I’m super excited to announce that after months of work, my latest side project has launched! CamperAlerts is a website where you can create alerts for sold-out campgrounds and then it will notify you when it finds an available campsite.
Background
When the pandemic started in 2020 we were looking for ways to safely get out of the house. I used to go camping in TN before I met my wife so I suggested that. I didn’t think she’d agree, but she did. So we spent a rainy weekend at the same campground I camped at before I climbed Mount Saint Helens. To my great surprise, she was hooked!
We wanted to spend every weekend camping, but soon learned that finding a campsite in the PNW is next to impossible. Everything gets booked within minutes when reservations open up in the spring. So being a nerd I wondered if there was a way for me to monitor the reservation sites and find available campsites whenever people had to inevitably cancel at the last minute.
During the summers of 2020 and 2021, I used a very crude program to monitor 3 big reservation systems. Almost all of our camping trips, including 2 summer campcations, were possible because of that program. I figured other people would use this system too. I found a few websites that offered something similar, but they either weren’t as timely (delivering notifications in bulk at the end of the day) or required an expensive monthly plan.
So I started working on camperalerts.com with the idea that there are lots of people who don’t go camping every weekend. They may only need this service for 1 or 2 trips per year, so why not provide a more affordable option that delivers notifications faster than the other sites. In May of 2022, I started beta testing, mostly with people in my neighborhood who were excited to try it out. And in June I launched to the public.
The Service
Currently, alerts can be set up to scan any campground that can be reserved through Recreation.gov, Washington state’s goingtocamp system, and 5 independent Yellowstone campgrounds. Within the next week, the ReserveAmerica system will be added, unlocking hundreds of additional campgrounds.
Setting up an alert is simple. You search for a campground, choose your alert level (higher levels let you scan for specific campsites, scan more often, and add text notifications as an option), choose your dates, and tell us how to notify you.
Then you can relax and wait for a notification that we found an available campsite for you! We can’t predict the future so we can’t guarantee someone will cancel for the campground and dates you choose, but after 3 years of testing this myself, it is very likely.
If you’re having trouble finding available campsites I’d love for you to try it out!