Methodology & data honesty

Where the data comes from. Recreation.gov publishes availability for every permit and campground it manages. PermitDrops re-checks that availability for 17 curated, chronically-oversubscribed destinations around the clock, and stores a snapshot of every date, zone, and quota.

What an “observed opening” is. When a date we saw at 0 remaining later shows 1+ remaining, that's an opening — usually a human cancelling, sometimes released quota or an expired hold. We record the timestamp, the zone, the date, and the before/after counts. We only ever count openings we actually witnessed; the feed starts the day tracking started, and we will never backfill or estimate.

Freshness, honestly. Every page shows its data age. If recreation.gov ever refuses our requests, pages say so at the top and show the last state we saw — we'd rather show you an honest stale number than a fresh-looking guess.

What we will never do. We never book, hold, or cart inventory, and we never automate anything against the checkout. Booking bots are why reserving a campsite feels like a ticket drop; we're strictly read-only. Alerts link you to recreation.gov and the rest is up to your fingers.

Politeness. Our poller is rate-limited, identifies itself as PermitDrops/1.0, waits at least 2 seconds between requests, backs off when asked (429) and stops the entire run when told (403). That works out to about 1,600 requests a day across all 17 destinations — roughly one request every 50 seconds, spread over 17 calendars.

Who. PermitDrops is an independent one-person project, not affiliated with recreation.gov, Booz Allen Hamilton, NPS, USFS, or BLM.