Tower Fall Campground — Attraction in West Yellowstone

If you don't have a reservation then this is what you have to do. In mid-August we were planning to arrive thru the North Entrance and knew we had to be at the campground around 8:00 am. We were camping with a 20ft trailer and decided to try Tower Fall or Indian Creek. In order to arrive early at the campground we boondocked just outside Yellowstone at the Carabella Recreation Area, handy to US 89 and about 16 miles north of the park entrance. (Take Tom Miner Creek Road and enter the recreation area about 100 yards from US 89, drive about 1/2 mile on the gravel road to the camping area with several sites close to the river)||We were able to arrive at Indian Creek (decided on that one based on a traveler's recommendation) and arrived at about 7:45 am. The campground hosts were excellent and had a board with the vacancies and expected vacancies, there were only 2 campers including us waiting at the office. They gave us a ticket to place on a campsite and told us to drive thru and select a site that was vacant and come back and fill out the paperwork. We found one where the occupants were packing up so we placed our ticket on the post returned to the office and paid for 2 days. Later we added another day.||This was a very large level and open campsite that was great for us. Even in mid summer Yellowstone can get pretty cold at night so we used the RV furnace, mainly in the mornings to warm things up, after day 2 we needed to put our solar panels out to replenish our RV batteries and the campsite was open enough to get good sunlight.||While we were here we saw most campers stay about 2 days so spots opened up frequently, most campers left between 8 and 9 am and there were always spots for early birds and some days there were sites even in the afternoon, but if you have an RV and need a larger site earlier is better to have...

If you don't have a reservation then this is what you have to do. In mid-August we were planning to arrive thru the North Entrance and knew we had to be at the campground around 8:00 am. We were camping with a 20ft trailer and decided to try Tower Fall or Indian Creek. In order to arrive early at the campground we boondocked just outside Yellowstone at the Carabella Recreation Area, handy to US 89 and about 16 miles north of the park entrance. (Take Tom Miner Creek Road and enter the recreation area about 100 yards from US 89, drive about 1/2 mile on the gravel road to the camping area with several sites close to the river)||We were able to arrive at Indian Creek (decided on that one based on a traveler's recommendation) and arrived at about 7:45 am. The campground hosts were excellent and had a board with the vacancies and expected vacancies, there were only 2 campers including us waiting at the office. They gave us a ticket to place on a campsite and told us to drive thru and select a site that was vacant and come back and fill out the paperwork. We found one where the occupants were packing up so we placed our ticket on the post returned to the office and paid for 2 days. Later we added another day.||This was a very large level and open campsite that was great for us. Even in mid summer Yellowstone can get pretty cold at night so we used the RV furnace, mainly in the mornings to warm things up, after day 2 we needed to put our solar panels out to replenish our RV batteries and the campsite was open enough to get good sunlight.||While we were here we saw most campers stay about 2 days so spots opened up frequently, most campers left between 8 and 9 am and there were always spots for early birds and some days there were sites even in the afternoon, but if you have an RV and need a larger site earlier is better to have...

Primitive campground, and only 20 spaces so it fills up fast. We booked lodgings at nearby Roosevelt Lodge on a Tuesday in early June, then drove the two miles from there to Tower Falls the next morning at 7:30 a.m. There were three campsites scheduled to vacate that day, and two people in line in front of me. I waited two hours and got the third (and last) one by 9:30 a.m. There was also a handicap accessible campsite which was available for rent on the stipulation that if someone with a disability sticker showed up and requested that site they would have the right to kick out the person in it if that person did not have an official disability sticker. There was also a small grassy area for hikers and bikers to camp in. The Tower Fall General Store is located along the Grand Loop Road at the base of the campground road, and a good place to go ft or ice cream. We had made reservations at Canyon Campground just in case Tower was full, and managed to use the payphone at Tower to cancel those (for a $25 cancellation fee) once we secured the Tower Fall site. The Tower Fall site is a great base location for the following trails: Lost Creek/Petrified Tree; Tower Fall hike; Yellowstone Picnic Area Trail; Trout Lake; the Lamar Valley; and several others. The restrooms were pit toilets, but clean. Not all the campsites had water spouts, and we had to put all our stuff in bear boxes (even pkastic boxes that did not...