Recreation.gov auto-cart

Most US national park and national forest campgrounds are booked on Recreation.gov, and the popular ones sell out months ahead. People cancel all the time. CampHawk watches 3,600+ Recreation.gov campgrounds, checking as often as every 15 seconds, and on the Auto-Cart plan it also tries to put an opening straight into your own Recreation.gov cart.

Recreation.gov’s own alerts

Recreation.gov has had free availability alerts since 2024, and they are worth turning on. An alert still leaves the race to you: by the time you have opened the site, found the dates and pressed Add to Cart, a popular site is often gone. Auto-cart is for that part.

Between July 22 and September 4, 2026 we watched 502 hard-to-book campgrounds, and a fully booked stay became bookable on about 0.9% of checks. Openings are rare, which is why the seconds after one matter.

How auto-cart works on Recreation.gov

1. 1Watch the campground you could not book.Search by name or place, pick your dates or a flexible window, and start a watch.
2. 2Connect Recreation.gov once.On the Auto-Cart plan, open Settings, connect Recreation.gov under Auto-cart, and turn it on.
3. 3When a site opens, we alert you and try to cart it.You get the alert the moment we see the opening, and at the same moment we try to add the site to your own Recreation.gov cart. If it worked, a second message says so.
4. 4Sign in and check out.Open Recreation.gov on your phone, signed in to the same account, and check out. Your cart is only visible to that account.

What to expect

• The alert never waits for the cart. You hear about an opening at the same moment we try to cart it, so you can always book it yourself.
• It can miss. A popular site can be booked by someone else within seconds of opening. When we do not get it, book from the alert as you normally would.
• One cart per stay. Once a site is in your cart we do not add a second one for the same dates while it is held.
• Check out promptly. Recreation.gov holds a site in the cart for about 15 minutes.
• It is for your trip, and you book and pay on the booking site yourself. Keep your watches current so it knows what to look for.

Before you start

• Have a Recreation.gov account, and be signed in on your phone.
• Check Recreation.gov’s own rules for how far ahead each campground books and for its cancellation fees. Those are the agency’s to set.
• Watch more than one campground if you can. A nearby campground with less demand often opens first.

Auto-cart also works on Minnesota State Parks, Ohio State Parks, Washington State Parks, Michigan State Parks, Wisconsin State Parks, Mississippi State Parks, Louisiana State Parks, South Dakota State Parks and Canadian parks. How auto-cart works everywhere.

CampHawk is an independent service and is not affiliated with, endorsed by or operated by Recreation.gov, the National Park Service, the US Forest Service, ReserveCalifornia or any state park agency. Reservation data comes from the sources listed on our data sources page.