Bow Valley Campground — Hotel in Alberta

This was our first time staying at Bow Valley Campground. Firstly, what a gem so close to the city. We live in Calgary, and it took us a short hour drive to the campground. ||The staff at the store were very helpfully and polite, checked us in quickly. The store is quite overpriced as most campground items are. So, unless you want to pay $20 for 10 paper plates. I would make sure you have what you need. Bonus, this place is very close to Canmore, so you could pop into town for anything you might need, or for a day trip! ||The showers and flush toilets were clean, we did not use the wash house as we have a trailer, but I did check them out to see for Future visits. ||We stayed in A loop, no power. But the new Parks Canada generator pilot project is in effect this year, this allows us to run our generator from 9AM-9PM. we used it to power up at lunch time with no issues. The road through the campground is paved however VERY narrow. With our Truck and trailer we were JUST missing trees on either side of us, so keep that in mind. ||We stayed in site A33, it was very large and on the bow river. We had a great view of Mount Yam, and the sounds of the river especially at night was amazing. Sites in A loop are very treed and private, note that there is a walking path that runs along the river, so there will be foot traffic quite close to your campsite during the day as people explore along the river. This didn't bother us, we had lots of people stop to say hi as they hiked. There is a train that runs along the other side of the river, we did hear it often, however it was not bothersome. We didn't hear it at night, but we were in a trailer. ||The only Con's I would say about this campground is that the sections are not linked. So if you wanted to walk the loops, you will have to go back out to the main road and walk down that to enter each loop, because of this we only walked A loop and C loop which were connected. And the very narrow roads are challenging if you are pulling a trailer, it can be very tight. ||All in all, we plan on making this campground one of our regular spots next season. If you plan to check it out, be sure to know booking dates as this place fills...

June 2021||||The campground is very large, it is not a campground you just walk to the store from your site, at least not the area we were in. There is a store where you check in, and just down from that a washroom with showers. You need to buy tokens for it and each token gives you 5 minutes.||||We booked a power/water site in loop E at the end of June during a big heatwave. Our site had 15 amp power which should have been sufficient to run the A/C but it constantly blew out. We even turned out all our lights, put the fridge on propane and it still wouldn't stay on. It was super frustrating because it was not even at the site where you reset it, you had to walk up above the sites to a breaker box. We were not the only ones having issues as we kept running in to people saying the same thing.||||The site itself was spacious and private (although quite tight to get in to with a 28ft trailer) Some sites were not very private at all but in loop E they seemed to be spaced out nicely.||||There are two parks, but we were far enough away from both of them from our site that we didn't want to walk to them and there was nowhere to pull over and park so sadly our kids didn't get to enjoy that feature. There is an amphitheater but nothing going on in it during our stay.||||You can purchase wood at the store, but it was horribly priced at $10 for a very small bundle.||||We drove down to the day use area but the water was running high, fast and dirty. Would be a nice area later in the summer. There is a pathway along the river that run in front of some of the sites in loop E but not great water entry areas in the spots that I looked near our site.||||We were warned that bear activity was very high but we didn't see any, thankfully. They are very strict about making sure all food/garbage/toiletries ect are brought inside a hard surface as soon as you leave your campsite and to not throw any garbage in the fire.||||We saw many people biking throughout the campground, the roads are paved so great area to bike.||||We could hear the train go by about every hour and most of the time blew it's horn but I didn't find it too distracting. ||||Check in time is 4pm and...

Campground was very clean and well marked. Whole campground is on river bed, but close to loop C you can not go to river. Lots of walking trails within the camp ground. We went there Jun 9 to 11 2020. Due to COVID 19 they have closed flush toilet and shower, only pit toilets available. Pit toilets were very clean. Campground has stores, they sale everything you can think of for camping purpose. ( food, small accessories, sauces, wood, tourch, bug spray, etc)

This campground is paperless. If you like to use trail maps please print them ahead of time. Also print your camp permit.

We were not aware about showers being closed when we went to ask at store they said its return on website but I wasnt able to find anywhere that its close nor it was mentioned in reservation email.

They say please dont wash your utensils on you campsite tap, but at the same time they have closed all public places, and we were tenting there so we had no option but cleaning them on our site.

We had electric 30 amp site, when we went to camp site we found out that electeic port plug was different then our usual ports, nothing was mentioned on website about this either. They said they have designed this with RVs requirement. In past we always had regualr plug for electric campsite. They were selling converters in store for $16.99.

Seems like there was new staff member in the store. And upon asking some questins we got very random answers. I felt she didnt knew the answers of my questions. I understand new staff might not have good understanding. So, rathen then giving random information it would be better to hear I dont know but I can find out for you and...