Best Dog-Friendly Camping near Shoshone National Forest

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.

In all honesty, our 1-night stay in Wapiti was kind of a necessary evil. Yellowstone campgrounds are notoriously difficult to get into, and after researching options online I decided that Wapiti - which is within the Shoshone National Forest outside the Yellowstone park boundaries - would be a good place to spend the night prior to actually heading into Yellowstone proper. It's about 1/2 way between Cody, Wyoming and the east gate to Yellowstone and it will take you approximately 30 minutes to reach either. There is a good mix of reservable sites and first-come, first-served sites, and we were able to reserve a site near the river. We camped here in late July and arrived at approx 7 PM and all of the first-come, first-served sites were already taken, which speaks to the popularity of the greater Yellowstone area in summer. Our site (#08) had electric as well, and was close to one of the restrooms. I do have to say, that was the cleanest (single) vault toilet restroom I have ever used in my life, which I can appreciate.

Being so close to the river (North Fork of the Shoshone), this campground was extremely buggy during our visit in July, which is genreally the case for this entire part of the country (especially Yellowstone) - bring a lot of Picaridin! The river itself is very fast through this area, so be careful if you have younger children. We did not do any fishing here, but there was a family fishing from the bridge (Sweetwater Creek Rd.) using pink scented 'marshmallows' (trout bait) that the locals told them worked the best - they had not caught anything yet.

We traveled back through the national forest into Cody for dinner and ate at Millstone Pizza Company and Brewery and I would recommend it. The beer was pretty good (we split a 6-sample flight to taste everything), and the portions were great. I got a meatball sandwich that was huge and delicious, and the specialty pizzas looked fantastic as well.

This review is based on a short term versus destination RV park point of view. Our arrival email stated not to arrive before 3:00 PM and we were coming in from about an hour away so we called the office to see if early arrival would be permitted. Since we were arriving on a Monday, well into September, our site was empty and we were told to come on in, which was nice. Check in was super fast and we proceeded to pull through site 18 with FHUs. Utilities were placed in the middle of the site which was nice. Buffalo Bluff is a fairly new campground(CG) and we were impressed with its cleanliness. We received a good amount of OTA stations plus they had cable with decent channel selections. Since there are no trees within the park, satellite would not be a problem. There’s a small fenced dog-park and plenty of area to walk the dogs. We received 4 bars on Verizon. We enjoyed our short stay and would consider staying here again.

Open year round  Services discontinued the end of September through May

Fees:  $10.00

Stay limit 16 days

Pit toilet   trash   fire ring bear box picnic table   camp host

GRIZZLY bear area so be bear aware bear spray is a very good idea and be prepared

Sites are flat but they are very small.  Pets on a leash.  The backdrop is amazing.  Campground is on the road to Yellowstone and you really can't beat the price unless you find a boondocking spot somewhere else.  There are horse corrals and trailer parking near.

Directions:  From Cody, travel west on US Highway14/16/20 for 28 miles to the campground.