Best Tent Camping near West Glacier, MT

Really enjoyed our stay. Minutes away from West Glacier entrance. Lots to do and see.

Small and pretty area but there were big deal breakers for us. We spent 2 nights here tent camping as part of a longer motorcycle camping trip.

First and foremost, the store was closed. They have a store on site but it's closed until 2022. It would have been nice because the closest thing to a grocery store is 15 miles away.

Second, there are no defined campsites. It's first come first served around a little pond on the property. It's nicely shaded and quiet, but there are NO picnic tables for tent sites and no dedicated fire rings. So if you show up later in the day, you might be SOL for a fire. The RV sites have picnic tables. I bring this up because it's a really nice thing to have when you're tent camping.  A place to cook, sit, put some of the crap you're hauling (especially if you're like us and on motorcycles with limited storage).

Third, the bathrooms and showers were cleaned up on a regular basis which was really nice but no hot water later on in the day. After a long, hard day of riding I just wanted to wash all the grossness off and was in freezing cold water.

We stayed here for 4 nights. Only 5 minutes away from West Glacier Park entrance. Close by is a zip line attraction with a blow up slide in water for the little ones and bounce house obstacle with a slide. Also an adventure park that has go karts, bumper cars, lazy river etc. Great location with so much to do outside the park. We had a corner spot which I really liked for some privacy. Each site has its own fire pit which was nice. Wi-Fi in my opinion worked great. Has a dog park and a little playground for kids. Laundry room and bath houses were very clean. Also has an arcade and loved how they use honesty policy during closed hours where you can pick up firewood or ice and pay the next morning:) I definitely recommend and will come back for another Montana adventure.

9/13/19 West Glacier, Montana 

West Glacier KOA Resort

Most beautiful location of the KOAs I've stayed at. Nestled against the mountains and less than 3 miles to Glacier National Park. 

Lots of sites to choose from. Ours was a pull thru with nice vegetation between. Fire pit with benches and picnic table. Some sites are close together with no privacy. Some have gas grills and patio furniture. There are cabins and tent sites as well. Bathhouse was average. The cafe was open for breakfast and dinner.Ice cream shop closed for the season. Amazing pool! Nice play area, dog parks. Really nice camp store, firewood available. KOA Workshop on site. RV wash and dog grooming by appointment.

The spot was wonderful. When you first turn off the main road there’s about 100 feet of very rough road so go super slow and keep to the left. And then splits three ways I kept the left and it was super smooth and brought me out onto the beach. I drove all the way through the beach back into the forest area for more privacy and that’s where the toilets are located. There were a total of four Porta potty‘s. No other services available. It’s 20 minutes from West glacier and had good enough AT&T service for me to work remotely. I would say they were about 15 other campers when I arrived Wednesday evening. The weekends I guarantee he gets very full but I think you could easily fit over 50 people camping here. I will definitely be back again and would recommend. I drive a Ford transit van and didn’t have issues.

First of all, I can't write this review without giving incredible thanks to the fire crews who were able to open this campground as quickly as possible during the Reynolds Creek Fire. We were scheduled to camp at St Mary on the night of July 29 2015, and when we went to bed on the 28th (at Fish Creek, on the west end of the park), they weren't sure if St Mary would be open. Needless to say, I was extremely stressed, but waking up in the morning to hear that St Mary Campground was open was one of the best things I'd heard in WEEKS. Though we had to circumnavigate the park to the south due to the Going-to-the-Sun Road still being partially closed, I was so relieved that I didn't have to find a contingency plan. The staff were very cheerful, in spite of the campground being pretty deserted and quiet (no birds or animals). I get the impression that this part of the park isn't as frequently visited, which is a bit odd. Most people head up to the Many Glacier area after their time in West Glacier, but I don't think St Mary campground should be passed over so quickly. It's a very well planned campground, with large bushes that block each pull-through driveway from the road and separate each site. We stayed in A07 and A09, right next to each other, and we could neither see nor hear our friends in the next site over. The ground was soft and excellent for pitching a tent, and the showers (though a bit of a trek from our sites) were warm. I think even when this campground is full it still feels very secluded - it was excellent! It's very different from West Glacier, but I don't think this campground is to be missed.

Well, this is an older campground, built when most people tent camped or had small to medium size campers I'm sure.. a good many of the sites are not very level. We saw some wheels off the ground. NOTE: the driveway length and the length of the vehicle are sometimes vastly different. Make sue the vehicle length works. Example: our driveway length listed 65 ft. Great, I thought, but when I double checked the max vehicle length it was only 24 ft. Whew..that would have been an unhappy surprise had I not seen that.. All the sited are tree covered giving that back country feel. It is hilly on that side of the lake. There's good hiking trails from the campground. There is a bike path over to Apgar Village, Visitors Center and West Glacier Village which was really nice. The bathhouse was nice and clean. The rangers and hosts were reall y nice.

For full disclosure we were compensated for this trip for testing the Dyrt's reservation system.

Our trip to Swan Lake Trading Post & Campground started out by reserving the campground through The Dyrts's new reservation system. Reserving the site was extremely easy and fast to use, way better than other systems we have used before. We had a confirmation from the campground with in a few hours of using the reservation system.

Now for the campground. We were highly impressed by this small campground. The tent camping area was located around a small pond/lake. The site has picnic tables and fire rings as well as plenty of chairs available for siting around the fire or along the little lake. The campground has 8 RV sites, 3 cabins and 3 yurts (the yurts had not been set up for the season during our visit). The trading post has all your basic camping needs and anything you need if you forget something, they even have Ice Cream. If you don't want to cook breakfast the trading post will take care of that for you by cooking up a breakfast sandwich for you. The campground provides clean restrooms and showers. Tent sites were very reasonable at $20, just two more dollars than the Forest Service campground down the road which does not have flush toilets or showers. The camp host are very friendly. We were provided with the camps wifi password, but you do have to be on the trading post back porch to use it. The porch has plenty of table an chairs for sitting at. They also have games you can use to pass the time, we didn't use them but was nice to know they were available. It was nice and quiet at night with very little traffic on the highway, plus the creek running by really muffled any noise from vehicles driving by. This campground will definitely be on our list to stay at the next time we visit the Swan Valley and Swan Lake.

The road was a little rough if you wanted to go all the way to the river. Fantastic site where you can tent camp, car or RV.

I really want to give this campground 5 stars but the tent sites left something to be desired. The sites with the views that sit on top of a hill are for RVs (even for RVs, they are pretty tight spots). The tent sites sit in a field and like a previous review states, have little privacy. However the sites are flat which is a huge bonus. We were lucky and the tent sites were not very busy so we were not terribly disturbed. Site 68 is decent as there is an opening set back in the trees for your tent. Most of the fire rings and picnic tables are set pretty close together. The bathrooms were nice and there was always plenty of hot water, even when showering during the busy evening times. The restaurant is fantastic and we ate there 3 nights in a row. The night time stars are fantastic and the location is great for east glacier and many glacier (30 minute drive to many glacier). The campground is VERY clean and staff is super friendly.

This is a well loved for family owned campground. We stayed in the tent camping area and felt like it gave great privacy vs. the typical rows of RVs. There is tons of shade in the tent camping areas were as the RVs were more in the open but have the opportunity to have gorgeous distant lake views. We would stay here again as the location is perfect for getting into the park while being family owned and responsible priced.

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This campground offers cabin, rv and tent camping. There is a cafe open for breakfast and lunch. The office has cards and games for use and the hosts are always helpful.