Impromptu Campers Not Welcome

[Kobieta]

Originally Posted by Waterwoman

I'm wondering if the response from the staff in Texas had more to do with covid and stay at home orders/suggestions than the reservation system? Different states may be less welcoming of out of state travelers than was the case in the past. This is the situation currently in Canada. Even if intra provincial travel is allowed, it's not encouraged. Just a thought.

Could be! I hadn't thought of that - and we know that "tone" in writing is often misinterpreted. But I think it could have been worded a bit nicer, no? Stay safe and well Canada! We're hoping to visit you again next summer. We did the Lake Superior Circle Tour and loved all the places we saw in Canada!

[@Michael]

Originally Posted by booster

It is possible to do both reservations and walk up and/or opening sites to reserve much closer to the use day. Even Minnesota has started to realize that and is opening some stuff closer, it appears from the press releases.

MN currently has a 120-day window. A system where some sites are held as un-reservable until 14 days prior?

Base on the dramatically increased park utilization, I'm assuming that those who can be flexible will have to be flexible.

[GeorgeRa]

Back in February of 2019 we travelled from Portland OR to Key West and back. We took the southern route both ways. We had no problems finding nice campgrounds in Texas. Stayed in county, state, national parks or forests and had no issues, sometimes we made reservation a few hours in advance sometime no reservations. Key West camping reservation we did a week ahead of planned arrival. Once we were forced to stay on a private campground, not very common for us. I as mentioned earlier we recently travelled to Redwoods in California and had no issues with abundance of vacancies. I am glad that my experience is good and hope it will not change any time soon.

[rowiebowie]

I'm noticing a trend in replies. Those who are able to travel "off-season", like us, have pretty good success. There's no denying the difficulty of "no reservation" traveling expands exponentially during popular times of travel. Mainly when kids are out of school.

However, I will reiterate my biggest complaint about reserved spots. It's not that I think it's unfair, but rather that it is wasteful. I base this on the high percentage (10%-20% from my observations) of empty sites that are "reserved" but vacant.

[avanti]

Originally Posted by rowiebowie

However, I will reiterate my biggest complaint about reserved spots. It's not that I think it's unfair, but rather that it is wasteful. I base this on the high percentage (10%-20% from my observations) of empty sites that are "reserved" but vacant.

I agree. That is why I favor a "4:00PM occupancy or reconfirmation" policy. Easy to do and little burden on anybody.

[InterBlog]

Originally Posted by Winston

....
InterBlog, we view our position not as demanding special treatment, to the contrary - - we consider ‘making room for all’ to be equal treatment.

Texas will make room for you -- at the back of the line, behind everybody else whose individual requests for 'making room' preceded yours. You will absolutely be treated equally in that way.

Taking turns is a construct taught informally in families starting at about the age of two, and formally starting in preschool or kindergarten. It is not an intellectually challenging construct. It does not matter if you are in a cafeteria waiting to be served lunch, at a sports arena waiting to go through the turnstile to access your seat, at the county tax assessor waiting to pay your car registration, or on the state park website waiting for your camping date to pop up. The laws of supply and demand are such that it is not practical to serve every person simultaneously. Nobody would think of saying to a cafeteria manager, "You need to hire 25 lunch servers for every 25 people who walk through the door, so that we can all have 'equal treatment' in getting our food at exactly the same time." It's equally implausible to add a sufficient number of campsites to meet peak demand. Have you been to a Texas state park during most weekdays? Much of the year, the parks are largely empty of campers. If they expanded the number of sites considerably, then they'd expand the state's carrying costs commensurately, while still having empty campsites most of the time, duh. It simply doesn't make sense.

[RossWilliams]

All the places we have been that require registrations allow same day registration. That means if someone cancels, the site is available first come first serve until someone else claims it. So the only time there aren't sites available for people who just show up is when all the sites have uncancelled reservations.

Most places with reservations require you to pay for the site in advance and its not refunded if you cancel too late. I think the national parks have a rule that if you fail to show for the first night without notifying them you lose the rest of your reservation. so there are a bunch of different strategies being used to avoid wasting sites.

It seemed to me that the OP's complaint was that no sites were being reserved for people who show up without a reservation.I.e the campground was fully reserved before they arrived. Not that there were empty campsites going unused because people cancelled.

[InterBlog]

Nobody on this thread has unpacked the naked elitism being reflected in the idea that “a certain class” of camper should be granted advantages that other people do not warrant. This post is not intended as a confrontation of the OP personally – this is a reality check on some of these ideas, which I think is healthy and necessary to this discussion:

(1) “Further, there is the significant group - - often retired seniors - - who have finally ‘earned their freedom’. After a lifetime of regimentation and scheduling in the working-world, they have been released - - free to roam, free to wander, free to explore this great Nation and beyond.”

^^ Free to displace the working-class families that often prioritize state park camping on weekends because, at about $25 per night, it is one of the few forms of recreation that they can afford. Those people, too, are a “significant group”.

(2) “one important aspect of ‘first-come, first-served’ is its even-handed application. Both the Planner and the Impromptu Traveler have the same and equal access to our national heritage and its campsites.”

Of course they would not have equal access!! Such a system would prioritize economically-advantaged non-working people who are at liberty to show up a day before the weekend to nab campsites because they are not compelled to report to an employer every business day.

At which point, some elite campers might respond, “Oh well, those others could just take a day off, and show up earlier, too.” In other words, “Let them eat cake.” This tone-deaf rebuttal ignores the fact that hourly-wage workers are often not at liberty to take a day off – they could not do it without losing their jobs or losing money that they need to feed their families, because in America there is no requirement to grant employees paid holidays, vacation days or paid sick days. Plus everyone of all socioeconomic classes in the public school system cannot have their children missing school for reasons that are not legitimate.

I encourage everyone to do a brief mental inventory of the campers who are present the next time you do snag a weekend campsite reservation in a Texas state park. Take a look at the number of car campers erecting $35 Walmart tents. And the number hauling 30-year-old plywood trailers of no residual resale value. Those people play a vital role in our society, and they have very little freedom to show for it. They are the ones who will be working backshift for $12 per hour changing the diapers of that “significant group” of retired seniors when they inevitably transition out of their Class Bs and into the nursing homes for which they will be paying about $60,000 per year in fees.

These fundamental socioeconomic imbalances, and their ramifications in the context of camping reservations, are worth keeping in mind, for the sake of good citizenship.

[booster]

While I agree a lot of the social comments above, I can't say that it somehow makes the 6-12 month ahead reservation setup more fair than other methods for those lower socioeconomic group campers. Many, very many IMO, can't make reservations that far ahead. Lots of retail and other industries schedule work hours only a week or two ahead so those folks are not able to reserve ahead unless they can afford to eat cancellation fees. They are also the people that are not able to be at a computer or on their phone all day waiting for a site to open up do to a cancellation which was suggested a by another poster.



It certainly is true that there are abusers of first come, first serve, driveup site setups that game it by going a day or two early and that needs to be addressed also in such systems.


I don't know if the ideal system exists or is even possible, but if we really want to be fair to all, from entitled seniors to low earning families, the current far ahead reservation system is not doing it. Whether or not the old drive up only would work better is certainly up for grabs, IMO, so time to expand and be flexible. Technology lets a lot be done that couldn't be in the past.



Wait lists for cancellations, staged lead times before use for reservations, releasing sites for reservations at times when most people are available to call or log in to do a reservation, a few "lottery" sites for prime times maybe.



The current setups heavily favor the well off that can easily schedule their recreation time, plus be easy to to apply by the states.



A big question that I have is how do you think the contract reservation vendors managed to lock up those exclusive contracts?

[booster]

Here is a link to an article explaining the shortening of the Minnesota reservation. It only went from a year to 120 days, which IMO is not a bit improvement, but at least it recognizes the problem the systems cause.


Reading the article and the reasons for the changes given makes me wonder why they only went to 120 days as that doesn't help many of the people that can't reserve far ahead. I think it needs to be in several day, not weeks or months to be effective. They obviously understand the issue, so I think it could have been done much better, but at least it is a start.


https://bringmethenews.com/minnesota...e-reservations


As mentioned earlier, many of us contacted the state when the 100% full reservations a year ahead was being proposed and we were roundly ignored and told we didn't understand how it all works, but now, years later they have come to the same conclusion, but not fully addressed it, IMO.

[RossWilliams]

I don't think you will find many people making $12/hour paying $25 for a campsite. They are however helping pay our social security. What I am hearing is less "elitism" and more a sense of entitlement that permeates the RV community. There are a lot of things that work fine in a limited way but don't scale very well when lots of people join in. By necessity the lifestyle of RV'er is going to become a lot more constrained as the number of people increases. Needing reservations is just one aspect of that.

[InterBlog]

Originally Posted by RossWilliams

I don't think you will find many people making $12/hour paying $25 for a campsite. ....

"...don't think" based on what, exactly? Your experience? Or just a hunch of some sort that is not supported by facts?

My statements and observations are based on extensive experience in the Texas state park system, as this old meme of mine suggests:

[booster]

Here is a summary of reservation windows for all states. Mostly clones of each other.


https://www.campendium.com/camping/s...-reservations/

[Jon in AZ]

One could have the same conversation without mentioning any specific class or group of people.

Some, whether by choice or necessity , plan travel far in advance and really need to know they have a place to camp of their choosing. Others, again by choice or necessity, travel spontaneously with no fixed agenda. A system optimized for one will necessarily penalize the other. Public campgrounds appear to have taken a pendulum swing over my four decades of adult travel and camping from spontaneous to plan-ahead.

Abuse of reservations is real. I’ve been in popular Arizona state parks in which 10-15% of sites are reserved but unused on a given night in peak season. I know they are reserved because there is a tag on the site. And I know there are others wanting to use them because the non-reservable overflow area (basically a parking lot with a few communal picnic tables around the perimeter) is full.

I do commend Arizona for at least providing the overflow area for walk-ins. I also commend Arizona for maintaining a check-in station with real people.

Curbing abuse of reservations is not easy, but it does need to be addressed. There is a built-in disincentive in that unused sites generate revenue without labor or utility costs. Reservation systems in general are clunky and could benefit from some innovation. Shorter maximum stays during peak season seems like one obvious way to make a limited resource available to more people. Public campgrounds belong to the people, and equitable access is part of the public trust responsibility of operators.

The elephant in the room, as already mentioned, is the failure of supply to keep up with demand. That has no easy answers.

(I haven’t kept up with this lengthy conversation, so I apologize if I am repeating what others have said.).

[RossWilliams]

based on what, exactly? Your experience?

Based on actually knowing people who live on $12 per hour.

Abuse of reservations is real.

But has nothing to do with the original post. Reserving sites for people who just show up isn't going to prevent or limit that abuse.

edit: I have been in Forest Service campgrounds where people pulled in on Thursday before a busy holiday weekend, parked their RV and then left. They didn't show their faces again until Saturday morning. First come, first serve.

[avanti]

Moderators' note:
This is an important, relevant and interesting topic. However, it is veering dangerously close to politics, discussion of which is not permitted by list rules.

Careful, please.

[Want a B]

If I was a RV park owner with a family and employees that were relying on me to support them.

And if I reserve percentage of my lots for "Impromptu" campers.

And I turn down reservation income to keep those "Impromptu" sites set back for customers that never came.

And then I get cussed out and bad online reviews because I didn't have the ESP to forecast who wanted what when.

I would subdivide my RV park for building houses and go work in a factory with a whole lot less headaches.

[InterBlog]

Originally Posted by RossWilliams

Based on actually knowing people who live on $12 per hour.

...

You and me both. I live in Houston, where one million of my fellow local residents are foreign-born (as was I), with most of them starting their lives here at the very bottom of the socioeconomic ladder (as did I), owing to their variable immigration statuses and associated earning restrictions.

This is not a political topic. Contrary to popular mythology, working-class people occupy every spot on the political spectrum. And they go camping in state parks because it's one of the few get-aways that they can afford.

A $12/hour person working full-time is grossing $24,000 annually. They can afford fifty bucks to spend a weekend on the Guadalupe River or the Frio River or the Brazos River or the Llano River or the Gulf of Mexico, and they do so in droves. It's an insult to them to suggest that they are not capable of coming up with $50 for that campsite reservation.

[rowiebowie]

Originally Posted by avanti

I agree. That is why I favor a "4:00PM occupancy or reconfirmation" policy. Easy to do and little burden on anybody.

This is exactly how the hotel industry has worked for many years. At least how it worked from the late 1970's until I retired 8 years ago when I had to travel extensively for my job. No need to reinvent the wheel for parks.

[RossWilliams]

Lets be clear. I have no way to know the hourly wage of someone at a campground or where they were born. What I do know is that $50 is a lot of discretionary money to spend for most people making only $24,000 per year. While I am sure there are exceptions, camping at state parks is generally not a low income activity.

Regardless of their income or nationality, a reservation system likely works better for most people who have a fixed work schedule. There is a reason campgrounds are fully booked on weekends, but often not the rest of the week. I see no reason why some sites should be reserved for those with more flexible schedules who can choose to camp whenever they want.