Even camping is getting expensive too.
People are making reservations and not showing up.
And the problem with campsites is they're often far enough from the inhabited areas that you can't just "waitlist" people at the last minute like restaurants do.
Another solution is a huge deposit.
I'm seeing more and more restaurants requiring a significant deposit with a reservation, because apparently there are a lot of no-shows. I kind of suspect that people are making several reservations for the same night, then deciding on the day which place they want to go to. Why not, when it takes about 3 clicks to go from Google Maps to a completed reservation? The deposits are OpenTable & friends' way of solving a problem that was introduced by their own product!
It seems like the basic effort of picking up a phone and actually speaking to a person at the restaurant or campground to make the reservation would have two positive effects: it adds a little friction so it's not as easy to make half a dozen reservations, and when you speak to that person it reinforces in your mind that you have made an agreement to show up for this thing.
It seems to me that a lot of the things people think are expensive are things that they unnecessarily insist on relying on someone else for, and / or that they do not lower their demand for regardless of the price. Well then, of course it's expensive.
The first time I did it, I felt like I was doing something wrong and that a ranger could show up at any time to ticket me for camping too close to the road or doing something else wrong. Forums are full of warnings to use apps to make sure you're not on someone's private property adjacent to or embedded within the public land, lest they show up with a shotgun.
A lot of people have never been introduced to the concept of public land in a way that makes it seem like a viable/legit option.
I don’t. I have a modern backpack with a camel pack and lightweight tent and electric lantern et cetera. But those are one-time costs. And they’re totally optional. Car camping is still highly accessible and cheap as hell.
Back-country rangers have to be paid. And campers cause more damage than day hikers. That requires enforcement and mitigation. I believe NPS fees have tracked under inflation over the decades. Camping, based on fees alone, is cheaper than it once was. (And if you don’t want to pay the Park Service there are our National Forests.)
This sounds right to me, a lot of my local parks seem to have rarely or never increased fees for decades. Several nearby canyon parks have had the same fees as long as I can remember. I keep expecting an increase, and am consistently surprised year after year that the prices stay fixed, making it relatively cheaper each year. Even the annual park fees are super low, making it incredibly easy to amortize the per-night cost of camping to be even cheaper, provided you want to do it more than once or twice in a year.
Ontario Park Campsite $59/night x 2 = $120
Firewood 2 x $15 = $30
Food $30+
Beer $20.
Tank of Gas $100+
_________
Total $300+
https://www.ontarioparks.com/fees/camping/2022
Your consumption of gas, beer, firewood and food don’t really support the idea of increased camping costs either, right? You’d likely have beer & food & heating, and drive somewhere anyway, no? Nothing here except the park fee is specific to camping, and aside from gas this year they haven’t increased by much either.
1 x $42.00 CampFee-A-NE
$42.00
1 x $9.73 ReservationFee-web
$9.73
Subtotal
$51.73
Not that far off. This is a non electric campsite. I would like an electric campsite for various reasons.