151–160 of 205 posts
Recreation.gov was recently rebuilt and runs on Kubernetes. Details: https://www.wsj.com/articles/seeking-happy-campers-governmen...
Has that made any difference positive or negative? Or is it new tech for the sake of new tech?
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Has that made any difference positive or negative? Or is it new tech for the sake of new tech?
As someone who used it frequently before and after, it’s not really much better or worse. The primary user impact I’ve noticed is that the ui is more “modern” (ie has more spacing between everything)
FYI recreation.gov also has an API: https://ridb.recreation.gov/ Edit: the National Park Service also has its own API: https://www.nps.gov/subjects/developer/api-documentation.htm
As far as I can tell it doesn't provide availability information, though.
Booking is not.
They REALLY need recaptcha on park reservations, or some sort of other automation. I'm 90% sure that botting is the only realistic way to get campsites in some high demand areas (such as lower and upper pines of Yosemite). I'm convinced the only reason there's not MORE scripts around to do it is because their API/web framework is impossibly ugly and not intuitive.
Why don't they run a lottery rather than first-come-first-served on a website?
They REALLY need recaptcha on park reservations, or some sort of other automation. I'm 90% sure that botting is the only realistic way to get campsites in some high demand areas (such as lower and upper pines of Yosemite). I'm convinced the only reason there's not MORE scripts around to do it is because their API/web framework is impossibly ugly and not intuitive.
Why don't they run a lottery rather than first-come-first-served on a website?
They REALLY need recaptcha on park reservations, or some sort of other automation. I'm 90% sure that botting is the only realistic way to get campsites in some high demand areas (such as lower and upper pines of Yosemite). I'm convinced the only reason there's not MORE scripts around to do it is because their API/web framework is impossibly ugly and not intuitive.
Seriously. I hate that visiting a national park now involves the same sort of online shenanigans as getting a popular concert ticket. That's not the vibe that should be associated with our parks system. Anyone botting the site should feel ashamed.
They REALLY need recaptcha on park reservations, or some sort of other automation. I'm 90% sure that botting is the only realistic way to get campsites in some high demand areas (such as lower and upper pines of Yosemite). I'm convinced the only reason there's not MORE scripts around to do it is because their API/web framework is impossibly ugly and not intuitive.
I use recreation.gov and the WA state equivalent regularly and am able to get decent reservations pretty easily. During the really high use times in WA we just go to camp sites (Forest Service sites are particularly good for this out here) and see if they have walk up spots available -- all campsites we have visited keep at least some spots available for this. Granted, we have only done this maybe four of five times so far, but we have got a spot every time.
Former SRE for the ground up rebuild of Recreation.gov - I gave a talk at Datastax's Accelerate conference this summer about how we built this site, and briefly covered how we combated bots for a while. Enjoy! https://youtu.be/gGDWkkj-UDg
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How can a federal government site be copyrighted? And, copyrighted by a domain name nonetheless. I worked on a project once with the national park service. Their Office of General Council or whatever its called didn't want to agree to make their metadata on https://npgallery.nps.gov available to use with a CC0 license for use in https://dp.la/ . Sure, the images might not have been taken by federal employees, but why…
Work done by private entities under contract to the government is copyrightable.
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In my experience many of the best camp sites I have been to have been in federal forest land on forest roads. The tougher the road the better (limits traffic). I have found some amazing places in Colorado that you could never reserve and they don’t exist as official camp sites. You find a good spot and you camp. Camp grounds with packed in sites are... good for some things. I acknowledge this is a problem for some hi…
I have this experience in North Georgia as well. WMAs and National Forests with roadside camping. Preferably roads without RV access. They call them dispersed campsites. State parks are terrible from the fees, crowds, and rules. It’s more like camping in a grass parking lot than anything else.