re puddlepounder: “The same is here in Minnesota, you can go into the office and they will look it up and see if it is reserved that day, if it isn’t, you can reserve it and camp. They are supposed to install phones at the offices to make it easier, when that will happen is anybody’s guess. Change is hard for some people. Is it perfect, no, nothing is. ”

Missing the point. It’s NOT if you can go into the office SAME DAY and if a site is empty, get it FOR THE DAY. It’s if you can call THAT DAY to a park and findout how many NON-RESERVABLE sites are available, plan accordingly, and get one for the duration you WANT… SO, for people that work at non-traditional schedule (off from the middle of the week through a weekend, or retirees, or others who prefer to do things on a more spur of the moment style than to make a reservation LAST JANUARY for a site in August, they’re PRETTY WELL SCREWED.

Yes, you may walk in on Tuesday morning and the office will have a site that ISN’T RESERVED, but you can pretty well GUARANTEE that you aren’t staying in it through the weekend.

“Change is hard for some people. Is it perfect, no, nothing is. ”

Stupid change, that makes the parks less inviting to a minority of users has NOTHING to do with being “hard for some people”.

Yes, in MN they decided to make EVERY STINKING SITE IN EVERY PARK RESERVABLE. Which means that in January a huge percentage of the sites are gone for months in advance. Yes, I’m sure it’s very nice for the DNR to extract as much as possible from park users.

As for the “well, sites would sit empty ’cause people didn’t know if they’d be availble”, we’ve been doing it for YEARS. OR WERE, UNTIL THIS YEAR! You wanted to go to Itasca early in the week (say Wednesday)? Call that morning, ask how many non-reservable sites were available, and if there are 4 or 5, you zip on up and grab one. OR you could ask what RESERVABLE sites were available and if there were some reserve one FROM the park WITHOUT GETTING SCREWED FOR A RESERVATION FEE.

All gone… As I understand it, this deterioration started when MN hired some guy from Colorado to run the DNR. Suddenly, you COULDN’T contact the park and get a site. You HAD to go through the reservation system. And you COULDN’T specify the site, just whatever they wanted to give you. Then they decided to “try” making “some” parks 100% reservation. And decided the extra bucks at the expense of seniors and retired people and spur-of-the-moment travelers was worth disenfranchising that whole group of park users. THEN they decided THIS YEAR that it worked SO WELL, they’d make 100% OF THE PARKS IN MN 100% RESERVABLE….

As far as I’m concerned, it sucks. No more contacting Itasca periodically to see when the Showy Lady’s Slippers are blooming then running up early in the week for a week or two of flower photography. If you don’t know exactly when you want to be there in January, you can pretty much forget getting anything at any of the more “popular” parks.

And that campsite for the 2 night weekend is going to cost you $35 for water and elec. No sewer. No wifi. PLUS the $8.50 reservation fee raising your nightly rate for $40. So it’s as much as a private campsite with full hookups. On top of that you get to pay $5/day or $25/year for the privilege of entering the park.

I know Wisconsin is somewhat equally screwed up, but if I recall correctly, the last time we were in Tennessee, BEAUTIFUL state parks were MUCH less expensive, and VERY readily available without reservations and reservation fees. I believe the same was true in Georgia when I was there. I fervently hope other states DON’T get in on the money grab MN has embraced (which given their appetite for taxes shouldn’t surprise anyone)…

Anyhow, I hope there’s enough howling for the DNR to rethink this repugnant new policy, but as long as they can extract the absolute maximum buck from everyone, I suspect the answer will be “screw them people that want to come without a reservation.”

Unfortunately, my first post isn’t as positive as some of the others…

I have to say I DESPISE the new “100%” reservation policy for state parks.

Other than a simple money grab, and the opportunity to totally screw the population of travelers and retired people and those who prefer to head to the state parks early in the week, grab a non-reservable space and stay through the weekend, what WAS their rationalization?

I live in MN. I don’t HATE it, but it’s no great shakes either. One of the NICE things WAS the ability to check the state parks, find out which NON-RESERVABLE sites were available, and head over early in the week to stay through the weekend. I don’t know who’s in charge of the parks, but in the last 10-15 years, they’ve done nothing but made the option of camping in the state parks less and less appetizing.

The latest is the brain trust decision to disenfranchise everyone that DOESN’T want to book a summer weekend campsite in January. So travelers, retired people, and anyone that likes to head out to the parks early in the week to enjoy a stay through the weekend WITHOUT having to reserve a non-existent site is totally screwed.

Top that with the grotesque reservation system that CHARGES to make a campsite reservation. Does your restaurant charge you to reserve a table? How about your hotel? They charging you to reserve a room? OF COURSE NOT! But, the MN DNR manages to put yet another money grab in place to screw another few bucks out of everyone that reserves a campsite…

Overall, this seems like just another policy that makes it less and less appetizing to live in this ridiculously high-tax state that continuously find new ways to screw extra money of of residents.