Where People Camp in California
CampsiteScan keeps an eye campgrounds spread across California state parks, national forests and national parks. Add it all up and you get roughly 25,000 individual sites. When people run searches here, most of them end up in one of six regions, and no two are hard to book for the same reason.
The coast and the mountains fill through summer, then go quiet by November. The desert runs the opposite schedule. Joshua Tree in July sits nearly empty; Joshua Tree in March disappeared six months ago. Figure out which curve you are up against and you have solved most of the problem.
Yosemite
67 campgrounds. Upper Pines, North Pines and Wawona vanish within minutes of the window opening. Cancellations are how the majority of people actually get in, and Valley sites like Lower Pines rank as the most contested reservations in California. Want a Valley weekend? Set the alert first, build the plan second.
Sierra Nevada
201 campgrounds. Mammoth, Tahoe, Sequoia, the Eastern Sierra. Our largest region by far, and the one where a 25 mile search radius almost always turns something up. Flexible campers clean up here: choose an area rather than a single campground and your odds improve dramatically.
Southern California beaches
38 campgrounds. Malibu, Orange County, San Diego. Eleven coastal parks showed nothing bookable on any night we checked in late August. You will find the full breakdown in our beach camping guide. Bringing a dog along? Only four of these beaches let one onto the sand, covered in beach camping with dogs.
The desert
41 campgrounds. Joshua Tree, Anza-Borrego, Death Valley, the Mojave. October through April is peak, which makes summer the easy booking. A July reservation win lives here, assuming you can take the heat.
Big Sur
14 campgrounds. Smallest region on the list, hardest per site. Pfeiffer Big Sur and Andrew Molera soak up demand from the entire central coast, and both routinely show zero open nights in our hardest to book ranking.
Northern California
137 campgrounds. Shasta, Trinity, Lassen, the redwoods. Your best odds in the state, as long as you are willing to drive past Sacramento. Even at peak August, most of this region still has open weekend sites.
Whichever region you are fighting
Cancellations level the playing field. Every region above churns nonstop as plans fall apart. Choose a campground, or search an area and pick up to 6 with Pro, and we will text or email you the moment a site opens for your dates. One campground is free.