Book Hard-to-Find National Park Campground Reservations with CampScanner

There’s nothing quite like sleeping under the stars at a national park. Whether it’s making s’mores over the campfire and listening to wolves howl in Yellowstone, or unzipping your tent to Half Dome views at Yosemite, a quintessential national park vacation would be missing that certain something without a campsite. The problem is, everybody and their brother agrees. Campgrounds at our national parks can be some of the hottest ticket reservations of the year and unless you want to book over a year in advance, you’re out of luck. That is, unless you have a CampScanner subscription.

Gone are the days of obsessively checking Recreation.gov for a cancellation at your favorite park. CampScanner, a new tool from Harvest Hosts, does all the legwork for you and can help you find hard-to-get reservations at campgrounds in national parks, national forests and other great campsites across the U.S. All you have to do is pick your park (or individual campground), specify what kind of site you’re looking for, choose your desired dates and CampScanner sets up a scan. If and when a cancellation comes through and a campsite becomes available, you’ll get a text prompting you to book.

CampScanner has three levels of plans to choose from. If you’re a frequent camper or are desperately hoping for space at one of the most popular campgrounds over prime summer weekends, you should opt for the $79 Summit plan. This yearly option gives you the best chances of booking and scans for campsites every five minutes and lets you set up to 15 concurrent scans. One step down is the Trailhead tier, which scans every 10 minutes for $49 per year and lets you set up 10 scans at a time. The intro level tier is Basecamp at $39 per year, which scans every 15 minutes and lets you set up five scans at once. All CampScanner plans scan for available campgrounds on major booking sites like Recreation.gov, and CA.gov.

For your best chance at snagging that reservation before anyone else, make sure you have an account set up with whichever entity manages the reservations (for most national parks, this is Recreation.gov) and that you have your username and password handy. CampScanner doesn’t book the site for you, so you’ll have to move quickly as soon as you see the text come in. It’s a good idea to download the Recreation.gov app onto your phone so you can easily make your reservation whether you’re at work, at your kid’s basketball game, or you’re woken up by a 3 a.m. notification.

Use code NPTRIPS for 15% off any plan. Learn more and pick your perfect plan at CampScanner.com.