BC Prov Park policy states that on a holiday weekends you are required to reserve three days. If the holiday is on Monday, but the three days I want to reserve are Thurs, Fri, Sat (not staying until Monday)will that qualify me for the three day requirement?
Try and book it and see .......... should have added when they open for reservations. But I think it will, as you will be starting prior to and ending your stay during the weekend.
You can always try to reserve those days. If the system doesn't accept your reservation, you will know that you can't. I suspect they will allow you to reserve Thursday night, but not the other 2. If they allowed you to reserve only Friday and Saturday, they are likely to have an unreserved, and possibly unoccupied site Sunday night. The point of the policy is to maximize use when faced with high demand.
What you could try, is find an unreserved site on Thursday. Then you can stay as long as you want. Depending on the park, the unreserved sites might not be quite so nice, say on an inner loop away from the lake. But most sites in BC parks are the same size, consisting of a large oblong gravel pad, without utilities. I also try to pick a park that is further away from the cities when faced with a busy weekend, and when in doubt, arrive early in the afternoon.
paulj
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I am almost positive you will not have any trouble if you arrive on a Thursday. I think the rule only applies to just the long weekend stays with a Friday arrival (people trying to reserve only Friday and Saturday nights). It's a dumb rule, in my opinion, but I guess they try to maximize the long weekenders.
I wish BC Parks would get a different reservation system. Their reservation system (they use Discover Camping) only opens on April 1 each year and they are BOMBARDED with reservations for the Canada Day long weekend because of the 3 month advance reservation rule. They need to start opening earlier in the year for the really organized folks - and for people like you that have questions that should be answered now and not in April! Try finding someone at BC Parks to answer that question. It's not easy... Don't even get me started on the lack of site-specific reservations. I complain every year for them to get a site-specific reservation system like Reserve America, and they continue with their archiac system of employing someone at every single reservable BC Park to manually assign sites. C'mon BC Parks - hire someone else besides Discover Camping already!
Okay - rant over. Enjoy your camping!
Paula
Larry, Paula and Two Kids (ages 5 & 3)
2006 Dodge Ram Power Wagon
2007 Jayco Jay Flight 20BH
Paula ... good words. We quit using the reservation system because
1) the reservation fee applies to each night you stay, not just to the one-time reservation.
2) you can't select your site. A couple of times we've been assigned the worst site in the campground; fortunately there was always a good first-come, first-served site available so we simply switched. Made me wonder why we paid the extra to reserve!
Since I don't work Fridays anyway, DH now takes Fridays off and we head out Thursday evening to campground of choice. The fee for the extra night of camping works out cheaper than reserving for three nights, and we get an extra day to relax.
We prefer picking our site and knowing it's the best available for our needs at the time we arrive. Reserved sites are not the best ones; they're usually just one area of the campground.
The atmosphere at park campgrounds is changing so we're thinking we'll be doing more backroads and camping on Crown lands. We prefer to not listen to music 24/7, and really prefer to not listen to someone else's music 24/7.
Soup and Sue - yeah, I am sure there are more of us that are sick of Discover Camping and their outdated reservation system (the EXACT same system has been in place since 1996. Haven't reservation systems come a long way since then? It's utterly sickening that BC Parks hasn't paid some $$$$ for a new one...esp. considering they flush money down the toilet every day half the year employing someone to assign sites at reservable campgrounds).
I agree with you Sue, about the reservation fee. The fee should be charged for the privilege of reserving - not based on the number of nights you are staying. Almost $20 just for reservation fees is highway robbery...esp. when you consider the system is so old and inefficient. Where is this money going, anyway? To pay the idiots that pick the sites for you to camp in (and then to handle all the complaints each day when people don't get the sites they wanted)?
Since we started RVing, we like Provincial Parks less because it's becoming more of a headache each year to organize it. I wish I could do what you do, Sue (leave on Thursdays). That's a great way to bypass reservations. We are also sick of the music at night. No one patrols/enforces the quiet time at most parks, but I find this is the case for any place besides private RV Parks.
IMO, it's not really an issue - there is no need to make a reservation at a provincial park anymore. We can pull into a WalMart parking lot if the park is full. ;-)
I have only used this reservation system a couple of times. Once was to reserve a site a Gold Stream for a couple of nights. Previously when I tried to get a site there, they had a waiting list for non-reserved sites. Fortunately at that time, private Paradise Lake campground nearby was still in operation.
Another time I reserved a site at Little Qualicum Falls, for the Thursday before a big weekend. With that I was able to catch an early ferry out of Duke Point and beat the crowds back over the US border. Assignment by the park operator worked to my advantage in that case, since I arrived at the park a day early, and was able to change my reservation so I could stay at the same site for the two nights.
paulj
Yeah, Paul, you can get lucky when it comes to the lack of site specific reservations. We made a last-minute reservation at Herald PP last summer and managed to get assigned one of the best sites in the park right beside the lake. I still hate it, though. I'd rather be organized and get the best site in the park every year - not one time in 12 years.
Oh yeah, and to add insult to injury, BC Parks have increased their camping fees by $2. So $24 gets you a non-hook-up site (but with flush toilets and showers). Wonder if they could reduce (and not increase) those fees if they laid-off all the monkeys assigning reservable sites each year...
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