Best Dog-Friendly Camping near West Wendover, NV

You can’t camp on the salt flats but this is the next best thing. Unpaved road but very reasonable for even 2WD. There are plenty of sites along the road here and more private ones further in if you have 4WD and high clearance. Easy to get to West Wendover for supplies (and casinos!)

Exit Bonneville Speedway. Head N past Sinclair (on right). Veer to left, which is Leepy (if you stay right youre on the Peninsula easy turn around at end) about a mile in Leppy veer to the right on the dirt road. It is wash boarded but totally doable. That leads you to the BLM parking lot. There are tons of spots all around there. To the left will lead you back to Leepy. To the right there are tons more spots. Some level, some not. You will be able to find a turn around spot (I'm towing 33' TT) if you don't want to go the, what I was told 40 mile loop. It is wash boarded. Only potable water I found was KOA in West Wendover. They also have a dump. Has a tendency to get VERY windy.

Bonneville Speedway Access Rd > Left on Leppy Pass Rd till you reach a strange mysterious government building > Right on Silver Island Loop Rd > veer right on Volcano West Rd

Dope spot on a bluff looking out at the entire valley, with Pilot Peak prominently featured.   Plenty of space to maneuver and very level.  Already some fire pits.

Watch the rocks on Volcano West rd as you approach the lookout - I made it with my 25 ft travel trailer, but be careful you don't bottom it out.

You can see for miles in every direction, but limited protection from wind.   Wasn't too bad when I was there but I imagine it could be.

Super close to West Wendover and the salt flats.  There's dozens of campsites in this area so definitely go exploring.  While the roads are generally in good shape, some of have pretty bad wash boarding, especially when towing.

Some cell reception, great for Starlink obviously.

Stayed: 5/14/2021

Cost: FREE

Site: SEE PIC

Vehicle: Volkswagen Atlas

Equipment: Tent

AT&T: Weaker 5G

T-Mobile: 2 bars LTE

This is a great area, just outside of the Bonneville Salt Flats, and minutes from the towns of Wendover and West Wendover, at the Nevada and Utah state line. Apple Maps had some issues with us getting to these sites, because it thought it was only walkable, and that there was no road. So, if you plug it in and there is a crazy long commute, that could be why.

Once you take the turn off of Leppy Pass Road, there is an open area that had some RVs and others camping out. If you continue east, passing the ‘Silver Island Mountains Back Country Byway’ sign, you will end up at the Volcano Peak Dispersed area. We traveled about 2 miles down this road, going around a curve with a flat area and big rock to the right. There are many more sites this way, but we turned around and chose the site marked in the map picture. Heads up, the road can be a little rough!

We had some cool views of the flats, I-80 in the distance and surrounded by the mountains. It is a little close to the road and there was quite a bit of traffic, so noise and dirt/dust could be an issue. However, it is a beautiful site!

#DareToEverywhere

This is one of my favorite spots we’ve camped! This particular spot is at the base of the mountains and had a large flat area perfect for our Sprinter, a fire pit, and large rock formation great for climbing. We even had some prong horned sheep near us on the mountain. The sunrise and stars at night were unreal. It was easy to get to, a long dirt road that splits off from the Bonneville Speedway road. The road is washboard but not bad at all in comparison to a lot of them we have been on at other sites. There are a lot of spots on this same road in both directions.

If you have dogs with you, this was also a great place to have them off the leash and play fetch since no one was around.

Although Dyrt has this listed as Nevada, it is in Utah (probably the BLM office is NV). Drive to the end of the road and there is a sign. Drive past the sign to drive right out onto the salt. We saw a lot of vehicles out there, including some trucks with campers. But we were worried about the salt being too soft for the weight of our van so we just parked at the side of the parking lot and hunkered down. 

If you take the spur of the road to the left that goes up the side of the mountain, there are places to park at the top that are part of BLM but UDOT restricts access to gravel/sand. Great views on top of hill in all directions.

BEWARE: Although you'll see people driving out on the flats, it MAY be VERY VERY muddy, with slick mud even though it appears to 'look fine.' I would suggest walking on it a ways out to see. IF it's dry it MAY be fine.

Overall, nothin' fancy but if you're in the area, might as well check it out.

We stayed at the Bonneville KOA on a road trip from Southern California out to Colorado. Our original goal had been to drive from the SF Bay Area to SLC, UT (US Highway 80 is a very easy, straight shot drive from CA to UT, even for a 650 mile drive), but got a really late start and changed our target to the NV/UT boarder.

The Wendover KOA is definitely a KOA designed for motorhomes and trailers - it’s BARREN - so not a place I would usually want to tent camp. All of the spaces are dirt lots, including the tent sites - no grass, no bushes, no (well, very few) trees, no privacy, no nothing. Again, this is not the environment I would normally want to camp in, but it worked just fine for a short stop between long stretches of driving when covering miles on a road trip.er

This KOA campground would be great for RV users who want to visit the Casinos on the Nevada side of the NV/UT boarder, and for those spending time at the Bonneville Salt Flats for races or recreational fun.

The facilities were clean - clean bathrooms, clean showers. There were fire pits and picnic benches in the camp sites, and WiFi was available on the campus.

KOAs can be really great and convenient (if not full), considering we did not have a reservation ahead of time, and arrived fairly late, but were able to register through an iron ranger near the front office. If you need to find a place to camp in this area, and do NOT have a 4WD vehicle, I️ would suggest camping at the Wendover KOA instead of the nearby dispersed BLM sites located ON the salt flats. When researching where to stop for the night, we considered staying at the BLM campsites as they were FREE and camping out on the salt flats seemed like a cool idea. We decided against it because we didn’t know how my 2WD Honda CRV would fair on the salt, and because KOAs always have nice clean facilities to use.

We got into a conversation with our neighbors about the salt flats (we had never seen them before). They seemed to think we made the correct choice by camping at the KOA rather than the on salt flats… they regularly take off-roading vehicles out to the salt flats, and have seen a dozen or so 2WD vehicles get stuck out on the flats. Apparently the long, vast salt flats are deceptive, and not always as flat as they appear. Also, they said that it can be very difficult to see pooled water while driving out on the salt, so a lot of people get stuck in deep puddles after rain.

CAMPSITE SPECS

Fees: $26/night

Plumbed Toilets: Yes

Water: Yes

Showers: Yes (no coins needed)

Picnic Table: Yes

Firepit: Yes

Cooking Grate: Yes

Shade: NO

Cell Service: Yes + WiFi

Trash: Yes

Animal Bins/Food Lockers: NO

Management at this KOA was excellent. Very nice and welcoming. The facilities were clean. The campground area is clean and well attended.

Wonderful!!!

Pretty basic but good for short term. It's just a small cup de sac of about 15 spots at most. All back ins except for like 2-3 pull thrus i think in middle! Don't even think there's a Host on site. Close to nugget and Montego casinos. No bathrooms or trees for shade.

Is pretty typical for a KOA except for the location!  This KOA has all the usual amenities: playground, showers, flush toilets, RV hookups, a pool, and wifi.  Some convenievces can also be bought at the main registration cabin.  In addition to the usual RV sites there are also camping cabins and "tent" sites (which I do not recommend).  There are a couple of unique things about this KOA in that it has shuttles to the nearby casinos and is also a 5 minutes drive from the world famous Bonneville Salt Flats where numerous world speed records have been set.

Just a level parking concrete concrete pad pad back in only No tables just Water electric sewer hook UPS. Is a small horse Shoe shape location. Must check in with Nugget Casino hotel dest.

My german shepherd and I had a beautiful nights sleep here. Camping sites are very spread out. No need to worry about noisy neighbors. We're close enough to the freeway that it's not way off the beat and path, but zero road noise. We were woken up to a beautiful sunrise. A great breakfast and back on the road to pennsylvania.

Notes: The main road silver island road is almost non stop rumble strips buckle up! Depending on how far in you wanna go for wheel drive maybe recommended. Site are clean and spread out everywhere. Sit back and enjoy the sunshine 🌞