sales and our generation of retirees has taken to the road in numbers. This growth has fueled changes to commercial campgrounds like KOAs. More and more space is dedicated to large RV pull throughs, some with their own patios and grills. Some with fenced in pet areas. We’ve even seen hot tubs in some RV spaces, as if traveling with their own kitchen, entertainment centers, and bathrooms isn’t enough! Us poor tenters are now relegated to the outer edges of camping resorts, with fewer spaces to choose from.
In the last few years, campgrounds that used to offer ten to fifteen tent sites now offer only five. Along with the reduction in available tent spaces, price increases have left us with mouths agape. What used to be a $10-$15 patch of grass with a picnic table, now goes for anywhere from $40 to $90. For a patch of grass! With a picnic table. Head shake!
In the past, while traveling, we felt like free spirits. If the weather looked stormy, we could opt to drive farther or hunker down earlier. That flexibility doesn’t exist now that places are booked up months in advance. All the spontaneity of the tent-camping traveler has been squelched. I will add, RV campers face the same reservation nightmare as us tent campers, albeit with more spots to choose from, but they still hear, “Sorry, we are fully booked” if they haven’t reserved far in advance.
The actual reservation process for national parks of the United States and Canada is a fascinating challenge. It felt like negotiating a maze until we figured out how to plan for securing reservations. This is my heads up for anyone planning an extensive camping trip in the future. Watch your calendars closely. The Christmas holiday season may morph to “get ready to start making summer reservations” time.
Here’s how it evolved for us.
Last year we planned the trip of a lifetime, driving from Connecticut to Alaska and back. Covering sixteen thousand miles in eighty days tested our mettle, not just during the trip, but planning it as well. We laid out a tentative itinerary, day by day, from June 28 to September 15. Once we had that in hand, next was booking camping in several U.S. national parks.
My wife and I got on our laptops, pulling up campground maps for Yellowstone, Glacier and Denali National Parks. We searched out desirable sites, noted their numbers and compiled a list for each. That was the easy part. Then we checked to see when each park opened for reservations. If, for instance, one park’s reservations opened at 10 a.m. on January 15th, we had to be on their reservation site waiting on that morning. At exactly 10 a.m. we both clicked on, each on her own laptop. Both computers and sometimes, yes, both our phones too. We had about fifteen minutes to secure the sites we desired, as we knew other eager campers all over the country (and world) were doing the same.
“Are you on? Did you get A14?” my voice, full of anxiety, asked as we tried to book ten days in Glacier National Park.
“No, keep trying,” she answered.
A minute later, “Got it, I’m on.” My voice cried with the triumph of will over technology. She was able to reserve the ten days for the dates we wanted, for the campground (there are three) we wanted and for the site we wanted. One down.
“Okay, Glacier’s done,” she said, “ Now we have to book Yellowstone and Denali.”
And so it went until we got the sites and dates we needed in the three U.S. national parks we planned to visit.
The Canadian system, whose provincial parks are awesome, was even more challenging. The system varies from province to province. From the date you wish to book, count backwards four months and that’s your booking opening. Even then, no matter how early you sign on to the reservation booking site, everyone is put in a virtual waiting room. If reservations open at 10 a.m., then at 10 a.m. everyone in the waiting room is assigned a random number. RANDOM! I’m not kidding.
For our reservation for three days in Lake Louise Provincial Park, Alberta, my wife was given random # 42,351. That means 42,350 people could make reservations before it would be her turn. My laptop showed a slightly better number, closer to 30,000. O.M.G. Desperate, I logged on with my iPhone and, hallelujah, was assigned #8,038. That looked a whole lot better. We ignored our laptop numbers, shut them down, and I was able to reserve our time at Lake Louise using my phone. We had to go through the same process for Jasper Provincial Park.
British Columbia has it’s own system, so we had new challenges as we planned five consecutive days in five different parks. The Cassiar highway is 460 miles of wilderness dotted with picturesque lakes, many with a provincial park along their shores. This meant every day for a week in April, we had to log on to book a site at the specific park we would be at in four months.
So, yes, my hair is a little grayer now and my wife has forgiven me for being grumpy during those booking days. Bottom line, we did it!
And what a vacation it turned out to be! As crazy as it sounds, it was worth the anxiety over the planning, the lost sleep leading up to the bookings and the frustration dealing with a variety of reservation systems. We reaped rewards in viewing incredible scenery, meeting friendly people and viewing animals in their natural habitats. We are left with memories for a lifetime.
And we have a blueprint for planning this summer’s travels. By the way- it is all booked!
Copyright 2026 by Gail H. Ouimet
Walks Across 