About this almanac
- Page revised
Campground Availability is a seasonal reference for people deciding where and when to camp. It covers six destinations and answers one kind of question: in a given month, which campgrounds are operating, when did that month's dates go on sale, and what does the park say about how busy it is?
Who publishes it
The site is published by OpenCampsite, a service that watches sold-out campgrounds and notifies campers when a matching site opens. OpenCampsite wrote and maintains every page here. Where a page mentions OpenCampsite, it is because an alert is a reasonable next step for a reader whose month has sold out. Nothing can be booked on this site, and it takes no payment from parks, campgrounds or other services.
Where the dates come from
Every date, site count and quoted statement comes from the agency that runs the campground: the National Park Service and Recreation.gov for Yosemite, Zion and Joshua Tree, California State Parks for Pfeiffer Big Sur, Ontario Parks for Algonquin, and Parks Canada for Banff. The sources are linked at the foot of each page with the day they were last checked.
A few figures are our own arithmetic on those published numbers, such as the running count of open sites on the Banff page. Those are labelled as ours.
What is left out on purpose
- Estimated odds. No agency in this almanac publishes occupancy by month, and we do not invent it. Where a page says a campground is "usually full" in a certain month, those are the park's words.
- Anything we could not confirm. If an official page did not state a season date or a rule on the day we checked, the page here says so or omits it.
- Booking tactics. This is a calendar, not a how-to. Each destination page gives the one sales rule you need to read its calendar and stops there.
How current it is
Agencies publish operating dates one season at a time, usually a few months ahead. The pages show the latest published season and name the year. Weather, fire and repairs change those dates after they are announced, so the linked source always outranks this site.
We recheck a page when its agency posts dates for a new season.
Corrections
If a date here disagrees with the agency's page, the agency is right and we would like to fix it. Write to hey@opencampsite.com with the page and the date.
Other sites from the same publisher
OpenCampsite publishes several small reference sites, each on one subject:
- campsiteavailability.com
- campsiteavailable.com
- groupcampsites.com
- groupcampgrounds.com
- wildernesspermitalerts.com
- bestcampsitealert.com