 So, I'm waiting outside the office of this RV park to see if we really have a reservation. I am never doing this again. Just over this wall is an RV park that shall not be named and inside the office of that RV park is a guy named Rick and Rick and I just had a very illuminating conversation about our reservation. Finding and keeping a reservation in an RV park this summer has become a blood sport and it's gotten me thinking, what's going on? Why are these parks overbooking? Why is it so hard to keep your reservation? So I did a bunch of research. I'm going to tell you what I found out and how we're going to respond to it. Now let me run back and get inside my rig before they try to run me off this property again. That's better. You know, Albert Einstein said that adversity introduces a man to himself and in that spirit I'd like to thank this janky RV park for reminding me why it is that I prefer to boondock. Now, no disrespect to all the park dwellers out there. You know I'm all for whatever type of camping suits each of us. For me, that is to camp in serenity in beautiful natural places without a neighbor and a timeline and a hookup. You might be wondering, how we ended up in this RV park? Well, we didn't mean to, but our plan was to drive about 7 hours to head up north, stay in a rest area, then drive another hour to meet our friend, but along the way we had some electrical issues. We stopped to get lunch and realized that we had no lights on our fifth wheel, even though we were plugged into the truck. We had to pull over and disassemble a bunch of stuff and figure out where the problem was, which we did, but it took hours. We knew we were never going to make it as far as we wanted, so we jumped online from the car and found an RV park just a couple of hours up the road that said that it had a bunch of spots and they were all pull-throughs. There were six to choose from that were available, so we booked it and headed that way. Our first take-up came when we stopped for gas and called the RV park to tell them we might get there a little bit after hours and we wanted to make sure it was okay to just drive into the spot that was confirmed on our reservation. There was some confusion about our reservation and our site number, and when I questioned it, the guy on the phone just kept saying, Don't worry about it. My boyfriend called just a little bit ago to tell you guys that we were running late, but they said that we were in site 16, in case we got there late. Well, your reservation tells me that I'm in site 28, my reservation email. Yeah, did you do it online? Yeah. Yeah, well, you're in 16, don't worry about what that says, yeah, don't worry about it. You packed your chair. You know, he told me that. I don't know that I do. I didn't order anything. Maybe you got something to do with someone else. I don't think it's for you after all. What's your lost name? No, you're right. This isn't for you, so anyway. I was like, well, that's weird. Maybe I'm sleep shopping again. I don't know. I don't know. Do you know what it's from? No, I didn't order anything. I don't know why she thought it was you. It has another name on it. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Not to worry. All right. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. We'll see you tomorrow then. Okay, okay. Unless you, you know, fight. Okay, bye-bye. So we didn't. We didn't worry about it. We found this great picture online of the park and these big spots. We were really excited to get there and take a shower. Of course, when we got there, it didn't look like the pictures. They never do. That's okay. We know that the park operators are trying to cram as many spaces as they can onto the property to make as much money as they can. Perfectly okay. But let me tell you, this site was really tight. See right here behind me? That's a tree and that tree is about an inch from our window. When we pulled in here, we actually had to choose between putting out our staircase and putting out our slide. So we finally figured out that we could put the staircase down between the bolted down table and the tree and that if we maneuvered a little bit and we had to back in and back out, we could open up our slide with this much room to spare. It's tight. And of course, later that first night, we had an earthquake. It was 4.9 and we were shaking back and forth. It was Doug's first earthquake, so that was kind of fun. But the first thing I thought of was, oh, please God, don't let that tree shatter our window. We were here watching rigs squeeze down these tiny lanes where everybody was holding their breath, hoping that they didn't get sideswiped. And looking around, we saw that there were no spots. I remembered that that online booking system said that there were six spots available here. There were not six spots here. There was maybe one spot here. And I remembered that the last park we stayed in had the exact same reservation system, exact same pictures, exact same format. And they also said there were six spots, even though there were no spots. And I found that curious. I'll tell you what happened to us in just a minute. But first, let me tell you what I found when I dug in and did a little research. First, I'm sure everybody out there knows that RV sales are booming. If you search the headlines right now, you'll see things like, this is the year of the RV, 2021, the year of camping, sales at an all-time high. But if you dig into review sites like these that I found on TripAdvisor, you're going to find quite a few that say things like overbooked, kicked out, and cramped. Now, I thought that only hotels and airlines overbooked, but not RV parks, not true anymore. During COVID, RVing and staying at campgrounds and parks became really popular. And people of all kinds were booking out these spots way in advance. And a lot of them are canceling last minute to hedge for this. Some of these parks are overbooking. And others, maybe like the one that we're in, are just ill-prepared for this boom or just exhausted because they've been too busy. If you go to an RV park that you find and you say reserve now, and it takes you to a reservation system, it might be software that they purchased that is just integrated into their site so it looks like their booking system. The problem with this is that that software is only as good as the information that the park staff is putting in. So like in this park, there were no actual pictures of the sites, and it said there were six available, and we looked again, it always says there are six available. That's probably because the staff is not going in and updating the software with the reservations they really have. So if they have a walk-in, or they have someone that calls on the phone to make a reservation, or one of the people that are already here extend, if they don't share that information with the online reservation system, double bookings just naturally occur. And why has this gotten worse in 2021? Why are there hardly any spaces to book for RVs? It's because this year there are more RVs than there are spots to put them in. There are 20% more RVs, but less than 1% more RV spots. And of all those new RVers, most of them want to stay in an RV park. RVTravel.com just did a poll, and only 28% of their members said that they could camp in their RV without a hookup. This year it's kind of become a recipe for disaster, and we don't really want to participate in it, especially after the plot thickened in this park. Okay, here's what happened. We were planning to leave the park, but saw on the weather report that there were going to be winds on 395 with gusts about 50-55 miles an hour the morning that we were leaving. Well, after what we just experienced on 395 between Lone Pine and Bishop, we decided that we didn't want to risk it. So Doug went into the office here to see if we could extend our stay. The not-so-pleasant lady in the office told Doug that there were no spots at all. We couldn't stay and we couldn't move, and that we just had to vacate our spot in the morning. Later on, though, another employee told us that there was a spot. So, about 10 o'clock that night, we looked online, and sure enough, it said there were six spots. So we booked the spot again. Of course, we were nervous. We knew by this time that that wasn't an accurate number, and that if we didn't follow through, we wouldn't get a refund because they require us to tell them that we're not going to be here with 72-hour notice, but they're not required to tell us with 72-hours notice if they're overbooked. We would have had to leave by 4 or 5 in the morning to avoid the winds, but the office didn't open till 8. So we called the casino that's attached to this park, and they said, yeah, no problem if you were able to reserve online. Of course, there's a spot. So we decided to wait till the next morning and just make sure we had a reservation at the office. It was a beautiful morning. The birds were singing. The sun was out, and I was walking around the park, and I decided to go sit in one of the many chairs on this giant porch outside of the Arfy Park office and wait for them to open. About 7.45, one of the employees threw up in the front door and asked me what I wanted. He actually yelled at me for sitting on the porch, and really, I thought I was being punked. I couldn't believe it. I realized that the guy must live in the back of the office, and so I said, oh, I'm sorry. Do you live here? I didn't know. I didn't mean to be rude. He said, I never get any time off. It's 24-7, and all I do is work, work, work, and everybody needs a break. And I said, of course, we can wait till after the office opens. No big deal. But he asked me to come inside, and we looked at my reservation. Long story short, he told me the same thing that that other lady told Doug. That there were no spots, that there might be a spot. They couldn't move us. They could move us. He was all over the board. And, again, he said that the reservation system that we used online was not the system he used. In fact, he turned his computer around to me and said, do you see a spot? I don't see any spots here. And I said, look, I don't see your system when I go to reserve something online. I thought maybe this reservation was the same spot, and we could stay in the same spot. And lo and behold, all of a sudden, it opened up. And we were able to stay in the same spot even though five minutes before, he told me there was nothing available. No big deal. We just decided to take the win and brush our shoulders off and go back to doing what we do and love best, and that is boondocking. We're out of here. Sayonara, Rick. Bye, Rick. Bye. No more reservations. And how much was it, Doug? We've almost got this spot all to ourselves. It's beautiful. It's quiet. It has a screaming cell signal. It's less than a mile away from free water and trash in a really rad town. Now, next Sunday is our final view queue of the year because after that, we're starting a brand new travel series where we're going to show you how we avoid the RV parks by camping in beautiful, mostly free spots just like this. If you haven't subscribed already, please do. And ring the little bell for notifications because we're going to bring you along with us and show you how we camp and how we find places like this next to Bolz. Until then, we hope you're all doing well and staying happy and healthy out there. We'll see you next Sunday. Until then, everybody have happy travels and be free.