Insider tips on how to get a camping reservation this summer [2021]

Frustrated about how to get a camping reservation this summer? We can help with some insider tips on using campground reservation technology. We know. There are a lot of people trying to book camping reservations this summer. Demand has never been higher. It seems like the entire country - frustrated after a long year of COVID-19 travel restrictions - is anxious to hit the road in their RV and find the perfect camping spot. But campgrounds across America are reporting record demand. In the most popular destinations - around national parks, for instance - finding an open spot will not be as easy as it was pre-COVID. Mark Koep, the CEO of CampgroundViews.com, is our special guest on Episode #339 of the RV Podcast. He offers up lots of insider tips for us on how to get a camping reservation this summer. You can listen to the podcast in the player below. Or keep scrolling down for a video version - in which he demonstrates just how to use the Internet to get a camping reservation. There's also a full transcript of the interview, so keep reading! How to Get a Camping Reservation: Tips from Mark Koep First, here's a video of the interview in which Mark demonstrates how to get a camping reservation this summer:  Here's an edited transcript of the Interview: Mike Wendland: To help us get into the right possible groove for finding those difficult-to-locate open campsites is our friend Mark Koep, of CampgroundViews.com. First of all. Hi Mark. How are ya? Mark Koep: Hey, Mike, doing good. How are you doing? Mike Wendland: The camping season is here. People are out moving about and I thought, there's no one better suited to help us learn how to navigate the challenges of finding open reservations than my friend Mark Koep. So Mark, let's talk about your site for starters. I know we have a big surprise that we'll have coming up in a few minutes, but first of all, a lot of people are in the planning mode right now and they hear all these stories, "We can't find a spot. We can't find a spot." How can we help them with finding a spot? And maybe we can actually bring up your site and show them. How to get a Camping Reservation: Get Creative Mark Koep: Yeah, Mike, it's going to be a busy camping season, flat out. We did a survey last week of 2000 campground owners. And 50% of them said that their advanced bookings are up significantly over average, everybody's just going camping. But Mike you've been camping long enough. I've been camping long enough to know that this is true. You can find a campsite anywhere you go as long as you're willing to travel a little bit to go do it. And the best example- Mike Wendland: And do a little research. Mark Koep: Exactly. Mike Wendland: I'm looking at your site. Walk us through. We see a map, what are we looking at? How to get a Camping Reservation: Widen your search area Mark Koep of CampgroundViews.com tells us how to get a camping reservation this summer Mark Koep: The first example I'm going to pull up is Yosemite Valley. And the reason I do this is that there are only four or five campgrounds on the Valley floor in Yosemite. And everybody will say Yosemite is full. But if you notice my default radius is set to 50 miles and Mike, how many campgrounds are there within 50 miles of Yellowstone National or Yosemite national park? Mike Wendland: Probably 75, a hundred? Mark Koep: 107 campgrounds within 50 miles of Yosemite Valley floor. So within that, you can figure the average campground has 60 sites in it. That means there are 6,000 campsites within 50 miles of Yosemite National Park. I guarantee you can find a campsite any night of the year, as long as you're willing to do a little bit of research and go find them. How to get a Camping Reservation: Alter your expectations The first suggestion on how to get a camping reservation is to widen the search area So the trick, the first rule at finding a campsite, and it's going to be nutty all summer long, everything's to be full up, is to remove your expectations of staying in one designated campsite in one campground, and open your horizons to a little bit wider radius. If you want to find another cool trick on this, you can click on this big map button up at the top of the screen here. I'm going to click on that. It'll take a second to load. This is actually pulling our entire database within CampgroundViews.com, which has 16,000 campgrounds. You'll notice all these icons going, and you can actually zoom in on the icons and then drag the Google map around to see all the campgrounds. And as you can see, this opens up your entire opportunities. You click on the little icons and the icons will bring up whatever that state park or campground is. You click on the name and that takes you in to get more information to book that site or whatnot. And be able to go ahead and go camping, even though everything is "full." 50 miles around your destination is the radius you should search for campgrounds Mike Wendland: So the first rule is that set your radius to about 50 miles around the attraction that you're going to see be it a national park or maybe a certain city. 50 miles is not a bad commute these days, and look what we found around Yosemite, which was pretty amazing. I knew there were a bunch, but when I see it on the map like that, and again, the folks listening to the podcast, be sure you go back and look at the show notes and watch the video that we will embed. That's pretty impressive. Mark Koep: Yeah and if you notice all you have to do once you're on a search page is update the search terms to change your location. So I can quickly bounce around all over the country and see the different camping spots and campgrounds that are within a certain radius of all sorts of different locations. You want to go to Tampa, Florida, you just type it in and it'll automatically update the map over here. And if you want to look around even more, so you drag this map, once you drag it, simply click "search this location." That'll update your search result and be able to take you into that radius area to see the results. Mike Wendland: Let's talk about Yellowstone and let's see what we can find around Yellowstone. And we should pick a date, maybe. What do you think? We'll pick, yeah, I don't know. How about the second weekend of May? Something like that. Mark Koep: So we don't pull data because the problem you have with any date-specific searches is that the different reservation engines are different. So from recreation.gov we don't pull any data information, but we'll give you the park information. Mike a lot of people go to Yellowstone as their first camping trip for the summer. It's their big trip. They bought the new RV. They want to go there. How to get a Camping Reservation: Search a wider area for mega-popular camping locations like Yellowstone The color at Biscuit Basin in Yellowstone's ar-northwestern Upper Geyser Basin is a photographer's delight. For help on how to find a camping reservation this summer, try searching a 100-mile radius of the park Some key things, if you've never been to Yellowstone is that Yellowstone is absolutely massive. If you want to drive the grand loop, it's like 150 miles just for that loop of driving, you are going to be driving in Yellowstone. So we actually encourage people to open the radius up to about a hundred miles around Yellowstone to really get a lot of campgrounds, such as the campgrounds in West Yellowstone, the Island Park area, over in Cody, to the East up North to Red Lodge. And as you see right now, most of the search results are the National Park campgrounds that are within Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks. But this year there's been an important change for these campgrounds, all of the campgrounds are now on the reservation system, the recreation.gov reservation system in those two parks. How to get a Camping Reservation: Try Forest Service Camping Forest Service camping around popular destinations is almost always available, especially if you are a boondocker. So you have to book them in advance. There are, though, a lot of forest service campgrounds located around Yellowstone. So for example, up in the Northern part, up near Gardiner, Montana, there are a number of forest service campgrounds just outside the gate that people are unaware of. Also, our little hidden spot if you're coming from the West like from LA or California or something like that, there's a town called Island Park, Idaho. Most people have never heard of it. But it actually has the longest main street in America. It's a 25-mile long main street for Island Park. There are a ton of forest service campgrounds in this region. Absolutely beautiful. And you're only about a 45-minute drive from the entrance of Yellowstone of which you'll be driving 150 miles inside of it anyways. So that's our insider spot to go. Mike Wendland: And then there's also the north end. We always have gone around Silver Gate up on the northeast entrance to Yellowstone. Mark Koep: Nobody ever goes to that area, right? So that's always a nice, quiet camping area. Mike Wendland: We do, that's why we go there. Yeah. In the heat of summer, when everybody's there, we've always been able to find a pretty great spot within just a few minutes of the North Gate of Yellowstone by camping in this area, up in the North. Mark Koep: Plus you can go then out to Red Lodge, the Cooke City, Silver Gate area. You can also go back down the Beartooth Highway. Mike Wendland: It'll run from the North end over to Cody. It's a spectacular drive. I don't know if I'd take it in a Class A, but I would take it in a C and certainly a B. And I would do it in a small towable. You must be flexible on camping locations You can almost always find camping in and around the Shoshone National Forest. We're making the point here of not having such tunnel vision that we think we have to be in one location only because chances are,