Sold-out campground alerts
The campground is sold out. Here's how you still get in.
Fully-booked doesn't mean fully-going. A meaningful share of campsite reservations get cancelled before arrival — and each one reopens a site on the public calendar for whoever notices first. PingMyCamp is the noticing part: it watches the sold-out campground for you, 24/7, and pings you the minute a matching site opens.
What actually happens when someone cancels.
When a reservation is cancelled on Recreation.gov or Parks Canada, the site goes straight back into the public booking pool — no waitlist, no announcement, no priority for anyone. It simply shows as available to the next person who looks at the calendar. At famous campgrounds in peak season, that window can be minutes: other campers (and their alert tools) are watching too.
Refreshing the page yourself works in principle. In practice, cancellations land at unpredictable hours — late nights, mid-workday — and no one refreshes a booking calendar at 2am. An automated watcher checks every minute without getting bored, and an SMS reaches you even when your phone is locked. Your only job is the ~30 seconds it takes to complete the booking.
Three steps, one ping.
1. Save an alert for the sold-out campground
Pick the campground, your arrival date, nights, and how flexible your dates are (±7 days catches far more cancellations). Takes about a minute on the homepage form.
2. We watch the calendar around the clock
PingMyCamp re-checks availability continuously and compares every scan against the last known state — so a site flipping from booked to open is caught within about a minute.
3. You get the ping and book it yourself
Email + SMS with the exact site, date, and a direct booking link. The reservation happens in your own account at the normal price. If it's gone before you tap, we keep watching and ping you on the next one.
Sold-out campground questions.
The campground shows zero availability. Is it really hopeless?
No — 'sold out' is a snapshot, not a verdict. Reservations at popular parks open months ahead and life happens in between: plans change, weather turns, refund deadlines push people to decide. Every one of those cancellations quietly reopens a site on the public calendar, usually without any announcement. The only question is who notices first. In our own monitoring of fully-booked Yosemite campgrounds, individual summer sites reopened and were re-booked within the same hour.
How do I get notified when a sold-out campground opens up?
Save an alert for the campground and dates you want (the form is on our homepage — it takes about a minute). PingMyCamp then checks that campground's public availability continuously, compares each check against the last known state, and the moment a site flips from booked to available you get an email and an SMS with the site number, the date, and a direct link to the booking page. You complete the reservation yourself in your own Recreation.gov or Parks Canada account.
When do cancellations usually happen?
They cluster around three moments: right after weekends (people finalize plans), at refund-policy deadlines (Recreation.gov charges bigger fees closer to arrival, so people cancel just before the cutoff), and late at night when trip organizers finally do admin. That last one is why an SMS that wakes your phone beats manually refreshing — the best openings often appear while you're asleep.
Does this work for any campground?
Any reservable campground on Recreation.gov (US national parks, national forests, and more) or Parks Canada's reservation.pc.gc.ca — that includes marquee spots like Yosemite's Upper Pines, Zion's Watchman, and Banff. State-park systems (ReserveAmerica, Ontario Parks, etc.) aren't covered yet.
Start watching your campground.
$15/month or $45 once for lifetime access — both with 20 alerts, 1-minute scans, and email + SMS. 7-day refund window if no alerts have been delivered.