my Castle Rock dilema

Being the one organizing the camping trips isn't always so fun. I can deal with it. I know I can, but its still just not so fun... I'm trying to organize a trip for aproximately 9 people in October to go to Castle Rock State Park. There are complications though and I've been going kinda crazy trying to figure out what to do. Castle Rock has no reservable sites, and closes its gates at sundown, its a hike to the site, and first come first serve...etc. Usually booking the camping is aganizing enough for me, and all that involves is picking a site and entering my credit card info. Check out this confusing email I just sent to my camping friends:

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Hey guys,

-you can prob skim just down to the "which option sounds best paragraph" -

little snag with camping... both of you know something of the difficulties I've been having booking this thing for October. So yesterday I booked us a night at the county park thats right beside Castle Rock for the Friday with the thought that on Saturday morning we could just go early drive the 7.2 miles to the trailhead and hike the 1 1/2 - 2 hour trail into the Castle Rock Trail Camp. As the Castle Rock park itself has no reservable sites (and only 2 full time rangers who spend their time at the pay kiosks as opposed to their office) they aren't very prompt to answer their phones, so I talked to the Big Basin parks people (as they run all the SP campgrounds 'around' Castle Rock) and from them I am reasonably confident that we will be able to get two sites on the Saturday. HOWEVER here's the dilemma, yesterday in my slow agonizing haste to try and figure this out and book something for the friday night, i accidentially booked us 2 sites at the county parks for the THURSDAY night. D'oh! Unfortunately when I tried to call them to change it to the friday, they said that santa calra county parks policy is to only allow two night bookings for the weekends. And for some rediculous reason the fees involved in a straight up cancellation are $22.

So heres the deal assuming you just skimed that long and complicated above parqagraph, do I change the booking to Friday and Saturday? That will raise the cost to $64 for the 2 sites, if we do that, do we eat it on the second night and pay a second time for camping over at Castle Rock on Saturday? or we could go and stay there both nights at Sanborn, maybe doing a day hike in Castle Rock on Saturday. The third option is for me to eat the $22 (which I'm fine to do as it was my fault) cancel the reservation and then book us one night at the closest State Park (where we CAN book a single night). The closest state park is Big Basin, and sites are available, but even the 16 miles between the parks is a big drive (i don't remember how the road is), and I kind of feel like if we go to big basin, we might as well just go to big basin cause its a pretty good place too. Then again, I'm probably making more of it than i should. Maybe we should just book a hotel...

Which option sounds best:
1 - pay for three nights camping and stay at Sanborn (Fri) and Castle Rock (Sat)
2 - pay for two nights camping and stay at Sanborn (Fri, Sat) with a day hike at Castle Rock
3 - Pay for two nights camping and stay at Big Basin (Fri) and castle Rock (Sat), Geoff eats $22 in this deal
4 - some other plan (Big Basin 2 nights, Jans on Fri, motel...)

Any thoughts?
Geoff

I hate options...

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Ok, I'm sure this isn't super interesting to you all... its just frusterating to me, I'll be back later today with something better. Bye for now.