Impromptu Campers Not Welcome

[booster]

Originally Posted by InterBlog

...plus a landline available to be put into the hand of the camper who needs to call in. Which in remote areas can be impossible to find.

I suppose a camper could try knocking on the door of a random house, but people stopped the "Can I use your phone?" thing decades ago. Nobody is comfortable with that now.

As long as the camper gets to the park before the check in/reconfirm time it should be no issue.

[InterBlog]

Originally Posted by booster

As long as the camper gets to the park before the check in/reconfirm time it should be no issue.

I bet there would be a backlash to a policy that required physical presence by 4 p.m. That was the suggestion that commenced this sub-thread. (Given the widespread unavailability of cell coverage in many of these areas and the resulting technical inability to reconfirm by phone, the only other alternative is physical presence.)

There's also the possibility of reconfirmation within 24 hours rather than by a set time that people wouldn't be as able to meet, such that they could phone in before setting out from populated areas and losing cell coverage. But I bet that would not open up many spots. 24 hours in advance, many people would hedge their bets and reconfirm whether they were coming or not. Just in case.

[booster]

Originally Posted by InterBlog

I bet there would be a backlash to a policy that required physical presence by 4 p.m. That was the suggestion that commenced this sub-thread. (Given the widespread unavailability of cell coverage in many of these areas and the resulting technical inability to reconfirm by phone, the only other alternative is physical presence.)

There's also the possibility of reconfirmation within 24 hours rather than by a set time that people wouldn't be as able to meet, such that they could phone in before setting out from populated areas and losing cell coverage. But I bet that would not open up many spots. 24 hours in advance, many people would hedge their bets and reconfirm whether they were coming or not. Just in case.

We hear lots about folks taking personal responsibility, so when someone knows they have a reservation weeks ahead of time and then don't get to it by the time they have to (or call), I think I would call that not taking personal responsibility as they had nearly full control of preventing that from happening. I really don't see that as somehow the fault of the system. It also seems like a lot bad stars have to align for it even to be possible in most cases and it certainly isn't the systems fault if someone is late as long as they knew the consequences.



The list of "whataboutisms" can be endless and doesn't do anything to address the issues concerning having a more inclusive and fair system.

[avanti]

Originally Posted by InterBlog

...plus a landline available to be put into the hand of the camper who needs to call in. Which in remote areas can be impossible to find.

I suppose a camper could try knocking on the door of a random house, but people stopped the "Can I use your phone?" thing decades ago. Nobody is comfortable with that now.

You can make up a story that demonstrates that any possible solution is imperfect and in all likelihood find real-world examples to "prove" it. As I said before, if supply and demand are out of whack (as they clearly are in some places), NO solution is going to be perfect. But the one I sketched is very good for the vast majority of situations in the US (and even Texas), and is extremely easy to implement.

I do not find the "running late" scenario particularly persuasive. Yes, it can happen. But at the travel distance scale we are talking about, your hypothetical family is very likely to realize that they may be late early in the day, when they are still on the Interstate with plenty of connectivity options. And, if you don't accept this, then allow day-before confirmations. This would be almost as good and would exclude almost nobody.

At any event, Elon's Starlink and its competitors are about to make this issue go away completely (first for the campground offices, and then for vehicles), so let's start planning for the future rather than the past.

[InterBlog]

Originally Posted by avanti

You can make up a story that demonstrates that any possible solution is imperfect and in all likelihood find real-world examples to "prove" it. ....

It is not a made up story. I gave three examples of very popular Texas state parks that I have actually visited, which are in white holes that prevent communication. One of the white holes extends in a patchy manner across hundreds of miles.

These are not theoretical limitations I'm talking about - they exist, they are chronic, and they must be accounted for in any sensible reservation policy.

Edit: I could detail the connectivity limitations of many other parks as well, but isn't three enough to make the point that this is a common phenomenon?

[booster]

Originally Posted by InterBlog

It is not a made up story. I gave three examples of very popular Texas state parks that I have actually visited, which are in white holes that prevent communication. One of the white holes extends in a patchy manner across hundreds of miles.

These are not theoretical limitations I'm talking about - they exist, they are chronic, and they must be accounted for in any sensible reservation policy.

Edit: I could detail the connectivity limitations of many other parks as well, but isn't three enough to make the point that this is a common phenomenon?

I repeat that while connectivity can be a problem in various places, it does not absolve people of their personal responsibility to show up when they said they would. "Hundreds of miles" is a few hour drive between places so how does this make it too hard to show up on time?


Again, whataboutisms get used to deflect and delay actually addressing problems so nothing gets done. Just because the system may work well enough for some people, they should not try to prevent improvements to help others, IMO.

[InterBlog]

Refocusing using another real world example, I annotated an image from the Texas state park system in order to mention two developing reservation-related trends.

I grabbed Garner State Park given its popularity. Thirty years in Texas and I have never visited it, because it's almost impossible to get into. The image below shows the reservation status a month out from today. I could go many months out, and all 372 camp sites would still be full.

You'll notice on the reservation page two features not yet discussed on this thread:

(1) They have incorporated a notification mechanism. There's probably a snowball's chance in hell that most people would actually be offered a spot via this mechanism, but at least they are making an effort.

(2) Some of our state parks have become very assertive about revectoring people who show up at the gate to a full park. You will see a "find facilities nearby" button on the page, which unfortunately lists other state parks only (all of which are full at peak times), but they tend to go farther than that, and be more helpful than that, when they greet people in person.

An example is Brazos Bend State Park. If you love strolling among an avalanche of shockingly large alligators, BBSP is the place for you. Unfortunately, it is located just south of a metro area of 7 million people and it has only 101 reservable sites of any kind (camping, lodge, etc.). Do the freakin' math - that's one camp site for every 70,000 *local* residents, to say nothing of travelers.

So, OK, those guys experience a constant barrage of people at the gate looking for accommodation when there is none. They have become very good at working the phones and keeping in touch with other local destinations, so that they can proactively funnel people toward those other possibilities. The people who show up at the BBSP gate unreserved don't know how the state park system works in practice, so they tend to be uninformed of other facilities as well. So for example, BBSP will actively direct people 81 miles southwest to Lake Texana - Brackenridge, which is a park run by the Lavaca-Navidad River Authority. They will tell people things like, "As of 10 a.m., that park still had campsites available." That in itself is very helpful to people who don't know the area.

So those are two emerging responses to impromptu campers that have been developed. They don't eliminate the problems, but at least the state park staff is trying to do something responsive.

[InterBlog]

Originally Posted by booster

I repeat that while connectivity can be a problem in various places, it does not absolve people of their personal responsibility to show up when they said they would. .....

On the day of my reservation, I was horribly late to South Llano River State Park because I was driving to it from a job site in west Texas. Here is how that day went down:

(1) First of all, my client work ran over schedule at the point of origin, so I was unavoidably late getting on the road to the park. My time is not my own.

(2) And then my dog started projectile vomiting inside the van because the shear winds coming out of west Texas were severe, and they were shaking the van so badly. I had to stop several times to clean it up because I couldn't allow vomitus to soak into the bottom edges of the wooden cabinetry.

(3) And I had to drop my speed 20 mph because of the unexpected winds, which put me further behind schedule.

(4) And then I tried to call the park to reconfirm (because it's always a good idea regardless of policy) only to encounter a massive white hole which prevented me from reaching them.

(5) And then my GPS failed because of the white hole of which I was not previously aware. And I got lost and was an additional 45 minutes behind schedule because of that.

^^ For the love of God, what part of that mess can be described as me abdicating personal responsibility?? As a first-time visitor to the general area, I was HOURS late to the state park because of factors beyond my control!


What about the family with a newly toilet-trained toddler who accidentally craps his pants due to the stress of a long car drive? They cannot let him sit in it for 2 hours as they race toward a park with an unforgiving reservation policy. They have to stop, get off the road, deal with it, and be late because of it.

Such a list could go on, and on, and on.

If someone is a person of leisure, with all the time in the world at their disposal, and no responsibilities to anyone else (including pets), then maybe they could meet such a performance standard.

But the rest of us live in the real world, which is messy and unpredictable.

[tgregg]

Originally Posted by InterBlog

On the day of my reservation, I was horribly late to South Llano River State Park because I was driving to it from a job site in west Texas. Here is how that day went down:

(1) First of all, my client work ran over schedule at the point of origin, so I was unavoidably late getting on the road to the park. My time is not my own.

You could have called before you left and said you were still coming but might be late.

[booster]

Originally Posted by tgregg

You could have called before you left and said you were still coming but might be late.

Yep, and I still fail to see how any of the things that changes whose responsibility is it to take care of it by finding a way to call somewhere during it all, especially if Avanti's system did include the 24hr or even 8hr before arrival confirmation window.

[InterBlog]

Originally Posted by tgregg

You could have called before you left and said you were still coming but might be late.

- Well, then, I would need to call every single time, because I don't have a crystal ball, and I mentally cannot keep track of where all the rural cellular white holes are located.

- In which case, the system would be more efficient if it simply ASSUMES I might be late, and holds my reservation accordingly.

- Which is exactly what the present system does.

***

Regardless of whether or not anyone sees merit in my personal real-world anecdotes, if you want to have a serious discussion on the topic of the reservation system format, then you have no choice but to evaluate the political tenability of any given suggestion.

Let me unpack the underlined portion.

I rely heavily on the state park system for accommodations during both paid and unpaid work. Not unrelatedly, I know a bit about the Texas legislative system, because I spent both the 86th and the 87th legislative sessions lobbying in support of nonprofit initiatives. In that context, am unfunded, so I need a $25/night option - I cannot afford the swanky hotels that paid lobbyists enjoy.

In the Austin Texas area, that includes access to McKinney Falls State Park, which is yet another high-access-pressure venue due to its proximity to 2 million local residents.

I will tell you that any system that gets tweaked to irrevocably void a paid contract because one party to that contract was neither able to arrive on time nor could they call in due to a cellular white hole or a dead phone battery or some other factor... that would happen exactly one time before the legislature prohibited it from ever happening again.

This is how it would go down:

(1) That family whose toddler crapped in his pants, and maybe later that day due to car sickness, threw up on himself to further annihilate their schedule... that family would get on the local 5 o'clock news and would draw attention to the profound unfairness of the state park having given away their *PAID IN FULL* reservation, forcing them to sleep overnight in their car with an exhausted toddler in the middle of nowhere, while Grandpa in his teched-out Class B luxuriated in what was supposed to be their campsite. Commercial news media eats stories like that for breakfast.

(2) OMG, what a great photo op!!! Elected representatives would then jump to the toddler family's defense, swearing that the likes of it would never happen again. They would go on TV saying this.

(3) A bill would get passed in the next legislative session. And it would never happen again.

^^ THAT is the reality that you face if you want to have this discussion on anything beyond a superficial level.


Now, with that in mind, here is a functional alternative that I don't recall anyone on this thread suggesting:

(1) Let's say the state park DOES re-sell the reservation due to no-show.

(2) The original reserver finally shows up at 8 pm, freshly-cleaned toddler in tow.

(3) The person placed in the original reserver's spot must immediately vacate that spot. They were, after all, given it on the condition of no-show, which later proved to not be the case. So they would need to get out, pronto. THEY need to become the party sleeping on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere, given that they took a chance on this no-show reselling scheme. Same thing holds if the original reserver shows up at 3 a.m. instead of 8 p.m. It's their paid site - they need to be given it if they show up at all.

^^ THAT might work. It would be fair, at least.

[avanti]

Originally Posted by InterBlog

- Well, then, I would need to call every single time

That would be fine.

If your everyday life is really described by such an extreme set of constraints and circumstances, such a requirement seems to me to be totally appropriate. But, to suggest that this is typical or even common is absurd. And, your stories ARE "made up". As I said, you can no doubt cherry-pick real-world examples that approximate them, but to suggest that the whole system should be built around them is nonsense. It would be just as easy to make up stories about the overburdened mother whose every day life was too harried for her to find time to make a reservation, and desperately needs one of those wasted sites on a drive-up basis

- In which case, the system would be more efficient if it simply ASSUMES I might be late, and holds my reservation accordingly.
- Which is exactly what the present system does.

Except that this is NOT more efficient. The present system encourages people for whom a night's registration fee is totally inconsequential to book on a whim ("just in case"), and to just forget about the ones they don't use. Since the system simply ASSUMES that everybody will show up, there is inevitably significant wasteful behavior with no effective disincentives.


I am not going to comment on your characterization of the Texas legislature, except to say that a no-show forfeiting a site would NOT "void a paid contract". This consequence would be PART of the contract. Nothing was voided. I tend to believe that if you establish rational rules and enforce them consistently and fairly, you will get few complaints.

Now, with that in mind, here is a functional alternative that I don't recall anyone on this thread suggesting:

(1) Let's say the state park DOES re-sell the reservation due to no-show.

(2) The original reserver finally shows up at 8 pm, freshly-cleaned toddler in tow.

(3) The person placed in the original reserver's spot must immediately vacate that spot. They were, after all, given it on the condition of no-show, which later proved to not be the case. So they would need to get out, pronto. THEY need to become the party sleeping on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere, given that they took a chance on this no-show reselling scheme. Same thing holds if the original reserver shows up at 3 a.m. instead of 8 p.m. It's their paid site - they need to be given it if they show up at all.

^^ THAT might work. It would be fair, at least.

Setting up absurd straw-men will not get us anywhere.

[MsNomer]

The problem with this discussion is that every poster is correct from their own viewpoint—blind men and the elephant.

Having someone vacate a site at 8pm or 3am works only if the person vacating in in a Class B or similar. Otherwise, there could be a long wait. One time we had a 2-night reservation and left the site vacant during the interim day. We didn't worry because all reservations were directly with the camp host. We came back to a tent, chairs, a father and two small daughters enjoying the creek alongside our prime site. He was totally innocent—the camp host had made a mistake. We quickly decided that they needed the site more than we did and the host found us another site. We asked what if there had been no empty site—host winked.

[booster]

Originally Posted by MsNomer

The problem with this discussion is that every poster is correct from their own viewpoint—blind men and the elephant.

Having someone vacate a site at 8pm or 3am works only if the person vacating in in a Class B or similar. Otherwise, there could be a long wait. One time we had a 2-night reservation and left the site vacant during the interim day. We didn't worry because all reservations were directly with the camp host. We came back to a tent, chairs, a father and two small daughters enjoying the creek alongside our prime site. He was totally innocent—the camp host had made a mistake. We quickly decided that they needed the site more than we did and the host found us another site. We asked what if there had been no empty site—host winked.

And where do the booted people go in the middle of the night? It sounds like a sure fire way to assure unauthorized camping somewhere else.

[Davydd]

Got our new van. Spent Friday night in ARV’s parking lot. Saturday night at a Harvest Host winery and tonight at a different winery. Our fourth night will be at an RV friends house driveway before moving onto Indianapolis and another driveway at my sister’s house. I don’t know when we will get to a pay campground.

On our way to Ohio from Minnesota we had planned to overnight at a Cracker Barrel in Elkhart, IN but in checking Indiana Dunes SP there were 37 available RV sites so we made reservations in route. Great park with level concrete pads.

[Gaucho]

Florida’s reservation system is going offline for a couple days starting tomorrow. Verbiage from their site:

“ As planned, our reservation system will be temporarily unavailable May 24-26 while we transition to a new system”

BREAK

“ When the new system launches on Thursday, May 27 at 8 a.m., reserving a stay in one of our cabins or campgrounds will be simple.”

Anyone have any insight about what the changes entail?


https://www.floridastateparks.org/stay-night

[Winston]

We’re uncertain whether to be delighted or chagrined at the significant discussion following our thread-opening post. We weren’t anticipating an in-depth analysis of the socioeconomic status of the camping community and question whether ones financial circumstances weight significantly on the question of ‘impromptu’ verses ‘by reservation’ camping.

One thing is clear, however. Whether a supporter of the ‘reservation’ or the ‘first-come, first-served’ system, there’s plenty of waste and unhappiness with current implementations of both. We’re not unhappy that so many took the opportunity to discuss their respective unhappiness’s - - although in initiating our post we had hoped to scrutinize what we deemed to be the fundamental issue of “availability for all” before venturing into this important subsequent issue of ‘reservation abuse’. We knew that even were all abuse to be eliminated, there would still be far too few campsites to meet growing demand - - the fundamental issue would remain: should our campsite allotment systems be structured to give all who desire, a chance of obtaining one of the limited supply?

A few directed comments.

InterBlog at post #48 said: “. . . the naked elitism being reflected in the idea that “a certain class” of camper should be granted advantages that other people do not warrant.”

InterBlog, maybe MsNomer in her post #93 had it right: “The problem with this discussion is that every poster is correct from their own viewpoint . . . “

Were we really looking for "advantages that other people do not warrant," we wouldn’t have written our Campground Administrator letter nor commenced this thread. We don’t consider it “elitist” to request some opportunity - - to be afforded a chance - - to obtain a campsite. We consider it equalitarian.

Jon in AZ (post #54), said it better than we could have. First, he recognized there are planners and non-planners and, importantly, that these two categories exist sometimes due to “choice”, sometimes of “necessity”. He suggests the “pendulum” has swung fully in one direction - - reservation - - but importantly, a system “optimized for one will necessarily penalize the other”. Again, Jon, well stated. Let’s swing that pendulum back a bit.

Want a B, Our principal concern are state and federal campgrounds - - those of a public nature. These treasures should be managed by our public ‘stewards’ with a primary objective (even above profit) of making these assets available to all. We agree that the private entrepreneur has a different set of concerns which renders their responsibility to the public arguably subservient to necessities of making a living.

Booster, We’ve particularly enjoyed reading your posts to this thread - - possibly because we appreciate your grasp of the core issues, with a corresponding empathy. But we particularly like your frequent reference to “flexibility” and ponder whether we shouldn’t be discussing this issue as one of “flexibility vs inflexibility”. Should we not be guarding the camping rights of the inflexible and flexible alike?

[booster]

Thanks for that, Winston, I am glad someone noticed about the flexibility as, IMO, that is the elephant in the room that seems to not be understood, ignored, whatever, and not ever addressed. When even the DNR of Minnesota finally recognizes that they have been leaving people out of the availability, you know it it is extreme.


Even if all abuse was gotten rid of in the reservation systems, it would not take care of the problem of flexibility in life. Sure sites wouldn't be wasted, but only those that could reserve early would be in them.


Any kind of leadtime in reservations would give those with flexible schedules a shot at campsites in all parks, be a year or one day before use date.


Those with inflexible systems only get a shot at getting a campsite if the leadtime to use is under a week or two, tops. Almost all of the current reservation systems give those folks near zero chance of getting a site, and getting rid of abuse will not cure that even if more sites are freed up. There needs to be a way that all people at least get an equal chance of getting sites in desirable campgrounds if the system is to be considered "fair".

[jrobe]

This is all a moot point. Reservations aren’t going away for sporting events, concerts, hotels, popular restaurants, popular campsites, etc. etc. etc.. Adapt to our crowded world and learn to plan ahead if you want to go to any of these places. Things aren’t going back to the good old days.

[booster]

Originally Posted by jrobe

This is all a moot point. Reservations aren’t going away for sporting events, concerts, hotels, popular restaurants, popular campsites, etc. etc. etc.. Adapt to our crowded world and learn to plan ahead if you want to go to any of these places. Things aren’t going back to the good old days.

Of course reservations won't go away, what we are talking about is make the reservation systems fair to all people, not just those with lives that match how the systems work.


This is not going back to "the good old days" it is a desire to make the future "even better new days" available to the entire population, not just of some it.