Let me start off with the good:
Obviously, 5 stars for the location. Easy access to many epic trailheads. A moose and her baby were in our campground three times during our seven night stay. How cool is that!?!
Now, the not so good:
1.) You'll have to be at your computer right when reservations open frantically pushing the *book now* button and praying it ends up in your cart. Otherwise, you'll be checking recreation.gov every spare second you get and hope you time it right and snag a cancellation.
2.) Major road construction to get to MG, so expect delays. A lot of the road is still gravel/unpaved/potholes so you'll have to go slow! Especially if you're towing a trailer or have a RV.
3.) It's bear country! The rangers patrol like crazy and will cite you! Every time you leave your campground, you need to pack up anything that can attract bears (camp stoves, coolers, water bottles, tablecloths). So at least twice a day, we packed up almost everything. Kind of annoying, but understandable.
4.) Designated generator hours three times a day, in the middle of the day. The sites range from shady to sunny to semi-shady. Our site (110) was semi-shady, so we had to sit around in the middle of the day to make sure that our refrigerator had enough power so our food wouldn't spoil during the heatwave. That obviously limited us on our daily activities.
5. ) Over our seven night stay, my friends were able to piecemeal three separate reservations at three different campsites. At check-in, the ranger said the only way we could potentially check cancellations and extend the stay at a site was by going on recreation.gov. Not helpful at all considering there is ZERO cell service for any of the carriers there. (Other camp hosts at other NPs check their printout list, no problem.)
6.) Lastly, it was really sad to see that a lot of reserved sites were no-shows. Given how difficult it is to secure a spot, this was so not cool.
Some other miscellaneous items:
1.) Vicious bugs everywhere! We had two Thermacells, citronella wristbands and doused ourselves liberally with bug spray and still managed to get eaten alive. Yes, I know this is the great outdoors.
2.) For 2021: Reservations for MG campground do not admit you to the going to the sun road! This was very unclear! Our neighbors told us the park changed this last minute, as we also were under the impression that we had access via our reservation. Because we didn't have internet access to even get a shot at reserving last minute tickets, we had to wake up at 4am to get through the gate before 6am. Needless to say, we could only swing this one day, which was a huge bummer because a lot of the trails and lakes I was planning on checking out are located in GTSR.
We have visited and camped at over 20 national parks and this was the poorest run one by far. read more