Best Dog-Friendly Camping near Dubois, WY

Dubois/Wind River KOA, Dubois , Wyoming

Dubois , Wyoming is another town on the old west trail. I only stayed overnight after Grand Teton NP but would have stayed longer had my schedule allowed to explore more. It is a little touristy but there is history there if you search it out.

The KOA was a smaller one, back behind a gas station which was convenient. There are cool TP’s that you can rent and the cabins site along the Wind River which makes for some nice scenery when you are chilling at the campground. Don’t look to hard though, across the river is a neighborhood. The road in was a little rough and the gravel needed some maintenance, otherwise it was a well maintained parking lot like so many of the KOA’s are now. The playground equipment looked archaic! I did not use any of the facilities so I have no information on them and there was no dog park. I arrived after close, found my paperwork on the lite kiosk and I left out in the morning before the office opened. For the price I expect more but it seems like the area dictates the quality of the KOA.

We did not have a reservation for this site, rather we stumbled upon the best lake side camping spot in Pinnacles campground on Brook Lake. The tent door opened perfectly to the setting sun, which bounced yellows and pinks off the lake and surrounding cliffs. The camp spot had perfect access to the water to enjoy fly fishing or an evening paddle board session. The camp host was pleasant and very helpful, plus the outhouse was the nicest outdoor facility I’ve ever seen, not to mention its directly across from the camp site. If you ever find your self outside of Dubois, WY snag the #3 spot at Pinnacles campground.

Closest Town, Dubois Wyoming

This is a primitive campsite, with no running water, fire rings or fancy tent platforms, but there is a vault toilet about 200 yards away in the parking area for the New Glacier Trailhead, aka Glacier Trail 801. There is room for several tents spread out among the trees and scrub, and a few spots right next to Torrey Creek, as we chose. They are not numbered and there is to my knowledge, no way to reserve a spot. That said, we were the only ones there in July!

Glacier Trail 801 is located at the end of Forrest Road #411, and branches off along the way to Whiskey Mtn Trail 804 and Lake Louise Trail 806. This campsite made a great jumping off point for day hiking. The hike to Lake Louise is worth every step! (even if you haven't acclimated to the altitude yet and less than 4 mile loop feels more like 15, just saying ;) Don't forget to log your name in the register before setting off on the trails.

Technically speaking, this campsite is right on Torrey Creek, at Glacier Trailhead 801.1.

Adjacent to this area, is a turn around that can accommodate RVs, with maybe 6 spots give or take. No hook ups, but there are bear boxes on these sites.

What to know: Bear Country, you know the shpeel. Mosquitos, affirmative. Remember Torrey Creek is glacial melt and is likely to be heavier later in the day than in the morning, and sounds incredible to sleep by at night.

How to get there: Heading South out of Dubois, WY, take US-26 for about 3.5 miles and turn right on Trail Lake Road (look for the Fish Hatchery sign, which is small and easy to miss). Stay on Trail Lake Road/#411 at the fork. Continue on #411 all the way to the end and you will find yourself in the parking lot for Glacier Trail 801. See the vault toilet and look a couple hundred yards past that and beyond the horse corral to Torrey Creek for the campsites. You can drive all the way too it, past the horses, but beware it is really rutted.

True Story: I am relatively certain I am the only person that actually wears bear bells when I hike. But hey, I sound pretty dang cheerful everywhere I go!

We enjoyed our stay and will definitely be back and also recommending this place to anyone we know heading to Dubois. 

GENERAL: very spacious, wide gravel roads, 60 aces- hiking; biking; ATV and off road accessible; great customer service and got discounted rate when scheduling over the phone vs online. All sites are back-in, but plenty of space to navigate. 

SITE: Very spacious, very few neighbors and spread out when you do have neighbors; 50 amp only, but we have an adapter to 30amp so no issue; The starts at night were insanely beautiful! 

WIFI: We work remote and the wifi was surprisingly strong and good for working remote. Occasionally spotty for video calls, but good otherwise. We looked out to Hamburger Point. You feel you are alone in the great outdoors with a beautiful setting. 

OTHER: Walkable to downtown(about 1.5); Fishing and great walking path right across the street. We went to the rodeo on Friday night and the grounds are right across the street. The small town was historic and nice to walk around. Check out the Rustic Tavern and/or Outlaw Saloon for a drink while you're there! Very windy most of the day so we didn't keep our windows open unfortunately. Too much dust whipping around and gusty, although the roads were gravel, everywhere else around is dessert and dirt. Grocery is nearby- a bit pricey and the produce isn't that great, but was good for the necessities while in town.

We happened upon the Pinnacles Campground by fluke, coming out of Dubois we saw the sign for Brooks Lake and just decided to take a peek. So glad we did!

It's a gravel road and we made it in a Kia Sorento just fine.

The first night we scored a spot (#4) across from the lake on the interior of the campground. In Grizzly Country, we fondly refer the interior campsites as surrounded by the 'Bear Buffer Zone' (aka exterior campsites ;) When we woke in the morning, the RV that was in the lakeside spot (#5) across from us left, so we scooted our stuff over for the lakeside spot. Got to be THE best view for morning coffee we've ever had!

The camp hosts, Joe and Deb make it a priority to make everyone feel welcome and at home (please see photo of vault toilet; Not your average outhouse!)

Things to know: It is windy! The wind dies down overnight and the morning is calm, but the wind picks up midmorning and keeps up till sunset. Mosquitos…PLENTIFUL and aggressive! The wind and temperatures don't seem to affect their determination to swarm your face constantly. But, effective bug repellant will keep them from biting you.

Also good to know (and we didn't): We are strictly tent campers. No one said anything to us, but I've since read that in that area it is supposed to be hard-sided camping only. (Yay Bear Buffer!)

Last but not least: If you are looking for a shower and a chance to wash your clothes, Dubois is about 23 miles South with a retro shower/laundry facility. Best $3.25 worth of hot water I've ever had :)

So I used to like this place in the last years but now I started to have second thoughts I don't know if I was unlucky this year, but I was surprised to have some disappointments here. One of the things was find a single RV site accommodating one RV, 3 cars, tent and multiple families. I understand if a single family brings one or two extra adult to stay in the RV with a couple of kids plus an UTV but overpopulating with an RV, multiple large cars, more than one single family and children(lots of) also building tent that's for me was a little disappointing. Another thing I was worry, even with that amount of people, there was a moment I went out and I saw they left the fire burning and unassisted. My list of concerns didn't stop here, I noticed some vehicles would not respect the speed limit of the campsite(in a place with kids! What is happening with this world!). In addition, because the kids were be walking around, they stressed out my dog which barked and I was the one reported! In respect to the facility I stayed inside of the RV with my dog(not the the way I had planned to spend my vacation and I did lots of rv travel, this was the first time I got reported for my dog!). On the other hand there were a day some kids were playing with some toy gun(not sure what kind, pellet, bb gun, whatever) that even our friend(yes we travel in group, everyone with their own rv site) who was few sites on the left of us that heard the shots of the toy gun. I just hopefully it wasn't a pellet/bb gun because we have people, pets and other kids around here. And there was the dog poop! This year it seems we got some bad dog owner, for the first time we encounter dog poop in some areas we used to walk.(again, what is happening with this world!!!) About the overpopulated RV site, I asked about the reception if they don't have restriction about the limit of people and cars, families, tents to receive on a rv site they pretty much I was told there is no restriction. So if you want to bring multiple families in several vehicles plus RV, built tents around the rv to accommodate everybody and all cramped in a single RV site to save money, this is the place to come. Another episode that startled me. The day we arrived, we started to unpack and I was laying on the ground the panels of the dog playpen on the grass near to the behind of the rv to assemble and suddenly a cart/utv comes driving over the grass toward to the panel I had just laid down on the grass. I signed the driver to watch for the panel and instead of stopping or slowing down he just drove over and neither stopped to apologize or check if he caused any damage, he just drove away. Either this drive was an employee or another bad customer that thought it was ok to drive over the grass area between the sites and the river. I never saw this happen in the past years I came here. This year unfortunately I didn't have much of a good experience here. Usually I don't write reviews but I want to make sure people that has certain expectation for their camping vacation like I do be aware of what they may experience here.