Miles City KOA Journey

This review is from the perspective of an overnight or short-term stay versus a destination location. We ensured we obeyed the campground’s (CG) instructional email stating to take Exit 135 and no others as there’s a low bridge through town from the other exits. We then followed the instructions to this quaint little KOA CG. The people running the CG were super friendly, and check-in was quick and easy. We were led to pull through site 82 with FHUs. The utilities were placed in the middle of the site to include two sewer connections, which was nice as our new Brinkley Toy Hauler has two sewer connections. The sites have newer picnic tables and fire pits. The WiFi speed here was okay, and we got enough of a northern shot through the mature trees to have usable Starlink. We got 4 bars on Verizon. The water pressure was also good. They have a spacious laundry with a nice book swap library. The office has a small gift shop with grocery items, including selling local steaks, as this is where the USDA’s Fort Keogh Livestock and Range Research Laboratory is located. They have a medium-sized fenced-in dog run, but there is plenty of room to walk your dog, especially out of the west side of the CG near the Yellowstone River. We enjoyed our overnight stay here.

Not the best experience, but probably our fault. We arrived late, 6:15pm on a dry, extremely hot 111 degrees day. Dust and cottonwood everywhere. Pool was only open till 7pm. The kids could’ve stayed in another hour to keep cool. Site 31, is placed about 30ft from a dirt/gravel road the locals use to get to the Toung River and Yellowstone River. Heavily traveled for a Tuesday night. Every 1-5 minutes a big truck kicked up clouds of dust, dirt bikes buzzed by, or a slow car blaring music passed.

We asked for a no hook up site, as our van is basically a tin tent, no A/C. Requiring our screened doors and windows to be wide open all night. Once dark, we moved to an open interior tent site to get away from the headlights, road noise, and dust.

The staff was nice, but didn’t seem to understand that our van didn’t need hookups. We should’ve been more insistent on a site closer to interior pool/playground area. Very clean laundry room and bathhouse, level sites, nice pool, and a small playground great for our 4 and 6 year old. We'll be back if we can arrive earlier and for a site closer to the interior.

The staff was great and fully implemented the CV-19 protocol, very clean laundry room and bathhouse. Cute little neighborhood but, you next to the access road for the locals to get to the Toung River and Yellowstone River. Level sites but it was full on cottonwood season meaning, it looked like it was snowing. Great job guys we'll be back.

There seems to be a pattern as of late in the KOAs we've stayed at. The premium sites are almost always at the outer edge of the park placed in the loudest possible places. In this particular KOA, the premium site, site 91, is placed about 30ft from "Dike Road". The road is a dirt/gravel road that runs atop the dike holding back the river. It is heavily traveled and as we learned, the local kids like to drive up and down the road on Friday nights with their stereo's extremely loud. This happened until about midnight about very 5 minutes or so.

For the site itself, sans the noise issue, the site was level, large and well laid out. Given the site was so far out, Wifi was limited, but cell service was decent. We would have far preferred a standard site in the shaded interior of this park.

We had been boon-docking for most of the previous two weeks and really needed a full-hook-up respite night. It you are traveling across eastern Montana on I-94, the first thing you will notice is there are not a lot of trees, thus not a lot of shade. The Miles City KOA offers a lovely park with enormous Cottonwoods. The sites are quite close together, it is in a fairly industrial part of town, the pool is small and crowded with kids... but if you just need a restful night and maybe do some laundry, this is the place to stop.
What made it especially nice for us was how incredibly friendly the owners and staff were. They made us feel very welcome.
We would definitely stay here again as we travel across Montana.