State Camping Up 23%

The number of campers at California state parks is up 23% this year, parks officials told a legislative hearing in Los Angeles last week.

Les McCargo, chief deputy director of the state Department of Parks and Recreation, said that from March to September the department rented camp sites for a total of 232,000 “camp nights.”

The period coincided with the start of a new ticketing system that relies mainly on telephone reservations, with tickets charged to credit cards, rather than reservations made at walk-in outlets and paid for in cash. Mistix, the department’s new ticketing contractor, has performed well, McCargo said, although there have been times when its phone lines have been jammed. He said Mistix has added more toll-free lines to take care of the problem.