Northwest parks late summer, early fall

[Dennis and Melissa]

We already have most of our campground reservations (based on previous visits car camping).  We also have a bunch of the now-required reservations for hiking and buses in CA (Lake Louise, etc.)

Just wondering if anyone has recent info on conditions or suggestions for 

Badlands NP (dry site) 8/17-21 
Bismark restock 8/22
Theodore Roosevelt NP (dry site) 8/23-27 
Great Falls restock 8/28
Glacier NP Two Medicine (dry site) 8/29-9/1 
East Glacier KOA (hookups) 9/2-9/15 
Waterton (hookups) 9/16-22
Tunnel Mountain, Banff (hookups) 9/23-10/6
Whistler, Jasper (hookups) 10/7-13

All weather permitting, of course.  If winter starts we plan to donate our reservations and head south. 🤪

We have a few family visits the set the course outbound, but no fixed return plans.  Again, depending on weather, we may just make a bee line for FL or try our luck heading East on the trans canada highway.  Both are VERY long, but we got nothing but time 😁

[ADKCamper]

We were just at TRNP in April! Lots of Bison about, sometimes walking right down the middle of the road. Saw a few pronghorn, lots of prairie dogs, and a lone coyote looking for a late lunch in an active prairie dog village. In addition to the South Unit and the North Unit, we also visited Teddy Roosevelt's Elkhorn Ranch site. To get there you need to follow about 30 miles of gravel road (we didn't take the trailer!) and an easy flat 3/4 mile hike to get to the ranch site. The rangers seem to be pretty cautious about sending folks out over all that gravel road, but it seemed pretty solid to us. There were only a couple of spots that might be challenging if there was a lot of rain. There's not much remaining there other than a few foundation stones, and a couple of historic plaques, but you do get to see the view that TR saw during his time there along the Little Missouri River, and you can say "I stood where Teddy Roosevelt stood" 🙂

They're working on building TR's presidential library in Medora, but I don't think its supposed to be finished until next year.

There's lots of TR history in David McCullough's "Mornings on Horseback" if that's your thing.

The visitor center also had "Theodore Roosevelt and the Dakota Badlands" (Chester L Brooks & Ray H Mattison) which is a short, easy read about TR's time in the Dickinson & Medora area. Its likely available elsewhere as well.

If you are into museums and have the time, there are a few in the area with lots of info/displays on dinosaurs (which were apparently abundant in the area), cowboys and native americans of that time and place:

• Bismark ND: https://statemuseum.nd.gov/
• Dickinson ND: https://www.dickinsongov.com/museum-center
• Medora ND: https://medora.com/cowboyhalloffame/  (lots of rodeo stuff, but also other cowboy and native american info)

We do have Glacier on our list, but haven't been there yet...

Edited Thursday at 04:35 PM by ADKCamper

[John Dorrer]

3 hours ago, Dennis and Melissa said:

We already have most of our campground reservations (based on previous visits car camping).  We also have a bunch of the now-required reservations for hiking and buses in CA (Lake Louise, etc.)

Just wondering if anyone has recent info on conditions or suggestions for 

Badlands NP (dry site) 8/17-21 
Bismark restock 8/22
Theodore Roosevelt NP (dry site) 8/23-27 
Great Falls restock 8/28
Glacier NP Two Medicine (dry site) 8/29-9/1 
East Glacier KOA (hookups) 9/2-9/15 
Waterton (hookups) 9/16-22
Tunnel Mountain, Banff (hookups) 9/23-10/6
Whistler, Jasper (hookups) 10/7-13

All weather permitting, of course.  If winter starts we plan to donate our reservations and head south. 🤪

We have a few family visits the set the course outbound, but no fixed return plans.  Again, depending on weather, we may just make a bee line for FL or try our luck heading East on the trans canada highway.  Both are VERY long, but we got nothing but time 😁

Nice Itinerary . I sure wouldn't pull out if it snows. Enjoy the White Stuff. You have the trailer for it 😊

 

Edited Thursday at 06:22 PM by John Dorrer
Updated Comment

[Dennis and Melissa]

2 hours ago, John Dorrer said:

Nice Itinerary . I sure wouldn't pull out if it snows. Enjoy the White Stuff. You have the trailer for it 😊

 

Well, I sort of agree.

We've already gotten caught in several snow storms while camping with Oliver.  They were just very comfortable nights.  No worries at all.  But that snow melted in a day or so. 

Given the latitudes and elevations we will be visiting, and the time of year, I'll have my eye on the weather.  I don't want to end up towing hundreds of miles in a Canadian blizzard.  I don't even own chains for the truck.  At least not yet.  I'm probably going to buy some before we head north.

[routlaw]

7 hours ago, Dennis and Melissa said:

We already have most of our campground reservations (based on previous visits car camping).  We also have a bunch of the now-required reservations for hiking and buses in CA (Lake Louise, etc.)

Just wondering if anyone has recent info on conditions or suggestions for 

Badlands NP (dry site) 8/17-21 
Bismark restock 8/22
Theodore Roosevelt NP (dry site) 8/23-27 
Great Falls restock 8/28
Glacier NP Two Medicine (dry site) 8/29-9/1 
East Glacier KOA (hookups) 9/2-9/15 
Waterton (hookups) 9/16-22
Tunnel Mountain, Banff (hookups) 9/23-10/6
Whistler, Jasper (hookups) 10/7-13

All weather permitting, of course.  If winter starts we plan to donate our reservations and head south. 🤪

We have a few family visits the set the course outbound, but no fixed return plans.  Again, depending on weather, we may just make a bee line for FL or try our luck heading East on the trans canada highway.  Both are VERY long, but we got nothing but time 😁

Couple of thoughts. Just for the record your trip locations are not really the NW but rather should be considered the Northern Rockies. Have not been to CN in a long time so will leave those areas out of the comments. As for chains, I have lived in MT for almost half a century and never owned them nor used them. The likelihood of needing them this time of year is unlikely too but anything is possible. You might see some triple digits temps in SD and ND that time of year and certainly well into the 90's. I did photoshoot in TRNP once in the summer and it was brutal. At least 110º perhaps more, but at least the assignment was with horses. Cameras got so hot it was difficult to hold them at times. 

Two Medicine is awesome and will be quite a bit cooler, days will be getting much shorter too by then. Same for East Glacier of course. Autumn colors start quite a bit earlier up in this neck of the woods compared to the SW but you should be hitting it at a good time. Expect cool to downright cold nights and with some frost on the later part. I have seen bitter cold temps and near blizzard conditions in Sept but it is rare and certainly not every year. Normally, the roads would not freeze up this time of year, but again anything is possible. Early winter snows tend to melt fairly quick on the roads and Montana has a great road crew system for clearing. I would imagine CN to be no different. 

Have a great trip

[Patriot]

19 hours ago, Dennis and Melissa said:

We've already gotten caught in several snow storms while camping with Oliver.

You are wise to avoid the snow and stay really weather aware in the shoulder months, weather can change quickly. In 23 we camped right outside Rocky Mountain NP at Spruce Lake CG in Estes Park. (Super close to RMNP) We got to know the couple running the CG and they told us that in 2022 in the last week of Sept they had 6” of snow. As @routlaw said “anything is possible”.  Last fall on our 48 day trip out west we had amazing weather in Sept and Oct. I recall we only had 2 days of rain and perfectly cool temps. We will likely only travel out west in the shoulder months. 

Winter certainly has its beauty and totally changes the landscape. I am in the crowd that has zero desire to camp in snow or pull our Oliver in winter conditions for sooooo many reasons. Sodium chloride aka rock salt on icy roads being the biggest one. 

One of many great advantages of living here in the south aka the land of cotton are long summers and short winters and very little rust on our vehicles.

Wishing you safe travels!!🇺🇸

Patriot

Edited 19 hours ago by Patriot

[Mike and Carol]

We visited TRNP and Glacier NP (Two Medicine) in September (2019).  Weather in ND was warm during the day and nice and cool at night.  Lots of sun.  At Glacier, weather was cool during the day and cooler at night.  Very little sun, I had to run the generator at Glacier a couple times since there was not much solar activity going on.  Two Medicine is a pretty dramatic site, mountains all around.

 

Camping at TRNP, lots of blue skies.  There were also lots of Bison wandering around the campground.

 

At Two Medicine campground, GNP.  No sun, cool damp weather.  This park is a must see!!

 

More Two Medicine…

[mossemi]

This information is from September 2022, so it’s not as current as you might want.  We started this portion of our trip in Ottawa, IL after my mother’s family reunion and the destination was TRNP before heading back to Florida.  THNP has 2 campgrounds, Cottonwood is in the south unit and Juniper is in the north unit.

Cottonwood has about 70 sites in 2 loops, north and south.  The south loop has small areas and it would be cramped for a LE2.  The north loop has larger sites, more suitable for LE2's and larger rigs.

We could not get a reservation in Cottonwood in advance, so we booked a night in Sully Creek SP, just south of Medora.  We headed to Cottonwood first thing the next morning.  There were not any campground hosts available when we arrived, so we proceeded to drive through the campground, we didn’t see anything large enough in the south loop and then found 3 available in the north loop.  Since I always what to know what’s around the corner or over the hill, we drove around the north loop again and found 2 of the available sites were already taken.  We took the 3rd spot and I walked up to the self serve check-in station and filled out some paperwork.   We ran into a campground host while walking back to our site and he showed us a site that was reserved for the new shower/restroom building construction crew and said that we could use it for the next 3 nights because the crew was off for a few days.  So we moved to that site and had a great stay.

We did drive to the north unit to see the Juniper campground and over all liked the north unit better, less people but also so less to see and do.

We wanted to say in Custer SP in South Dakota, but couldn’t find anything and headed to Badlands NP and dry camped for 3 nights, just off SD-240 about 9 miles south of Wall, SD and before you get to the entrance to Badlands NP.  Look for a dirt road on the left and other campers a mile or so off the highway.  You should also be able to see 2 or 3 radio towers several miles in the distance also on the left or east side of SD-240.  Drive along the dirt road until you find something you like.  A word of caution, it's very windy!

Good luck,

Mossey

 

Cottonwood campground - TRNP

Outside Badlands NP on SD-240