During the reservation-only season from March to October, inclusive, the Devils Playground campground (CG) required advanced reservations. In many places they claim there are no walk-up reservations. In truth, if you are in the reservations season, and you want to camp there, it’s best to hold a reservation, more on that later.
To be clear, if it’s November to February, there are no reservations required (or possible!) at Devils Playground CG. You can go there and take your chances on getting a site. At some point when it slows down they will close the back half of the campground, in case you had your heart set on one of those sites.
The point of this article is to talk about how walk-up reservations work at this campground. It’s possible but don’t count on it, that’s the basic approach you should take. Be ready to be turned away.
Campground is Eighteen Miles from the Park Entrance
One problem with trying to get a walk-up reservation here is that the campground is eighteen miles into the park, along a road with thirty-mile-per-hour speed limits in many places. Unless you’re already in the park’s northern area (Devils Garden is at the end of the park road), you could waste nearly two hours venturing into the park, getting turned away, and having to drive out to find another site.
Yes, it’s important to remember, Devils Garden is the only campground in Arches National Park. If you don’t get a site here without a reservation, you have a bit of a drive out of the park to go look elsewhere for a campsite. All while daylight is burning down, especially in the winter!
How to Get a Walk-up Site at Devils Garden
All right, it’s time to get to the point of this article, in theory there are no walk-up reservations at this campground, and the reality is that most of the sites where the campers don’t show up stay empty for that night. I don’t have hard data but based on my impression staying there, and my conversation with the camp host, many people do single-night reservations at Arches National Park’s only campground.
This means if the campers with the reservation don’t show up, and (typically) they don’t cancel either, the campground has to keep the site open all night. This is in case the camper shows up at 3am. Only when a camper actually cancels their reservation in time, then the camp host can resell that site. Also, the reservation system at recreation.gov doesn’t allow cancellations at some point of the day of arrival, so there’s literally no way for a no-show camper to cancel. Hence some sites go empty all night, and they can’t be sold as walk-ups.
OK let’s assume the above doesn’t apply, that some camper did cancel at the last minute and no one else online grabbed the site. You show up at the campground full of hope. What you should do is graciously approach the camp host and ask them if they have any sites available. You might get a speech about the reservations system, or your might get a site, you never know!
Why You Shouldn’t Try to Walk-up to Devils Garden Campground
The problem with this approach is much of the time, there’s just no sites available to hand out to walk-ups. If you get turned away, now you have to find some other place to camp in and around Moab. First you’ll have to make the drive out of the park back to Hwy 191. Once there, what do you do?
Watch this space, soon I’ll link some articles about camping in other areas around Moab.