Burning Coal Vein Campground

Nice dry campsite far from anywhere. Only one other camper here when we were there. The water pump was being installed did not check the pit toilet.
Be VERY CAREFUL to not drive past last campsite are the road runs up to the top of the hill with VERY LIMITED TURN AROUND SPACE.
Nice short trail at the top of the hill and there are some long trails running thru the site down below. Road it was good but got a little rough after the turn in for the cg.
Nightly price was with park pass discount.
Saw no rangers or other park personel
Stayed in 8/2019

We pulled in on a Wednesday and had the place to ourselves until Friday. On Friday, there were another three campsites occupied overnight. The crickets and coyotes were the only things we heard at night, and the stars were beautiful. The pit toilet was exceptionally clean, and the water worked, but was discolored. We didn’t drink it, but we did use it to take solar showers and to cool off in. It was blazing hot. We tried to get our 25’ level in one of the front spots with a view, but ended up retreating to site 4, where it was easier. It was a bit of a drive into Medora, 25 miles on a well-maintained dirt road, but we were fine with that, given the other options available. A word of caution...we did encounter a rattlesnake one night in our spot. Be careful!

Great small campground. The roads in the Forest Service land had been freshly covered with skoria rock and graded. As you drive closer and closer to the campground the land changed from vast flat farmlands to a badlands feel, then a few more miles in you start to see river and Juniper trees. It felt as though for a brief moment I was driving through the black hills. This made this trip feel like even more a reprieve from the daily life in Western North Dakota. None of the sites had cell service on my Verizon iPhone 7 plus, and there was no WiFi available. It was not needed for this trip, but if you are a work from RV person it is not a total loss. There is a short drive from the campground to a lookout there you can get multiple bars on Verizon. it was good enough to not have to buffer YouTube videos on my laptop through mobile hot spot on my phone. I visited this campground in April and they did not have the water pump handle on the hand pumped well so I could not get any fresh water. It does not say on the USFS website that the water is unavailable, but I brought in water so it was not a big deal, and I doubt I could have rigged their hand pump well to pump water into my tank anyway for transfer to RV. The nearest dump site I know of is in Belfield, ND or Medora, ND. Overall This place is exactly what it says it is. I took one star away from Site Quality because the sites were not too level, and there looks like a couple that would be hard to get into with an RV. I would say spot 4 is the only site long enough for 30' to 40' RV the rest of the sites you should probably stay under 30' This campground is also a trailhead for the maah daah hey trail for walking and horseback riding so there will be visitors just for the day and for overnights with horses and mules. Check out youtube.com/ndnomad1 for more pictures from the areas in videos.