Prune Creek

Every time we passed this campground we saw empty sites. This came in handy on this holiday weekend. We grabbed a site and before we even filled out the forms the rest were taken. It’s nice to have found a campsite at late notice on a holiday but they did fill up. 

The campground has a couple loops. We ended up right next to the road. Consistent traffic became background noise if we didn’t pay attention to it. We would have preferred a quieter setting but at least we found a campsite. The campers in the other loop seemed louder and more active. One site had a bunch of dogs and a couple of sites had large groups. Our loop was quiet and restful.

The hosts keep the place clean. With all the rain we’ve had, the trail that links up to Sibley Lake trail was too muddy to hike. We walked up the hill away from the road where logging is being done. It led to a series of trails that seemed to lead to more logging. 

The highlight was finding a mother and baby moose grazing right through our campsite. The host told us that a moose killed a dog recently. I’m keeping a closer eye on ours now. 

We loved the moose coming into camp here! This is an ok campground but the closeness to the road wasn’t the best.

I got lucky here and scored site #18 which was very private and at the end of a lollipop loop. While this site is further away from the creek and closer to the road, it was still quieter than sites on the creek(which were all taken anyway). There is a little trickle of a creek nearby that did a nice job of drowning out the road noise in the evening. There was a nice little trail that went up the hill and overlooked the bigger Prune Creek and all of the people floating and tubing down the creek. If you want a site on the creek, the best ones seemed to be#6-9. My site had the usual picnic table and fire pit, and nice hammock trees. I did find it interesting that while the dumpsters were bear proofed, there were no bear boxes at every campsite. There were two bear boxes and both were next to the water pumps. The vault toilets were not especially clean, most likely due to the heavy use by creek floaters and tubers. While walking down to the creek I noticed that there was some dedicated parking for fishermen, which I guess means that there may be some people in the campground that are not camping.

this is a fantastic campground in the Bighorns. Beautiful scenery and incredibly picturesque. we have camped here for years as friends and with family and we love coming back anytime we can. it’s right on the south fork of the Tongue River and while the fishing is better on other rivers in the area it’s a great place to teach kids or just relax for the evening while you watch the Brookies jump!