What are "bots"?

 

Rather than link in and compete for sites, software designers write software programs that link into the reservation site at the 8:00 a.m. witching hour and grab an open site faster than a human can respond thus the term robots or abbreviated to bots.

 

Are "bots" stealing your campsite? Answer: Yes! - RV Travel

I do not at all condone nor accept the one recommendation made at the end of the article about using bots. That does nothing other than to exacerbate the problem. Theoretically, bots are illegal to use on recreation.gov. But, there again its illegal to speed on the public highway too.....

 

Here is a thought. Once enough folks use bots, it negates any advantage of having one. However, my preference would be everyone have a bot so no one has to get up early to fight for a space. Why not just automate the whole process? I think as long as anything is in short supply, there will always be some folks trying to jump the line.

 

The whole BS of refunding all but a $5 or $10 fee for cancelling reservations even a day or 2 after the reservation is to blame. If you can't commit to loosing the full price of a site, don't reserve it. I agree with the statement above, make them pay double if they don't show up

Don't get me wrong, I get that @$&% happens on the road and you may not make the reservation 400 miles away if something mechanical or health wise happens, but when I see 75% of the sites empty at state or national parks even tho the computer shows reserved there should be no refunds, and a first come first serve after 9pm. I know we don't pass that many broke down campers on the roads to assume all the empty reservationists broke down en route.

Most the time all you want is a somewhat level place to sleep when travelling cross country. In the summer ideally a 30+ amp hookup for AC and maybe water. We've parked in boat ramp parking lots overnight because a way off the interstate place shows they are all booked up online, and the person who answers the phone says someone might cancel last minute, come on down and find out, yet they will have many many empty spots all thru the night.

 

Where we have camped in state parks there is normally one campsite open, maybe two, but never a high percentage and more often everything is full. Guess it varies with the area.

 

Here in Western Oregon and to some extent, Central Oregon around Bend or LaPine, (popular Deschutes River Fishery), are always full during the summer. There are usually a few Handicap only camp sites that don't get reserved and those are released to the general camping public at 1900 hrs. every day for a single night on a 1st come 1st served basis.
In some of the State parks in Oregon they create false shortages by closing loops in the campground Sept-June, taking a lot of camp sites "off the market". We usually only stay in State or Federal Camps out of convenience to our plans. We mostly wild camp.

It will be interesting to see how many empty sites there are this year and how many of those actually get cancelled so they are available to others. These high fuel prices are going to cause more than a few people to change plans, and we were no exception. We'll get our first look at that March 27 at Detroit Lake Oregon State Park Campground. We had 3 additional 1 week trips to this campground scheduled for April and May along with boat slip reservations, but have canceled them out. We kept March 27 - April 1 and we kept an RO2N for June 1st but that is a different campground stop over rest stop for a "short" trip to Eastern Oregon for an Oregon Chapter G2G.
JOut of curiosity, I just checked the State Campgrounds. They have a few more openings now than they had a month ago. So it appears at least some people are calling in and canceling cancelling their reservations.
The USFS primitive camp we spend several weeks at doesn't even open up until the snow melts around mid June. I don't see any differences there yet.

 

a computer program designed for a specific task. Most bots click links to hold a place in line, or bid on an item to a certain dollar value. Some click on sites just to overload a server.