If you were hoping to book a cabin, cottage, yurt of other “roofed overnight” site in a Pennsylvania state park for any of the holiday weekends this summer, your window of opportunity is closing fast.
None of the state parks with those facilities (45 of the total 121 state parks in the state) has any of those sites available for the Memorial Day weekend.
Just 7 state parks collectively have just 16 sites available for the Fourth of July weekend. And there are just 36 sites available for the Labor Day weekend in less than half of the parks with those facilities.
Non-holiday weekends and weekdays throughout the summer generally have more availability.
Those numbers do not include tent or trailer campsites at state parks, most of which have many more of those sites throughout the summer.
According to Bureau of State Parks in the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, “Pennsylvania state parks roofed overnight traditionally have had high demand. We are normally 100 percent reserved for many of our roofed overnight facilities during peak season,” which runs from the second Friday in June through the third Thursday in August, “and at designated sites during periods such as the Friday before Thanksgiving to the first Friday in March.
According to Bureau of State Parks in the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, “Pennsylvania state parks roofed overnight traditionally have had high demand. We are normally 100 percent reserved for many of our roofed overnight facilities during peak season,” which runs from the second Friday in June through the third Thursday in August, “and at designated sites during periods such as the Friday before Thanksgiving to the first Friday in March.
“During the off-season, while weekends are popular, weekdays typically have more availability. We have observed more customers staying during the week during the non-peak season as they look to experience the outdoors during the pandemic. ”
The bureau noted, “Roofed overnight facilities rent faster than campsites due to customers not being as concerned about weather.
“For high demand dates, such as peak season, fall foliage season, trout season, many of these facilities book at the maximum booking window of 11 months in advance.
We are seeing that from April 1 through October 31, 2021, currently we are about 66 percent reserved for that time period. For the same period in 2020 we were 90.36 percent occupied.”
DCNR takes reservations for all sites in state parks through an online reservation system.
— Marcus Schneck/PennLive via Associated Press
