State Park Reservations

[Gulfcoast]

Every state park in NW Florida and south Alabama shows to be booked for the summer. I have not found even one spot open until October.

Are there any secrets to getting reservations, or did i wait too late for this year? Do I have to reserve a year in advance?

Thanks for your help.

[Gulfcoast]

I founds some sites in August and September, but nothing on the earlier dates I wanted.

[monkey44]

johnhicks wrote:
Big Katuna that ticks me off too. The park stays empty five days out of seven because of weekend warriors and eventually the state closes it or pawns it off on a municipality for lack of use.

There's probably no rational solution.

That's probably the biggest problem with state parks everywhere - full weekends take out many of the two week vacation bookings.

[johnhicks]

Big Katuna that ticks me off too. The park stays empty five days out of seven because of weekend warriors and eventually the state closes it or pawns it off on a municipality for lack of use.

There's probably no rational solution.

[agesilaus]

There are always commercial cg, usually you can find a site at one of those. If you are trying to find a site near a beach then you can always expect those to be booked up.

[drsteve]

Constantly check the parks you want for cancellations. There are more than you might expect. People book large blocs of time to get a few days they want, and cancel later. Or sometimes life gets in the way and plans made a year in advance do not work out.

[ljr]

Magnolia Branch Wildlife Reserve is pretty busy during the summer but it’s on tribal land and not that well known. You might get lucky. It’s a great place in SW Alabama.

[huachuca]

Would the National Forests work for you? We’ve enjoyed Juniper Springs in Ocala NF several times.

[Big_Katuna]

It’s 11 months window in Florida starting at 8:00 AM. What ticks me off is that they let people books weekend 11 mos out leaving empty nights during the week.

I’d like to see weeklies to get 11 months and weekenders 3 mos.

Anything in Florida near water books up way out.

[Gulfcoast]

Every campground THAT I CHECKED ON was full, and I need specific weekends, not just any day of the month.

[agesilaus]

Every site? I just plugged 5/30 for 3 days in this website and found 11 sites open. That was with flexible 30 day window. And one of them was the most difficult park of all to get a site in: Bahia Honda .

But if you want a specific park during a fixed date range you better reserve the day, or even the minute it opens.

[wildtoad]

Yep. Many of the popular state parks are booked a year in advance here in SC. Actually 12 months as that’s the window for reservations.

[donn0128]

Jere in the far west its been that way for the last four or fives years. It shows how many are getting into RVing.

[khager76248]

I don't know about Florida, but I do know that there are alot of state parks and federal parks that you do have to reserve right when they become available (For summer months). We booked a month stay in Ca one year, it was really hard to get what we wanted and we had to be fast, and flexible. All the sights were booked within minutes of becoming open. I am from Texas, and we have one state park, Garner near San Antonio that you have to book a year in advance to get a spot.