West Shore State Park is a public recreation area occupying 129 acres on the western shore of Flathead Lake five miles south of Lakeside in Lake County, Montana. The state park offers boating, fishing, camping, swimming, hiking, and wildlife viewing.
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If you want to get off the beaten path but not too far off, this is the place. A quick turn off of HWY 93 puts you in this pristine campground. There are few amenities here but there are water points to fill your containers and very well-maintained pit bathrooms. There's also some larger communal bear-proof storage containers on the campground as well if you don't have your own way to secure your food.
The hosts are very friendly and can be found under the one giant fluorescent streetlamp on the upper loop. They have firewood available to purchase also, which is super convenient.
The only thing I did not like was when I reserved the camp spot online, the campground map makes it look like the upper 'A' loop is right on the lake, suggesting there's also lake access. This is incorrect. There is actually a row of privately owned homes that border the lake and there is no access for campers. You have to drive up and around (and/or walk) down to the boat launch and picnic area.
Oh, and the sounds of cars and trucks rushing down nearby HWY93 are hard to miss (and ignore), so if you are looking to get away from it all, sight and sound, you might want to find another campground or find a place to hike into.
Anyways, even with those two small irritations, our overall experience here was great. We made friends with other campers, and my family loved being close the lake and being surrounded by nature. I know I enjoyed my early morning walks as the sun came up.
I can't wait to go...
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Camp host Janie blocks the loop having long conversations with other people, inconsiderate of any one behind her. Blocked my spot with another car after that. Allowed a camp van to park staring straight into our site all night, never occupying the site they paid for. Made us feel uncomfortable that people were watching us all night. We were told at the check in kiosk that the host would check in with us every night, but when I addressed this issue I was told by ranger drew I should have handled it myself, either by confronting the people or tracking down the host. If you want a view, pay for a site that has one, like we did. Poor customer service, at least offer a free night if you did not want to give us our 28 bucks back. Update- afterwards ranger drew circled around our site a few times and parked in the same spot we complained to him about the other people being in, and claimed to be on his lunch break. After calling in to register our concerns about him, he got out of his truck and began confronting us about our complaint against him, and refused many attempts of ours to disengage. He finally left us alone after me asking him over 15 times to stop talking to us....
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We've been to this state park a couple of times to try to swim but it's really not a great place to do that. the shore is really narrow and Rocky. It drops off rather quickly. it was also rather crowded when we were there even though we were told there would be a parking spaces. there were parking spaces up above but we had to walk down and up to our car which is quite a distance. they did have a nice Ranger there doing a presentation which was kind of fun. I suppose it would be a nice park if you planned in advanced or...
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