Recreation.gov 17+

DO NOT use this app if you are trying to book highly sought campsites. I put it in my calendar to book a campsite when it became available 6 months out and kept looking and being confused by the fact that they either weren’t available for reservation, were first come first served, or were available but when I tried to book was told it would come available at 10am. At 10am they were suddenly all fist come first serve again. All of that was wrong. I finally went to the website and all sites had already been reserved. The availability information shown was completely false and ruined a vacation I had been planning for a year. I was so excited when this app came out and now will go back to website only.

I like this site because it is easy to use. It seems like a few new tools have been added recently too. There is now a “partially available” noted if your reservation dates just need to be tweaked by a day or two and that eliminates the guessing game that you often have to play when using other sites. Campground site maps could be a little more informative, and it would be great if more pictures were added, but I guess the adventure is out there and sometimes should be left unknown. :-)

It’s rather an annoying website (and by extension, app). It isn’t user friendly, and there are no directions. It is hard to figure out which campsites are or aren’t available on certain dates. Also, I don’t understand what certain codes, like “partially available” mean. If you reserve something, even without paying, you can’t modify the dates for at least 15 minutes. I think it would be really helpful if there were clear directions, both on the website, and in the app. I would also love to know which sites were first come first served. I guess those aren’t available currently, bc of COVID? I wish there was a way to see all the campsites at one time in a chart, along with available dates, but I couldn’t find an option to display in that way.