Review

Bridge Bay was not our favorite campground in Yellowstone, but if that’s all that is available in the park, we would still stay here again. It is located right on Yellowstone Lake, and is close to Hayden Valley and the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone area. The best thing about this campground is the fact that male elk live here and put on regular displays. Apparently bison live here as well, but they were all off in Hayden Valley doing their mating action in late August.

We had made reservations, but sites are assigned when you get there, and you have no say in what they give you. Our first site was supposedly a pull-through, but it was just barely long enough for our rig, and we had to park our tow car a long ways away. C-loop was also very exposed, with not a tree in sight and no shade. There were some other loops that were more forested (e.g., G loop), and we went back to the office to see about switching. They wouldn’t give us G loop, but they did give us a back-in site in B loop, which we think was #B-71. This didn’t have any shade or trees either, but was much better because it was a back-in site and we didn’t feel like we were in the middle of the road.

Sites are gravelly-dirt and notoriously unlevel, but hey, it’s Yellowstone. Bathrooms are typical of national parks, and we never used them. 

Male elk wandered through the campground throughout the day, and we were treated to two male elk sparring one evening, right in the middle of C loop.

Bridge Bay Campground is right next to a marina, and close to the trailhead for the Natural Bridge, which we rode to on our bikes. It’s also a good location from which to ride Gulf Point Drive on bikes, with a view across to the Yellowstone Hotel. So, we loved the location, just not the campground and campsites.