Thanks to the people who answered my question. Posting the following for anyone else who was as confused as me: I was stressing out thinking I'd have to try to get a site consecutively on a daily basis, but I was finally able to figure out why there are blocks that are already reserved when they are less than 6 months out. So you can reserve a reservation STARTING exactly 6 months out, BUT you can reserve it for 2 weeks at a time. So you should get on reservation.gov the day before and see which campsites are going to be released (based on which reservations have been booked up to 2 weeks previously and end on that day). Maybe this is obvious to everyone else, but I couldn't find anywhere online that spelled it out like that. Also, the reservations are released at 10 a.m. EST, or 7 a.m. PDT., and apparently they are all booked up within a minute.

Plan ahead. I have multiple people help try for particular spots. I log in, have the site picked, days I want, time.gov clock visible on screen, and when I see 6:59:59 I hit reserve. I usually get what I try for but there are hundreds out there trying for the same spot so redundancy is important. Watchman is beautiful!

It's six months to the day like all the federal sites. On January 1 you can make a reservation that starts July 1, on January 2 you can make a reservation that starts July 2, etc. I usually check the day before to see how many sites are going to be coming available.

Daily