Bridge Bay is a campground located in the southeast part of Yellowstone National Park. The location is fantastic for those wanting to access Yellowstone Lake or all of the thermal features in the southern half of the park. The campground is one of the largest, boasting 432 sites in 8 loops. For the best views of Yellowstone Lake, request the E, F, or G Loop! Avoid Loops A and B, as there is very little shade - basically camping in an open field.

We pulled at 17' RV trailer with our Durango, and we barely fit into the back-in site they assigned to us. The sites themselves are pretty nice and level, but extremely close together, even in the more wooded loops (we were in Loop H). Bear boxes are shared between sites. When we arrived, our neighbors in a tent had taken over the entire bear box. We didn't completely mind, as we had an RV, but we have a very large cooler that would have been nice to store instead of transferring back and forth between camper and car twice a day.

Check-in was very slow with long lines. We arrived around 3 pm and had to wait over twenty minutes in line to check in for our reserved site. This is one campground in Yellowstone that you can reserve in advance (and you should do so by the end of March for that summer season). Flush toilets and a dump station are a bonus for this campground. Generators are allowed as well, from 8 am to 8 pm. We found that campers in this campground tended to stay up and out of their tents well past the 10 pm quiet hours began, and most were still sleeping when we got up to go spot wildlife at 6 or 7 am.

All campsites have a fire pit with a cooking grate and a picnic table. We did see and hear some wildlife from our site, mostly birds, including a grouse that walked right through our site (see video). Deer, elk, and bison are also around.

Although the accommodations were ample, the crowding, noise, and slow check-in process (compared to three other campgrounds in Yellowstone) brought down our overall rating.