The best campsites shouldn’t go to whoever refreshes fastest

I grew up camping in Texas (thanks, Boy Scouts), then spent my twenties in New York City trading trails for sidewalks. When COVID hit, my wife and I had moved to suburban New Jersey and we started camping again. The first place we went was the Adirondacks: Lake Durant, then Fish Creek Pond, then Rollins Pond. That’s where I learned how competitive the good campgrounds are. The best sites at the most popular parks are gone within minutes of the reservation block opening.

What I kept wondering was simpler than it sounds: how do you find the best sites at a campground you’ve never been to? Without a friend to whisper “site 27” in your ear, you’re guessing. In the summer of 2024 I started writing the hacky script I needed, first to map what made a site genuinely good across hundreds of parks, then to watch for cancellations when the good ones were already booked.

That’s what CampCancel turned into. We scan every campground in the US and Canada every five minutes by plugging into the reservation systems that run them: Recreation.gov on the federal side, and the major state-park platforms (ReserveAmerica, US eDirect, plus the few states running their own) for everything else. When a site you’d actually want opens up, you get an email. That’s the whole product.

This is for the people whose vacation days don’t line up neatly with reservation windows. The families trying to keep a tradition going when work, kids, and life keep nudging the dates around. If you’re like me, you can’t sit at a laptop on a Tuesday morning waiting for the block to open. I built the tool I wanted, and I’m betting other campers want it too.

I’m not trying to get rich here. I’m trying to make camping easier. I run the whole thing, scrapers and server and support inbox. If you paid for CampCancel and it didn’t serve you well, email tim@campcancel.com and I’ll refund your money or do whatever I can to make it right. A real human reads every email, usually replies the same day.