Making Campsite Reservation

We go to camping every year during August for a few days. Last year we went to Awenda Provincial Park. (I have recently uploaded a few photographs from that camp.) Spending a few days with the nature in the camp is very refreshing. Ontario Government operates several provincial parks and some of these are so popular that these are always booked. The booking for the campsite opens five months in advance, and all popular camp grounds get completely booked within the first hour. Since our friends also go with us for camping, we need to book three adjacent or nearby sites, which causes further problems. For this year's camping, we had to book on March 1st. The booking opens at 7 am and one can book on phone or through the Ontario Parks' website. Since the booking opens for thousands of campsites at 7 am and everyone tries to make the booking at the same tine, getting the phone connection to the booking office is only by chance. To improve our chances, we decided that my friend, Narayanan, his wife Usha, me and my wife would try the number simultaneously from our land line and cell phones. That reminds me the movie Lage Rahoo Munna Bhai, where ten people were trying to get connection to the radio station to enable Munna Bhai to be the first to answer the quiz on Mahatma Gandhi. Well, ultimately, I got the connection at around 7.10 am and was able to book three campsites in the campground of our choice -- Arrowhead Provincial Park. I will write more about our stay there after I come back from Arrowhead Provincial Park in August. 

Booking a campsite also reminded me of my adventure in booking railway tickets during peak travel period in eighties and nineties. Indian Railways used to open bookings at 8 am, 90 days in advance. Thus, one had to carefully calculate back 90 days from the required date of travel taking into consideration the number of days in different months and lineup outside the booking office at least one hour before the booking starts. I used to go to the Sarojini Nagar booking office, and the Tea Stall outside the booking office used to do brisk business. The campsite booking experience was somewhat similar to the Railway ticket booking, except that we did not have to lineup and we were in the comfort of our home making bookings over the phone.