Rio Grande Village Campground

Rio Grande Village Campground in Big Bend National Park is a unique camping experience. In this video, we give you a walking tour of the Rio Grande Village Campground, show the best campsites, and highlight why this campground is one of our favorite camping destinations. There is no Verizon, AT&T, or T-Mobile cellular service at this location, but the nearby village store has free WIFI available.

There wasn't anything special about these campsites. We were in site 3 in the generator section. The sun set behind our RV so our campsite was shaded in the afternoon, which was helpful.
We would recommend this campground for visiting the east side of the park or if you want to see javelinas. They wandered through the campground in the evenings. The sunset view from the nature trail was very pretty. The wifi at the Rio Grande visitor center was decent. There is a single washer and dryer here, but we didn't use it.
Worth noting that the dump station is on the way into the campground so it's open for anyone in the park to use. (It's a bit of a drive from the dispersed RV sites though.)

We stayed here one night while we explored the east side of the park. It’s clean and has the necessities. It has water fill and dump station. Our site had a pavilion. The campground has toilets but not showers. No power. There’s a nature trail that goes from the campground to the Rio Grande. Very pretty. If you need internet, the village store nearby has great wifi. There is no cell signal at the campground (T-Mobile and Verizon). The village store also has paid showers that are open 23 hours a day. They close at 9am for cleaning.

Clean, but with sites that need vast improvement. Pads are crumbling apart. Spiky and low branching trees in many sites are a definite encumbrance that could even damage your roof. This campgrounds needs work. Repaving or new loads of gravel would vastly improve. Tree trimming is needed!

My other general peeve was that the reservation site clearly says if you are not there
by 1 pm following day of the first day of your reservation, it will be cancelled. This is not enforced per camp hosts and as a result roughly half of the campsites sat unoccupied the 5 days we were there. Sign out in front of all the campgrounds in BBNP say “full”. Not so!

If you have a larger or tall rig say over 20 feet length or so, you should look at campsitephotos.com. Try to book first on a generator site, although these have no vegetation. Otherwise, you may have the length you need but not the height or width. The sites in the 40s in non generator area seemed ok too.

This is a primitive campground. Bathrooms have flush toilets, and shared water is provided throughout the campground. Sites where generators are permitted and restricted and limited hours of use. Sites varied in size and privacy accommodating variously sized rigs. All sites are reserved through recreation.gov. Finding a good site, I would suggest using https://www.campsitephotos.com. Our site had trees providing wind block and privacy.
Wifi is provided at the camp store. It is free, but spotty and inconsistence. There is no cell service there.
Showers are available at the camp store operated by a private vendor. There are only 3 showers for the men and 2 for the women (one was out of service). They cost $2 per 5 minutes of tepid water. Expect to wait for the showers. It is a very large campground for just 5 shower stalls.
Camp stores were expectedly pricey. Canister of propane purchased at home for $4 was $12-$15 in the stores.
This site is remote. The unleaded fuel pump has not been working for some time. Be sure to fill at Panther Junction if you are running low on fuel.

This area/NP is beautiful and we would stay hear again. The restroom was clean and the site was clean. What makes zero sense is that this campground has over 100 sites and because of "Covid" only 20 or so were open. So they took the most cramp-packed section and put everyone right next to each other to "slow the spread". I guess the sections that are wooded and separated from each other have been deemed a super spreader section for some reason? With only one restroom to manage the park staff still did not have the ability to change a light bulb in the women's bathroom or provide toilet paper in the men's bath. The laundry was closed (clean clothes are very contagious), and the showers were closed for a week of maintenance. Sorry guys but its time to go back to work.

Loved the RGV Campgrounds. The grounds have bathrooms with running water and flushing toilets. There is a little room attached to the bathrooms with a dish pit to wash your dishes and drinking water spouts throughout the grounds. There are plenty of dumpsters for trash and recylings and Bear bins for storing your food. We did see a Javelina scavenging through the campgrounds so we highly recommend using those Bear Bins for your food storage and we heard coyotes one night. We stayed in the No Generator Zone so it was pretty quite and there is no cell service here unless you go to the RGV store, they have free Wifi and coin operated laundry but their showers are closed due to Covid-19. There is a Nature Trail that starts from the campground that we LOVED! It leads you to a cute little sandy area by the river, or you can take another trail up onto a hill with perfect views of the sunset. This trail is very easy, we saw people of all ages. Other trails are near by that you can drive to with parking spots, we highly recommend Boquillas Trail. Our Camp Host Suzanne, she was so nice and friendly.

If you enjoy Camping and Hiking Adventures, and want to see even more details about Big Bend and other National Parks, check out our travel blog website to 43 National Parks in 1yr :)

www.NationalParkAdventureGuide.com