yellowstone-camping

yellowstone-camping is a Campsite Reservation Cancellation Finder for Yellowstone National Park. This simple Python application will continuously check Yellowstone's Campground Availability API and let you know as soon as a reservation is available with a Push Notification on your Android or iOS device. Don't stress about finding a campsite in that booked out campground, let yellowstone-camping do the work for you.

How to set up your campsite search

Make a file called yellowstone-camping.env and place it at the root of this repository, you can use the example.yellowstone-camping.env file as a template. Once the yellowstone-camping.env file is ready, fill out your lodging details and Pushover credentials:

export BOOKING_DATE_START="2021-07-31" # YELLOWSTONE ARRIVAL DATE (YYYY-MM-DD)
export NUMBER_OF_GUESTS=2 # NUMBER OF PEOPLE IN THE CAMPING RESERVATION
export NUMBER_OF_NIGHTS=1 # NUMBER OF NIGHTS IN THE CAMPING RESERVATION
export POLLING_INTERVAL=600 # HOW OFTER TO CHECK FOR NEW RESERVATIONS (IN SECONDS)

export PUSHOVER_PUSH_TOKEN="xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" # PUSHOVER API TOKEN
export PUSHOVER_PUSH_USER="xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" # PUSHOVER USER KEY

Running with Docker

./scripts/check-yellowstone.sh

To run the reservation search in a Docker container you'll run the check-yellowstone.sh file, this creates a docker container called yellowstone-camping that runs in the background. Automatically, the logs will be attached to the current session. Exiting the attached logs does not kill the search. Once the scraper has found its first booking it will exit. Use docker stop yellowstone-camping to kill the container and stop searching or docker logs -f yellowstone-camping to reattach the container logs.

Running Locally with Python

Don't work with Docker? No problem. The docker image is based on Python 3.8.X, but any version of Python 3 you have locally should suffice. Source the yellowstone-camping.env file and run the python script (this requires the requests package to be installed):

source yellowstone-camping.env && python scripts/find_availability.py

How do I set up Pushover for Push Notifications to my phone?

Pushover is an neat service/app that allows you to easily send push notifications to your mobile device. More details on how to set up Pushover can be found on their website. FYI: Pushover is a paid service (a lifetime subscription costs $5.00). However, if Pushover is not right for you then the source code can be manually changed to use your preferred method of sending notifications. To bypass logging to Pushover, just remove the variables, set them to empty, or leave them untouched; the script will simply log CRITICAL events to the console when a campsite is available.

About this Project

My partner and I are taking a trip this summer (July, 2021) from home in Colorado through Wyoming to Glacier National Park. Like all national parks right now, the campsites in Glacier are a hot commodity and tough to come by.

To help us get an advantage in finding a site we signed up for Campnab, a service that lets you sign up for text notifications when booked out campgrounds receive cancellations. Long story short, it's totally worth it and get's a big recommendation from me. We found a 5 day cancellation and booked our first choice campground within a couple weeks of signing up.

Later in our trip, we'll be going through Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Park. Unfortunately, Campnab doesn't (currently) work for most sites in Yellowstone, since they use a different booking provider than the rest of the National Park System. Instead, I decided to play around with the booking website with Chrome Developer tools, figure out the endpoints responses, and build my own integration with their API. It's built in Python, runs in a docker container, and sends push notifications through via Pushover.

Feature Requests and Technical Feedback / Questions are best done though the Issues Page. Some basic command line skills and an always-on computer are required to run this.

We're still waiting for our Yellowstone spot as of writing this and can't wait to get back there this summer. I hope yellowstone-camping is useful for someone out there, good luck hunting for your next spot!

Cool stuff happens in Denver, CO