Get the campsite cancellations everyone else misses.

California state parks — where most of our users want alerts (Crystal Cove, Big Sur, Leo Carrillo, San Onofre) — don't have any native alert feature at all. The official tools that exist for federal sites are email-only and slower. If you want California state parks, fast SMS, and multiple parks at once, this is the tool. If you only need occasional alerts on a single federal campground, the official options are real and free.

No tool can. When a cancellation hits, it's first-come-first-served. The faster you get the alert, the better your odds — getting it in 1–2 minutes vs 30+ minutes is the entire game.

You get a 14-day free trial, and your card isn't charged until day 15. Cancel before then and you pay nothing. After that, if you ever want out, just email me and I'll refund the current month, no questions. Founding members are too important to me to make this complicated.

40+ California parks across both reservation systems — state parks like Crystal Cove, Leo Carrillo, San Onofre, and Big Sur, plus federal sites like Yosemite, Sequoia, Joshua Tree, Lassen, and Tahoe. Coast, Sierra, redwoods, and desert. Don't see your park? Email me and I'll look at adding it.

Good news — we already cover them. Campkey watches both California state parks (through ReserveCalifornia) and the major federal campgrounds (through Recreation.gov): Yosemite (Upper Pines, Tuolumne Meadows), Sequoia (Lodgepole, Dorst Creek), Joshua Tree (Jumbo Rocks, Indian Cove), Lassen Volcanic, the Tahoe National Forest sites, and the Big Sur federal campgrounds (Kirk Creek, Plaskett Creek). Channel Islands isn't supported yet. Don't see a specific campground? Email me and I'll look at adding it.

A few real differences. Speed: we poll every 2 minutes during peak booking hours, and free tools are usually slower — on a first-come-first-served cancellation, that speed is the whole game. The California intelligence layer: nobody else pairs the alert with what a California camper actually needs — a quality rating so you skip the bad sites, wildfire and closure alerts when a fire threatens a park you're watching, plus tides and surf forecasts for coastal trips. Focus: we only do California, across both ReserveCalifornia and Recreation.gov, so we go deeper here than a national tool can. If you camp outside California, honestly a free national tool may be the better fit. If you camp in California, this is built for you.

Honest answer: it happens. Cancellations are first-come-first-served, and a site that pops at 2 AM may be gone by morning. Two mitigations: (1) your trip date window can be wide (e.g., "any weekend in June"), so even if you miss one alert another usually comes; (2) most cancellations hit Thursday evening through Saturday morning — when most people are awake and can act on the alert.

Not yet — we're SMS-first by design. SMS is faster than push notifications for time-critical alerts: when a site opens up at 2 AM, an SMS reaches you in seconds, while an app push depends on the OS being awake. SMS also works on every phone with no install. The web dashboard handles everything else (pick parks, set dates, manage your trial) from any browser. A native app is on the roadmap once the SMS experience is fully dialed in.

No. Your phone number is used only to send you cancellation alerts you've explicitly subscribed to. Reply STOP to any message to unsubscribe instantly. See our Privacy Policy for details.

Ian Richardson, solo founder, building this in California. You can email me directly: ianxrichardson@gmail.com. I read every message.