Reservations, deadlines, and schedules, oh my!!

Clicking the pics delivers a rush of excitement..... Followed by a surge of indifference.

I walked up a little Hill and got this overview of Rockhound State Park. Everything is visible here except the Park headquarters and visitors center, which is about a quarter of a mile down the road to the left .

Tomorrow is moving day... Again. This seems to be happening an awful lot when state parks are full. I could only get reservations for two days at a time, it's got me hopscotching all over the campground, and tomorrow's critical move will be right back to where I was on the first day, in a free to me, boondocking spot.

This is one of the many annoyances of making reservations instead of having parks with some reservation sites and some first-come-first-served sites. And talking to one of the hosts here at Rockhound, I found out I was right last year when I said that Reserve America, which books all these phone and Internet reservations for a substantial fee, of course, did lobby New Mexico parks to get rid of most of their first come first serve sites, and go to reservations only.

One of the things that this causes is people like me that buy the annual pass every year, resident or nonresident, can boondock at the state parks for free. So I can make a reservation at any New Mexico State Park for boondocking even if I think there might only be a small chance I can go camping and just pay the Reserve America fee of eight dollars. And if I don't show up, I'm only out eight bucks, and that site is tied up for at least one night while other people that actually need the site can't get in.

Oh well! Baby boomers learned a long time ago that everything good that people used to do end up being changed when we baby boomers start doing them. There are just too many of us, and we tend to over-stress the system, so the system gets changed when we baby boomers begin taking advantage of its benefits.

Theboondork

This is my latest campsite and it has water and electric hookups. It was the only thing available when I made my reservations a while back. But it was only available for two nights, then I can happily move back to my boondocking campsite for two more days.

One of the higher parts of Rockhound State Park. You get a nice view from up here.

Since the campground is built on the side of a hill, some areas of the campground are higher than others.

The buildings on the left are the headquarters for Rockhound. The offices, visitor center, storage, and Ranger residents is all there.