Tent & Tree
Recreation.gov / Release dates
When campsites go on sale on Recreation.gov
Recreation.gov says most campsites can be booked six months before the arrival date, and most campgrounds go on sale at 7am Pacific (8am Mountain, 10am Eastern). The window rolls: each morning, one more arrival date goes on sale. Some campgrounds use a shorter window, and some release a month at a time on a set day. The calculator below reads the campground's own calendar to find which.
When does my date go on sale?
What the calendar is telling you
- Available
- On sale and free. It sits in your cart for 15 minutes once you add it, then goes back if you don't finish.
- Reserved
- Booked. It comes back as Available if the person cancels.
- Open
- Past the last arrival date on sale, but bookable as part of a stay that starts on an earlier night, so these nights can fill before they go on sale.
- NYR
- Not yet released: past the booking window.
- Not Reservable
- That site can't be booked online that night.
So the morning a date goes on sale, part of it can already be gone. Kirk Creek, on the Big Sur coast, is one example. On October 1, 2026, arrivals through April 1, 2027 were on sale, and 23 of its 30 reservable sites were already reserved for the night of April 2, by stays starting April 1. April 2 itself was due to go on sale the next morning.
How fast the 7am release goes
On Sunday, November 1 we read the night going on sale at each campground we track just before 7am Pacific, then again through the morning. "Reserved before 7am" are sites already taken by stays that started on an earlier night, the "Open" nights above. The rest went on sale at 7:00.
| Campground | On sale | Reserved before 7am | First read | ~15 min | ~1 hour | Sold out |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kirk Creek | May 1, 2027 | 30 of 30 sites | 0 left 7:00 | 0 left 7:15 | — | Nothing went on sale |
| Kirby Cove | May 1, 2027 | 5 of 6 sites | 1 left 7:00 | 0 left 7:15 | — | By 7:02 |
| Diamond O | May 1, 2027 | 1 of 20 sites | 19 left 7:00 | 19 left 7:15 | — | 19 left at 7:17 |
| Dinkey Creek | May 1, 2027 | 0 of 119 sites | 119 left 7:00 | 119 left 7:15 | — | 119 left at 7:17 |
| June Lake | May 1, 2027 | 1 of 28 sites | 27 left 7:00 | 27 left 7:15 | — | 27 left at 7:17 |
| Plaskett Creek | May 1, 2027 | 30 of 38 sites | 8 left 7:00 | 8 left 7:15 | — | 8 left at 7:17 |
| Silver Lake | May 1, 2027 | 21 of 63 sites | 42 left 7:00 | 42 left 7:15 | — | 42 left at 7:17 |
Each time is when our read happened, so "by 7:05" means it was gone when we looked at 7:05; it may have gone sooner. "Left" counts sites still Available for that night. Sites already on sale before 7am (a few campgrounds sell some sites further ahead) aren't counted. Sold-out nights come back when people cancel: cancellations we've caught →
When do cancellations come back?
Recreation.gov puts a cancelled night back on the calendar with no announcement, at whatever hour the person cancels. We check every site at the popular California campgrounds we track around the clock. In the last 30 days, 8,404 booked site-nights came back up. Here's the hour we first saw each one open, Pacific time:
The busiest band was 9am–12pm, the quietest 3am–6am. A night that opens and is rebooked between two of our checks isn't counted, and Recreation.gov slows our checks at times, so these are floors. The live log →
Recreation.gov's rules quoted from its tips for booking popular campgrounds ("most campsites can be booked six months prior to your arrival date", "Most campgrounds go on sale at 7am PT/8am MT/10am ET, but not always!"), read October 1, 2026. Each campground's window comes from its own Recreation.gov calendar and rules when you look it up. Late-cancellation fees: the cancellation policy, in plain words. Yosemite's 15th-of-the-month releases: the Yosemite release calendar. National parks, campground by campground: Glacier, Yellowstone, Zion and more.