About Park Banter
Park Banter is a national parks newsletter and campsite alert service. The pitch in one sentence: it's the friend who has actually dragged their kids through every park and will tell you which entrance to use, which campground to skip, and when the trail gets crowded.
Why this exists
Most national parks content lives in two camps. There's the institutional camp: NPS, NPF, official park websites. Helpful but soulless. They tell you the rules. They don't tell you which entrance is a one-hour bottleneck in July.
Then there's the influencer camp: drone shots, golden hour, arms raised at sunset, "5 hidden gems" listicles. Aesthetically gorgeous and operationally useless. They don't help you plan a real trip with real kids and a real car.
Park Banter is the third option. Opinionated. Practical. Family-tested. Tells you the stuff the brochures leave out and skips the parts the influencers add.
What we publish
Two newsletters a week. Park spotlights, trail notes, campsite hacks, news and closures, and one weekly hot take. Subjects get planned around what's happening this season, not what makes a clean Instagram grid.
We also run a campsite alert service. You tell us a park, a campground, and a date range. We poll Recreation.gov for you. When a site opens up, you get an email the moment we see it. Free tier covers three concurrent alerts. Paid tier removes the cap and adds SMS.
Who runs it
Jay. One operator, plus an AI agent that does the grunt research and the scanning so the human side can focus on the part that needs a human (the opinion, the editing, the family stuff).
How we make money
The newsletter is free. Paid tier ($10/month) is coming, which unlocks unlimited campsite alerts, SMS notifications, faster scanning, and the full park guides library. No display ads. No sponsored "5 best products for camping" listicles. Maybe an occasional affiliate link to gear we actually use, clearly marked.
What we don't do
No em dashes. No "hits different." No "nestled." No "vibrant." No "let's dive in." No "game-changer." No fake urgency. No clickbait subject lines. No influencer aesthetics. No drone shots over Half Dome with a copy of Walden in frame.