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.