Colter Bay Village Campground

Grand Teton National Park in mid-September used to not be so crowded. However, these are different times, and the tens of thousands of brand new RV owners, as well as seasoned campers are flocking to our National Parks to quarantine and recreate at the same time, but you knew that already if you have been on the road these past few months.

We arrived at the Moran Junction park entrance on the first day of what we thought might be 4 nights in the park at 1430 hours on a Tuesday. Unfortunately, all of the 1,000 + campsites in the park were either full or closed, and had been since 1100 that morning. The nice lady at the gate told us about some dispersed camping options just outside the park on Buffalo Valley Road, towards Dubois...and that's where we went the first night and found a spot along with other late arrivals.

On day 2, we broke camp early and was in line to the campground just before 0700, and we got a site. The process to get into the campground on your first day resembles a military operation. RV's and cars line-up in front of the gate shack to the campground very early in the morning, usually before daylight. The official opening is 0800, but they opened at 0730 on our first day. A nice concessionaire employee told us while we were in line, that they were expecting ~100 departures that day, and she was confident that we would get a space. The employees are friendly and accommodating to the extent possible. There are several people working the line to get in with radio communications with the gate shack that looks at vacancies and works to fit campers with what is vacant. One lady took our information, size of RV, days staying, generator or no generator and completed a form and took it to the gate shack. Another nice gentleman (Tony), comes out and get's our money and takes it to the gate shack, and comes back with our change and a map to our assigned site. I assume they will take a CC, but I didn't ask because I didn't want to push my luck.

There are 2 dump stations in the campground. There is double station for RV's that are leaving, and a single station for RV's that are arriving and need to dump before they set up camp, like we did. Both stations are on the main road to the loops and are easy to get to, albeit its fairly tight at the incoming single dump station with other RV's coming and going on the same road. Also, the wash out hoses will not serve to back flush your black water tanks as they have no coupler on the end. There is a potable water spigot at each dump station that can be used to top your water tank. Although there are dumpsters, there is nothing for recyclables.

The campground has over 300 sites. Yes, it's a small town to be sure. The bigger rigs will go in loops H through O, while many of the tenters or smaller rigs will go in loops A through G. While most people will park along the loop roads, there is plenty of real estate usually to the side where you can spread out within the lodgepole pines before you get into the other campers' spaces. Each site will have bear boxes, picnic tables, and fire rings. If you dare to be so bold as to ask for a certain type of space, I would try to get as far away from the main road as possible, inside the loops. The traffic each morning on the main road is substantial until around 1100 to noon. After that, the campground will settle down.

Colter Bay Village, including the grocery store, gift shop, visitor center, marina, and restaurant are within walking distance to the campground. There is also a gas station that sells propane just as you enter the Village.

For those arriving to a full campground, we saw many rigs parked within the village and marina, some with slide-outs and jacks down. I was told that 'officially' there is no camping in the parking lots, but...there you go.

The smoke from the Northwest and California fires found its way to Wyoming while we were there.The Tetons were hard to see and Jackson Lake was also smoky, but it was still a nice setting.

I can't say enough about the nice concessioner employees that we met. They all were very accommodating and helpful! But, for me, I think I would rather find dispersed camping next time.

The pull thru sites are ok and ours was perfectly level. In most sites the picnic tables are a ways from your rig. Lots of folks coming and going. The showers are $5.00 EACH. The laundry was also super expensive. Around $4.50 wash normal load. All of the folks working are super! You can go around the corner to the laundry/ general store for very good WiFi.

Campground is FCFS. Dry camping, although some sites have electric. There is potable water, dump stations and bathrooms available. The sump station closer to the I loop appeared more level. Site is a pull through. Because it was on the inner loop they had us drive in the exit so I door would be facing the campground. Picnic table, fire pit, and bear box provided. Lots of trees for shade, but still able to get solar. Propane is available at the campground (price was $4.49/gallon). Store located in Colter Bay village, well stocked and prices on many items were reasonable. Verizon signal was virtually useless. WiFi available near the store.

We were staying at Gros Ventre and loving it there, but were able to get an opening at Colter Bay, so moved up there to be closer to Yellowstone for a couple of days. It is first come-first served and seems to fill up very quickly.

Our site was in the "O" loop which required you to drive through the exit of the "M" loop to get to in order for your door not to face the street. The sites are very, very narrow and a large class A with slides out came almost out over the road. On the other side were boulders marking the site on that side. One boulder was sticking out so far that it ended up damaging the bottom of our RV as we were trying to avoid hitting the extended slides on the left. Luckily, not serious, but the first damage we have experienced.

The sites are pull-through loops front to back and it was a challenge to position the RV in a way that we were not hitting tree branches and also not having our slides extend over the narrow road. The other unfortunate thing is that people pack extra cars/people/etc. into these tiny areas making it difficult to get in and out of the site. All the extra people added to a lot of extra noise, also. Some of the staff also seemed to not be happy or helpful, but it might have just been a bad weekend there.

The good was that instead of fighting the traffic from W. Yellowstone, we came in through the south and didn't sit in traffic, although it is a LONG drive. The other good was that there is a grocery store that was pretty well stocked right there.

Besides the issues with the sites and roads into the sites, Verizon was 1-2 bars and pretty useless probably due to high usage.

The great thing about this site is that it is in the park and had plenty of availability. We were there over labor day and I don't think it filled up until Saturday around 1. The spaces are along a u shaped loop and you basically parallel park along the loop on gravel or asphalt depending on the site. The electricity is ADA access only. I didn't realize that until we're got there. That would have changed my planning. The bathrooms are clean and will kept. The was no verizon reception at our site but you could text closer to the stores in the middle of the campground. Nearby Jackson lodge had great reception and a pool that colter bay guests can use. Our site was about a 20 minute walk to the lake. Generator use was 8 to 8.

We were told we wouldn't be able to get in but we go in with no problem. Each day there we noticed there were great spaces that opened up so don't count it out as an option. There is a lake, a great store, grocery store, boat rentals, a beach, and of other great stuff. The location was perfect. We spent part of our visit hiking around the Tetons and a few days in Yellowstone. Our spot had a lot of privacy-we chose not to have hookups but there are spots with hookups if you choose.

If you want to camp in the Teton NP, then this is the place to be. You can't beat the central location of Colter Bay and the view of the Tetons over Jackson Lake from here are spectacular. I arrived about 4pm on 9/13 and got the last generator spot available (no reservations). The site was incredibly uneven but I had been warned. It looked like a lot of the sites required leveling based on the way they were oriented to the road. It's dry camping with generators allowed in certain loops. I think that's pretty expensive for dry camping, but again the location is hard to beat. For close access to the Tetons, I would camp here again.

With the size of our rig, we never thought we would stay in a National Park, but we managed to get a site here. We drove down from Yellowstone to check out our options, and were told by a ranger that we should have no problem after Labor Day. We arrived two days after Labor Day and managed to get a spot, but we certainly didn’t have as many choices as we had hoped for. For whatever reason, the crowds didn’t dwindle and the campground was full the Saturday after Labor Day.

The sites aren’t ideal, our loop was mostly pull throughs right alongside the road, but we managed to fit. Most bigger rigs sit very close to the road, which can be a little nerve racking, but it worked out fine. The living space, for most of the sites, is highly wooded and quite large. We really liked our site and joked about how far a walk it was to the fire pit. This is bear country, and each site has a large bear proof box to keep food, garbage and grills safe.

You check in at the gate, which went fairly smoothly even with three campers in front of us. They assign you a spot, and were very accommodating of us, giving us two options to chose from. The sites are gravel and ours was mostly level. The were no hookups at all in our loop, only the second time we have tried this, but we liked it so much here we extended our stay from 3 to 6 nights. There are electric only sites, but they weren’t even recommended to us, I assume because of our size. They were also pricey, I think they are $58/night and $36/night with a senior pass.

We have a solar system, but the trees interfered and we had to supplement with the generator, a lot. We did get some afternoon sun, which helped, but very little direct sun. Generator hours are 8am to 8pm, which seemed to work out. The trees also prevented any hope of satellite and we had no AT&T or Verizon signal. Our AT&T hotspot with a booster would occasionally get a strong enough signal to update mail, but was unreliable so we just turned it off. There is WiFi in the village, which usually worked well. We were really roughing it! (-:

The bathrooms in our loop were older, but clean. The showers are located with the laundry in the Colter Bay Village. Not overly convenient, we drove when we needed to go to the village. The laundry area is big and at $2 to wash and dry, not the highest price I’ve seen. There are two sets of loops, with the second one being for the bigger rigs, at there is a dump station at the entrance to the second set of loops. There are two dump stations on the way out. The grocery in the village is well stocked for a campground grocery, even if the prices are a bit high. The cafe was closed for the season, but the restaurant was open and the food was good.

Overall, we liked the campground and would consider staying here again.

We stayed here five nights in the middle of June 2018 in site M-268. We were at some BLM in the Bridger-Teton National Forest nearby, but the weather forecasted heavy rain for several days straight, so we decided to move to paved roads. This campground is nice. There are two areas in the campground, one is generators allowed and in the other area they are not allowed. We opted for the generator side because it was going to be rainy for several days and we were not sure if our solar would keep up (it did). When we were here, the campground was not busy at all which was very surprising.

We really liked the layout of the sites. Groups of sites where in a loop configuration with the road being one-way. Each site was pull-in. The best part of the configuration was even though you might have neighbors, it did not feel like you were right on top of each other. Our site was particularly nice because there was no site directly across from us. Even though we were in the generator area, it was very quiet, and everyone observed generator hours (8-8). The Coulter Bay area has most everything you need. There is a gas station (with diesel), a small convenience store for groceries and a laundry facility which also has paid showers ($4.50). We used the laundry facility while staying and it was typical. We did not use the showers but heard from other campers that they were very nice. There is also a visitor’s center, a marina and a swimming area in the lake. We had no cell phone signal (AT&T) at all. We could not send or receive calls or text messages. With a small antenna, we were able to get some use out of the hotspot for internet, but it was mainly only usable in the evening hours. The laundry facility and some of the restaurants in the complex have Wi-Fi which was usable. They have three dump stations. We used the in-coming one to dump before we set-up and one of the out-going ones on the way out. They also had potable water. The maximum length for the campground is posted as 45 feet. We heard that a black bear and her cubs frequented the area, but we never did see them. Overall it was a good place to stay. Wish it had not rained the entire time we were there. I did deduct a star because of cost. $31/night for a campsite with no hookups is a little steep in my opinion. These are the times I wish one of us was a senior! 😊

We would love to stay in Yellowstone, but it always seems all the (good/decent) sites are full and overcrowded. We always go early in the season, but it seems they're always full anyway. That being said, we like to visit sites all over the area including the Grand Teton NP and Jackson. Because of this, Colter Bay Village Campground is a good alternative and centralized to these locations.

The sites seem like they're close together due to the way you park within the loops. Basically, you have "loops" of campsites, where you park parallel with the loop. Each site is a pull-through and you face into your campsite from the appropriate side of your RV. Because of this, your sites are not stacked on top of each other, but the loops get full of a cars lined up along the narrow road. I personally like this setup as it does give you more room from surrounding campsites. This makes access to your site very easy as you don't ever have to back into anything.

Access to a decent grocery store, gift shop/clothing/camping supplies store, laundry, showers, marina, gas station, and a place to buy tickets for activities are located right outside of the campground. Expect to pay the premiums at this locations, so load up outside of the park if you're on a budget. There is a full hookup RV park, lodges, and a restaurant in the village, so you have access to quite a few amenities if you choose to use them. To me this is a great convenience since the campground is right outside of this without ruining the camping experience.

As for campsite amenities, this is dry camping campground. There is water and dumping available and flushing toilets at each loop. The bathrooms are clean, but they're also old, so don't have high expectations no matter how much they clean their bathrooms. Since it's a dry camping campground, expect generators to turn on in the mornings and some take advantage of the generator times throughout the day. Fortunately, it's 8 am to 8 pm, so at night it's well before the sun goes down during the late Spring and Summer months.

Overall, the location is good, the cost is good, the location is good, the sites are decent size. I would recommend this location.