The days of same day booking for parks seem to be gone.

[LMHS]

My last trip was in March (3 days) . I didn't make a reservation. We stayed in a private park. There were other options in the town we were staying in just incase the first place I picked out wasn't available.

Previous trip was almost 3000 miles round trip. I made one same-day reservation at a State Park in Arkansas. That was done only because I knew we would be rolling in after the office closed. The trip East had no other reservations and we stayed in parking lots the whole way (Sam's Club or Cracker Barrels plus one DollarTree). On the way back West, I made a single same-day reservation at what used to be one of our favourite county parks. I was traveling with my daughter and she really wanted to stay there. It's no longer a favourite because I had to make a 2 day reservation in the middle of the week for a one night stay (it now says on the reservation site that it is a 2 night minimum but when I made the reservation, I had to ask the park ranger why the system wouldn't take my single night reservation). If it hadn't been crazy evening rush hour (which is more like 3 hours of horrible traffic), I would have left and stayed at a nearby State Park that we liked. We stayed at two other parks (one private - mostly to dump the waste tanks on the truck camper - and one city park) and just drove up. Again, I did have back ups for the private park as well as the city park.

Always have a backup overnight stay and an alternative route when possible.

 

[bpaikman]

We have always booked anywhere from 2 months to 1 month in advance. RVParky is my main app I use.

It is all about the miles per day. I try to find a site maybe 300 miles down the road. If there isn’t anything available then I simply adjust my miles until I get a site booked. It could be 400 miles or it could be 250 miles. Or, I might find a good bargain for a 2 night stay that saves some money, then a longer travel day after that.

My point is it takes some mapping and planning. In all of our years of full time traveling we have never had issues finding sites.

Agree. And in figuring our routes, I add 50-100 extra miles "credit" to the day's travel if passing through major cities, bad construction zones, or mountain passes.

 

[FL-JOE]

Exactly. I gauge my daily travel distance differently if I am going to be on US-Routes compared to all interstate highways also. Terrain makes a difference as does big metro area.

What we have started doing in our new little TT this year is mapping away from interstates and big cities.

We just spent about 10 days coming from central FL up to central Illinois. We didn't go through Atlanta, Nashville, Birmingham, Montgomery, or any other big busy city. We did end up going though the tunnel at Mobile on I-10 but that was it. Most of this trip has been US-highways and State routes. It has been more relaxing and interesting.