National Park "First Come, First Served" - EXCEPT!!!!
Recently returned from a 3 week trip into Idaho and Montana in the "boonies". Trip included a planned stop at Two Medicine CG in Glacier NP. We left our Sun night stopover aboot 7 am and arrived at Two Medicine around 8:30 am. Started driving around looking for an open or shortly to be open "first come, first served" site. On our 2nd pass through the campground, there was a congregation of NP employees at the host site. At same time we found a reasonable site that would take our 34' trailer, BUT, a rangerette came over and slapped a "reserved" tag on the site, and no amount of discussion helped to have us occupy the site, even if we had arrived before they "reserved" it just as we tried to pull in!!
There had been a bear incident at Many Glacier CG and they were reserving any open site and any that were being exited for tenters and soft sided rvs from Many Glacier. AND, the reserved tags weren't just sudden items, they were professionally printed tags stating site reserved for Many Glacier campers. Obviously a common happening!! Sunday a black bear had gotten into a bear box that had not been closed properly, and had a "free meal"!! Prior to that in May, a Grizzly had forced 2 guys cleaning fish to abandon their catch to him!!! So down to Two Medicine for any tents and soft rvs. So much for first come, first serve!!!
Moral of the story is don't believe everything that you read about getting to a NP campground and trying to find an open campsite when the rangers and rangerettes may suddenly make it a "reservation" campground whenever "neccessarly"!!!! :M
There had been a bear incident at Many Glacier CG and they were reserving any open site and any that were being exited for tenters and soft sided rvs from Many Glacier. AND, the reserved tags weren't just sudden items, they were professionally printed tags stating site reserved for Many Glacier campers. Obviously a common happening!! Sunday a black bear had gotten into a bear box that had not been closed properly, and had a "free meal"!! Prior to that in May, a Grizzly had forced 2 guys cleaning fish to abandon their catch to him!!! So down to Two Medicine for any tents and soft rvs. So much for first come, first serve!!!
Moral of the story is don't believe everything that you read about getting to a NP campground and trying to find an open campsite when the rangers and rangerettes may suddenly make it a "reservation" campground whenever "neccessarly"!!!! :M
