First thing you need to know - Gros Ventre is a first-come-first serve place (no reservations). Best chance of getting a spot is at 11 am right after check out. My parents arrived first and found a spot. They reserved us a spot. Both of my parents have the Senior passes and so they used one for their spot and the other for our spot - that save us $15/night. Usual cost is $30/night.
Here is the view looking behind the trailer.
There are no hook-ups - this is a dry camping or boondocking situation. There is potable water and there is a dump station. There are parts of the campground that allow generators and other parts that do not. This campground has tent sites in one loop and RV sites in other loops. It is very large.
This was our first time using our solar setup in this rig. For those of you following us for a while, we had a solar setup in our previous rig and we moved it to this one with some modifications. This was our first time using it. Unfortunately one of our solar panels took a crap and since then we are down to one panel (which has served us well - more on this later). We also had problems with our charge controller properly reading the battery voltage. We didn't figure out the resolution when we were at Gros Ventre...but we did eventually figure it out (it had to do with the fact that our charge controller is hard wired to the battery and is always on even when the rig is connected to shore or the truck. To get it to work properly Husband disconnected it from the battery when we were dry camping and it reset the controller. After that it was able to function properly.)
To give you an idea of the space at this campground check out these two pictures...
The sites on both sides of us are occupied and you can't even see them in the pictures because there is so much space between them. Contrast this to Sand Creek RV park and others I will review later where the RVs are tight together - this is really nice. I used my outdoor kitchen and made my vegan corn chowder, mom through elk burgers on the grill, and we had us a very nice picnic and fire complete with s'mores.
Here is a picture of my mom and dad's site.
The campground is located immediately outside the National Park boundaries in the National Forest. It is also very close to Jackson Hole, WY. I have to share this picture taken in Jackson Hole because it blew me away when I saw it!
Jackson Hole is a touristy town if you are into that sort of thing...we aren't, but we do like a good restaurant and we enjoyed The Merry Piglets Mexican Grill. It is an unfortunate name in my opinion, but if you want a really good veggie burrito this is your place. They have really good salsa too. Others in my group were happy with their meaty things as well!
Ok, summary of pros and cons of Gros Ventre Campground.
Pros:
- rural feeling when camping
- moose visit the campground
- clean public flush toilets
- potable water and dump station
- very reasonable price with senior discount
- campsites spread out
- beautiful
- good dry camping spot
- staff in office are super friendly and helpful
- no reservations (I would normally say no reservations is a con, but I really liked their system and it seemed to work. I like to be sure about my plans, but I would be willing to attempt to stay here again because it was so wonderful.)
Cons:
- if you need full hook-ups this is not your place
- $30 for dry camping is a little high, but when you consider what full hook-ups in this area cost you realize that this acceptable
- public showers would be nice
- NO Verizon or WiFi
This last bullet is the big one - we would have stayed here longer and changed our plans, but Husband couldn't work from here. So...two and a half nights and two full days of exploring were the extent of our visit. The kids got their Junior Ranger badges and we did some awesome hikes, but I wish we could have stayed a few more days.
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