73. National Park RV Campgrounds: How We Do It

National Park campgrounds take advanced planning, unfortunately, at least when it comes to the larger, more popular parks. National Parks that come to mind are Yosemite, Zion, Arches, Bryce Canyon, and Glacier, for example.

The rule for booking campgrounds at the national parks on recreation.gov is that they open 6 months in advance to the day. So when you want to book a site starting June 15, you have to book it December 15. You can book up to 2 weeks at that time, so people's reservations are always rolling into the future. So each day only a subset of the campsites will be opening up. It is possible that no campsites that fit you will open on the day you want to start your reservation. Yosemite is the exception to this since they release a month of campsites one a single day announced ahead of time.

You can revise your reservation if needed, but have to wait at least 2 weeks so you can't trick the system and book a site way ahead of time and then move it later. It does allow you to book your site less than 2 weeks ahead of time and then revise it later.

For booking sites at the popular campgrounds, you will need to be logged in and ready ahead of time. Know which sites you want and can fit in (you can use the filters). Have them up and ready before 10am EST, have the first site and dates already highlighted, and click the second it strikes 10:00:00. You can have a second device try for a different site as well, though it doesn't like it if both are trying at the same exact moment, but it won't hurt to try. One might just say to wait a second while the other reservation is attempted. Sometimes it is more advantageous to not try for the absolute best site since everyone else will be as well. We found it is good to try for a slightly less good site and have a better chance of getting it, especially at the big parks.