National Park Reservations For Those Who Plan

Above, camping at Yosemite Valley's North Pines Campground. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

Over the years, I have only made national park campsite reservations twice. 

The first was in November 2015 for a site at North Pines Campground in Yosemite National Park in April 2016. I calendared the date the reservation system for when it opened for the campground and got a site within minutes of its opening. Sites were gobbled up pretty fast.

The second was easier, I just logged into the Grand Canyon National Park's Trailer Village site and made a reservation. 

Both times, I did so while living in California. I am not so sure if my zip code at the time made any difference. Apparently, to some, higher zip codes give people an advantage. At least that's what an article in RV Travel says.

They begin with:

RVers know how this works. You map out a trip months in advance, then weather turns bad, the truck needs repairs, somebody gets sick—or you find a place you like and decide to stay another week.

That can make national park reservations a problem. Some campsites and park-entry permits disappear almost as soon as they become available. Others have to be booked months before you arrive.

New research suggests those systems may give an advantage to people from better-off communities.

Jonathan Hughes, an economist at the University of Colorado Boulder, studied reservation systems at seven national parks. He found that people who won some of the toughest reservation scrambles tended to live in higher-income ZIP codes. So did people who booked months ahead.

Twice in recent years, I pulled into two national parks without reservations and got a campsite. The first was at Joshua Tree National Park and the other was at Lassen Volcanic National Park.

To read more, go here.