Reserved Yellowstone & Teton Campgrounds

[Army11Bravo]

After reading horror stories of spaces being reserved at a record pace in Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons, I have been on pins and needles waiting for my vacation request to be approved through work so I could reserve spots in both parks.

The website for Yellowstone showed all the 40 foot spaces taken, and my TV with trailer can't fit in the smaller 30 foot space. Thankfully, the nice people at the reservation center were able to give me a double-wide 30 foot space to park.

We have been to YNP 3 previous times, but never in a hard sided TT. This will be our first trip to GT. Mid June we start at Madison CG for 2 nights, then south to Colter Bay in GT for 3 nights, then back to YNP to Fishing Bridge for 2 nights before heading toward home. Both to and from we will hit some state parks.

I feel blessed to be able to have reservations, since they are almost all filled up!

[2gypsies1]

Gros Ventre campground has 300+ sites and it rarely fills up. It doesn't take reservations and neither does Colter Bay campground which also has 300+ sites. We love Gros Ventre.

[bukhrn]

Veebyes wrote:
Have you tried Bay Bridge? Looked at FB. No better than a carpark. The dry camping at BB will give so much more of a Yellowstone experience. Lots of sites for a <30' trailer & truck.

In the Tetons Gros Ventre is the same way. Dry camping & loads of room for cheap price. Spent the July 4th weekend there in 13. Only full 1 night.

Veebyes, thank for this post, makes me feel more encouraged about Gros Venture in mid July.

[littlemo]

Enjoy! You'll want to go back many times!

[Veebyes]

Have you tried Bay Bridge? Looked at FB. No better than a carpark. The dry camping at BB will give so much more of a Yellowstone experience. Lots of sites for a <30' trailer & truck.

In the Tetons Gros Ventre is the same way. Dry camping & loads of room for cheap price. Spent the July 4th weekend there in 13. Only full 1 night.

[Army11Bravo]

drillagent wrote:
We made our reservations for this summer a year out, so we were able to get one of those 40' sites at FB. I was able to get 3 weeks leave, so we'll be staying the first two weeks of June. I've got a lot of use or lose, so they didn't have much choice but let me go. I think we timed it well because most schools let out around mid June, but my son gets out mid May. So the crowds might not be as big. Or I could be a fool and the crowds will be terrible. With my luck it's the latter.

Anyway, hope you have a fun time with no issues.

Good for you to be able to make a reservation a year out. I kept waiting after several major delays in the vacation bidding process at my work - I am a 911 Dispatcher.

The last day of school for my kids was originally Wednesday, June 10th. So I planned our trip to start Saturday June 13th. Two weeks ago we had two snow days, so the make up days have been tacked on to the end of the year. Now they get out Friday the 12th. They won't have much time to prepare for the trip!

Maybe we'll see each other in the park...

[UsualSuspect]

The 40' spots were reserved within seconds of them opening up. I did not get one, have tried for the last 4 years with no luck, and this is for the beginning of May. We decided we want to go anyway and booked at Grizzly.
When I called they told me I should just show up, chances are I will get in as most book the large sites there not realizing if you will fit in a smaller site they will change your site to a smaller one, and it frees up the larger ones. We decided not to chance just showing up. Shame folks don't book what they really need.

[bukhrn]

We made reservations for Bridge Bay CG in early July, they were going fast, that was a week before Christmas, when we go down to GT's we want to stay in Gros Venture, it's first come first serve, so I hope we can get there early in the morning.

[drillagent]

We made our reservations for this summer a year out, so we were able to get one of those 40' sites at FB. I was able to get 3 weeks leave, so we'll be staying the first two weeks of June. I've got a lot of use or lose, so they didn't have much choice but let me go. I think we timed it well because most schools let out around mid June, but my son gets out mid May. So the crowds might not be as big. Or I could be a fool and the crowds will be terrible. With my luck it's the latter.

Anyway, hope you have a fun time with no issues.

[Army11Bravo]

kknowlton wrote:
Army11Bravo, that's great that you were able to get reservations. I hope you have a wonderful trip - and that you find some great state parks enroute as well.

Just a caveat about Fishing Bridge - if your site on paper looks like it will fit your RV, you may still have an adventure backing into it. That happened to us last year; we had reserved a site that on paper was big enough for our rig, but trees and an electrical power panel alongside the (narrow) CG road made backing into our site rather difficult. We did succeed, with the help of a few fellow RVers, but it was tough. Just FYI. Fishing Bridge sites are TIGHT; don't expect a lot of CG atmosphere. But you sure can't beat the location, very central to the park. And you might get lucky and have a buffalo or coyote walk by your site some morning or evening. 🙂

I figured Fishing Bridge will be tight and close quarters with other campers. But we are planning to hike and drive for many hours of the day and not spend too much time at the campsite.

It's actually more of a nuisance that we won't be able to have a campfire at FB. That's one of our greatest pleasures of camping. And a great way to meet your camp neighbors. But we will probably have better luck socially at Madison and especially Coltor Bay RV Park in Grand Teton.

[rexlion]

I hope to be in the Tetons this summer also, at Lizard Creek. It's exciting to think about the trip and all the fun. Glad you got your reservations.

Also I'm getting more and more glad that I travel alone in a little 15' trailer, so I don't need to worry about site length and hard back-ins and reservations. You folks with families and long TTs have to work a lot harder to get your outdoor fix, and my hat's off to you.

[kknowlton]

Army11Bravo, that's great that you were able to get reservations. I hope you have a wonderful trip - and that you find some great state parks enroute as well.

Just a caveat about Fishing Bridge - if your site on paper looks like it will fit your RV, you may still have an adventure backing into it. That happened to us last year; we had reserved a site that on paper was big enough for our rig, but trees and an electrical power panel alongside the (narrow) CG road made backing into our site rather difficult. We did succeed, with the help of a few fellow RVers, but it was tough. Just FYI. Fishing Bridge sites are TIGHT; don't expect a lot of CG atmosphere. But you sure can't beat the location, very central to the park. And you might get lucky and have a buffalo or coyote walk by your site some morning or evening. 🙂

[Army11Bravo]

Itching2go-

We reserved a full hookup site in the RV Park. We do a lot of boondocking, but it's nice to have water and electricity every now and then. That's why we wanted to intersperse FHU sites in our 10 day trip.

And yes, after much research and disappointment on the reservation website, talking to someone live on the phone helped ease my mind with solutions I couldn't find online.

[Itching2go]

Way to Go! Your campground choices are really good ones. Madison is a great campground, and perfectly situated for seeing the west side of the park. FB is a good place to base for the east side, has full hookups, but isn't as spread out as Madison. Colter Bay is a good central location for the Tetons, but you don't say whether you're in the Colter Bay RV park or the Colter Bay campground. Either one doesn't disappoint, although the RV park does have full hook ups, which is nice.

There's a lesson in your experience regarding reservations. We made ours on line back in 2013, only to find out after the fact and by chance that the site we had reserved wouldn't fit the rig we had at that time. While the web site indicated there were no other options available, a call to the reservation center ended up with us being able to get sites in Madison and Fishing Bridge for our week in the park. So what's the lesson? If it looks like you're out of luck, CALL!

[Army11Bravo]

We considered Grizzly RV Park, but don't want to stay outside the park. We enjoyed our stay in the camping cabins at the West Yellowstone KOA a few years ago, but having to drive into the park every morning added lots of miles to already long days.

We've seen all the park and view roadside attractions at YNP. We're looking forward to hitting a bunch of hiking trails this trip.