Our home base for this Yellowstone visit was Bridge Bay Campground. We stayed at Fishing Bridge on our last visit twenty years ago but, it’s still closed for renovations. Bridge Bay was a wonderful place to stay while exploring the splendor of Yellowstone. Since we are longer than 36-feet Mark had to call for reservations. We were given site 135 in C Loop, a lengthwise pull-through with plenty of room for our coach and the Jeep.
Bridge Bay is a large campground with 450 sites spread across ten loops. There are four tent only loops and one loop that is a group hiker/biker tent only loop. Bridge Bay is all dry camping with generous generator hours, 8 am to 8 pm. There are back-in sites as well as sideways pull-throughs, each with a bear box, picnic table and fire pit. The sites are large with large areas of grass in between. We watched families play catch, volleyball and soccer in the giant grass. Two families were camping together on the other side of our loop and we enjoyed watching their kids play hide and seek. We watched them hide behind bushes, in bear boxes and one agile girl even climbed a tree to hide. The bear box hiding spot was in the site next to us, as the girl climbed into the box she looked at us and gave us the “sshh” symbol to which we smiled and nodded. It took a long time for the others to find her, so long that her mom started looking and walked over towards us. We pointed to the bear box and shared a laugh with mom.
Because the campground is in bear country, storing items with a food odor in a bear box is a must. We stored our BBQ in the bear box every night. Since we stayed in a hard sided RV, it was okay to keep our food inside our coach. To keep your dishes clean and food odor free, there are dishwashing stations throughout the campground.
We were treated to resident wildlife at the campground. We saw the same two elk, at least we think they were, every evening grazing and walking through different campground loops. Fellow campers left them alone, only taking pictures. We also had a resident bison! He had a well worn spot four campsites up from ours. He was there, just laying, every afternoon and then again in the morning. There he lay completely disinterested as people set up their camps.
We prefer to stay inside National Parks whenever we can. For us, it means more time exploring and less time waiting to enter. Dry camping inside the park means managing your power and water. We BBQ dinners which mean less dishes to wash. We take “camp showers” turning off the water except to rinse. Our new RV came with three solar panels and they were a game changer. We actually made power during the sunny days which meant we didn’t have to run the generator as much. A good/bad part of staying inside the park is no cell signal or television signal. We played a lot of card games, watched the kids play hide and seek and enjoyed the evening with a fire. Mark was the big winner in Gin while I took the trophy for most Crazy-8 wins.
A wonderful bonus that comes with camping at Bridge Bay is a beautiful hike right outside the campground! The first thing we did after setting up camp was to hike to Natural Bridge. It’s an easy trail that meanders through the trees to a small natural stone bridge. I had Lake Powell’s Rainbow Bridge on my brain, this is much smaller. It’s also a lot more rugged than the smooth wind-blown lines of Rainbow Bridge.
The Bridge Bay Marina is a short walk from the campground. They have boats and kayaks to rent. You can also take a one-hour scenic guided tour on Yellowstone Lake. The marina store has a small grocery section along with all things fishing related.
We’re already planning our next Yellowstone trip and it’ll be a toss-up where to stay. Even when Fishing Bridge Campground is open, we may still make reservations back at Bridge Bay.