Our First-Come-First-Served Campsite Fiasco

We often don't make plans for our next camping stop until a day before we leave our current home. But we always call before we leave to make sure we have a site waiting for us. For the first time in almost three years, we headed to a first-come-first-served campground, with no possibility to secure a spot until we arrived. To make it more interesting, the Baker's Hole campground is a popular public campground just a few miles from the western entrance of Yellowstone National Park. Yikes! For a planner like Denisa, this was scary! 

We really weren't surprised to find that the campground was full when we arrived in the afternoon following our kayak trip down the Madison River. So we positioned ourselves to get a spot for the next day. We drove a couple miles down the road to a ranger-approved overnight boondocking spot along the highway. We shared our little slice of asphalt with a couple trucks, a van, and another motor home for the night.

We were up early the next morning, taking the advice from the camp host to arrive to Baker's Hole by 8:00 a.m. Mark positioned the motor home in the entry of the campground, so that we were definitely first in line for an open spot. Actually, the reason for our early arrival is to get one of the most popular sites with electricity. This campground has no hook-ups, except for 33 sites that have 50-amp electricity. Each site has a date on a post indicating the day through which the camper has paid. After driving through last night, we had a list of ten electrical sites that were supposed to become vacant. As we walked through this morning, we found out that 4 had decided to pay for additional days. So we were already down to six available sites. We can see why this campground is so popular, as the Madison River runs right beside it.

It's now an hour later, and it's still chilly outside. No one is stirring (except a few brave people parked at the entrance of the park hoping to get a site). Campers have until 2:00 to decide if they want to stay additional days, so newcomers have to just wait it out. We kept walking the roads of the electrical sites, watching for campers preparing to leave. Instead, we found more deciding to stay. It's time to insert a flower picture, because it was getting a little tense in the line of campers waiting for the best sites.

By 10:00, we had been waiting for over two hours, and we were down to only two electrical sites with possible openings. One camper that had stayed overnight in a non-electric site had slipped into one of the electric sites. Denisa's Garmin says she has already walked over five miles this morning. Who knew that first-come-first-served was so much work?!?

We were really happy to see another camper actually hooking up their trailer. Denisa confirmed that they were indeed leaving. We were told that we should stand at the camp site to be sure someone doesn't try to drive in and steal it. It's a brutal system, not for people that are impatient, timid, or in a hurry. But by 11:00 we were rewarded with a great site, surrounded by trees and great neighbors, and with 50-amp electricity. It's not fancy, but at $23 per night, it's less than a third of the price of most of the RV parks this close to Yellowstone.

We are now out of the fire ban, so we even got to have a very carefully-watched campfire. We celebrated with hotdogs and smores!

We are pretty excited about our camp site, which is right beside Yellowstone National Park. As we walked along the Madison River in the campground, we crossed the boundary line into the park.

The good news is that we have electricity, so we don't have to worry about our batteries and running our generator while we visit Yellowstone. The bad news is that we don't have water or sewer hookups. We can stay here as long as we want, but we are limited by the size of our water and waste tanks. So we are using maximum water rationing, because after all the trouble of getting a spot we want to stay as long as possible!