travel dates: July, 2022
Jim and Mary’s RV Park! Sounds so friendly, doesn’t it? Don’t you just want to go hang out with Jim and Mary around the campfire?
Well, you can’t, because Jim and Mary sold the RV park over 20 years ago.
But! The good news is the current owners are also friendly, the campground is beautifully landscaped and maintained, and it’s a great option as a base for exploring Missoula.
Location
Jim and Mary’s is under 15 minutes from downtown Missoula, right off of I-90. I was going to tell you that the Missoula KOA might be a better location for proximity to downtown, because I felt like we drove right past it a million times on the way back to Jim and Mary’s, but google maps assures me that it is only one minute closer in.
There’s not a ton in the immediate area, other than a couple of other RV parks and some truck stops, so you will be getting on the interstate for pretty much anything you want to do or buy.
Booking and Arrival
We booked our site back in August of 2021 for our summer, 2022 stay. There was plenty of availability when we booked, so we probably would have been fine waiting until later, but it’s a small campground and did stay pretty full while we were there (4th of July week), so don’t wait until the last minute. Rates for 2023 are in the $60 range.
The campground is very easy to get to from I-90 and there’s plenty of room to pull up and check in at the office. And their check-in time is noon! Which was a relief after the 3 PM check in time in Butte (particularly since this was another short drive for us).
Campsites
There are only 74 sites here, and pretty much all of them looked like nice sites to us. There’s a mix of back-ins and pull-throughs, and some sections are more wooded than others. We had a pull-through on the A row and were very happy with it. There’s plenty of space between sites, and most have some trees or bushes for privacy even if they’re not in the more wooded areas. Our site was plenty long to stay hitched up if we had wanted to.
This is not Jim and Mary’s fault, but I’ll mention it because it happened and I took a picture. A storm passed through while we were away from the trailer one evening, and we came back to this:
As you can see, it’s a perfectly healthy looking tree and branch–just some very strong winds took it out and it swiped our trailer on its way down. But! No major damage–just a scuff in the paint. We were very glad it didn’t take a more direct hit.
Some other sections of the campground (oh! There’s a rainbow peeking through in the first one!)
Here you can see that trains pass by right behind the sites. That’s our row (A), but, unlike in Helper, we didn’t have to pay more because we had a train watching site. Free train watching!
Amenities
Everything at Jim and Mary’s is super clean and well-maintained. There are two bathhouses, a laundry room, dog park, and a nice camp store with a good selection of local souvenirs. There’s not much else, though–no pool or playground (and not a lot of kids around when we were there); it’s not the kind of campground where you’ll want to hang out all day; it’s just a great place to come back to in the evenings.
They put a ton of effort and care into the landscaping; there are flowers everywhere. And, of course, you’re in western Montana, so there are plenty of great views beyond the flowers, too:
Next up: what we did in Missoula
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