Minn. state park reservation system shutting down for repairs
Monday is the last day for more than two months to make a reservation at one of Minnesota's state parks.
The Department of Natural Resources is upgrading its existing reservation system, which means the system will be unavailable from Tuesday through the end of February.
Reservations for camping, cabins or lodging can be made until 8 p.m. at stayatmnparks.com. Then the system will be shut down until March 1st.
Pat Arndt, the DNR's communications and outreach manager for Minnesota Parks and Trails, recommends acting now to beat the rush in early March when the new reservation system is online.
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"If you are making your reservations today, you can make them for Memorial Day, Fourth of July, or Labor Day, or the summer of 2012," she said.
The DNR has seen a bump in reservations over the past few days, Arndt said.
"We already have quite a few reservations for 2012, particularly for the holiday weekends, those are the ones that generally book up first, so if you're with family today, or with friends, this would be a good time to have that conversation about what are we doing for some of the major holiday weekends next summer," she said.
There were nearly one million overnight stays at Minnesota parks in 2010, up nearly 50,000 from the previous year.
