travel dates: July, 2022
KOA is fairly stingy about handing out their “resort” designation. KOAs are labeled “journey,” “holiday,” or “resort” based on level of amenities, but, of the more than 500 KOAs, only 17 are currently resorts. We’ve stayed at a couple of different ones and have sometimes felt the resort label was a wee bit hyperbolic.
Not so with the West Glacier KOA; they have so much stuff here, and everything looks absolutely pristine and beautiful. And, of course, the ridiculous mountain views don’t hurt:
Throw in a location less than 10 minutes from Glacier National Park, and you have yourself an excellent base camp for exploring the western side of the park. I’m not going to lie: it won’t be cheap (and the campground has a few notable flaws), but let me remind you about the views:
For more about what we did while staying at the KOA, check out this post.
Location
You can’t get much closer to Glacier National Park without actually staying in the park…which you can do, but not with hookups, and we’re not set up for more than a night or two without hookups, so that was out for us. From the West Glacier KOA, you can be to the gate in under 10 minutes. I remember when we stayed in West Yellowstone, the distance to the gate didn’t really mean a lot, because there wasn’t much near the gate, so we were still looking at a substantial drive in the park to get much of anywhere. That’s not the case for Glacier; Apgar Village and the Apgar Visitor Center are right inside the gate, as is the beginning of the Going to the Sun Road. So you can be getting ice cream, catching a shuttle, or kayaking on Lake McDonald within a few minutes of leaving the campground.
Aside from the park, there’s not a ton in the immediate area. Glacier doesn’t really have charming gateway towns the way a lot of national parks do. There is some dining in Apgar Village and a few options along Route 2 near the campground. We drove about 20 minutes to Columbia Falls one evening to give ourselves more selection and enjoyed the food, beer, and live music at Gunsight Saloon.
The towns of Kalispell and Whitefish are both around 35-40 minutes away, if you’re looking for either more outdoor/touristy fun or something like a Walmart.
Booking and Arrival
You’ll need to book early if you want to stay here. This is true of most places anywhere in the area. We booked at least a year in a advance, and, when we were thinking of shifting our dates around slightly and called back a couple of months later to see if we could add a day we were already out of luck. That said, I just checked now (mid August 2023) for sites for a few random dates in July 2024, and there is some availability, even for weekends. So summer 2022 was probably a uniquely difficult time to try to find reservations and things may well be loosening up some. Still–don’t put it off! Book as soon as you know your dates.
We were coming from Missoula and found the drive to be pretty straightforward and easy despite the mountainous terrain. We always check the Mountain Directory when traveling in places where steep grades might be an issue, and it has yet to steer us wrong. We did have to decide between going east or west around Flathead Lake. We chose east, and it was a very pretty drive, but with narrow roads. The western route is the truck route, and we’d probably go with that if he had to do it again.
As far as check in, the resort is a well-oiled machine. Like with many campgrounds in Montana, check-in is annoyingly late at 3 PM, but once we got there everything was very smooth.
Campsites
There’s a big variety of RV sites here, from fancy patio sites to back-ins, as well as a range of non-RV rentals. I think I’m beginning to understand why there’s still availability for next summer (and the end of this summer), because I put in some dates and couldn’t find any RV sites for less than $175/night in season (if you can go in the shoulder season, you might be able to get in for the low, low price of $125). For reference, we paid around $90/night in July of 2022 for a nice pull-through with a great view. It will be interesting to see what happens with campground prices in the future. I can point to reasons why the price is so high: everything’s higher now! they’re making improvements! the season is so short! …but prices essentially doubling in a year is…a lot (incidentally, I’m writing this immediately after returning from Newfoundland, where we routinely paid less than $30US for campsites with hookups and equally spectacular views, so that might be affecting my thoughts on this).
Okay, but you’re sucking it up and paying $200/night for a parking space because you want to see Glacier (I don’t blame you!)…you can’t really go wrong with sites here. We were in a pull-through in the section to the left as you enter the campground. We liked this side of things because it felt a little quieter than the other side and had that great view. But the other side is nice, too, and has its own share of views.
There are a number of deluxe patio sites and some back-ins; we had a standard pull-through without any bells and whistles, but all the sites have decent separation and lovely landscaping.
If you want a cabin, there are basic camping cabins with no bathroom or fancy deluxe cabins.
Amenities and Activities
Yes. There are a lot of these!
Let me start with a couple of quibbles, so that I can end with the positive parts. Caveat here is that our stay was over a year ago now, so it’s certainly possible my quibbles have been addressed. Drawbacks of slow blogging.
Bath houses: the bath houses are very nice, with individual shower rooms like I like–very clean and well done. But. There are not enough of them for when the campground is full, and we found ourselves on more than one occasion walking all the way over and not finding a free shower.
Laundry: same thing here. It was a long haul from our campsite to the other side of the campground where the lone laundry room is, and it was very, very busy and difficult to find a free washer or dryer. They really need to up the capacity here. That said, the laundry room was also very nice and everything worked well when we got to use it.
Electric system: this is probably my single biggest complaint, and I haven’t seen anything about it in reviews I’ve read, so I think we probably got unlucky by being in a site near the end of the line, electricity-wise, and being there during an unusually hot week (but not THAT hot). We hooked everything up as usual when we arrived, only to find that our electricity kept cutting off. We called the office, and they sent someone out promptly, who told us that it was going to keep happening unless we disconnected our surge protector. Because something, something, end of the line, too much AC in the big rigs, something something. They assured us that things were fine on their end and there wouldn’t be any damage to our electrical system.
So. We disconnected the surge protector. We didn’t seem to have much choice unless we wanted to push to be moved to another site (in a pretty full campground). But I’m not comfortable not having the surge protector on and I feel like a reliable electrical grid that can handle hot days and surge protectors is not too much to ask, particularly with the prices they’re charging.
Wifi: last complaint! Wifi is no good. Campground wifi is, of course, usually not good. But I mention it here just because it fits into an overall pattern we noted at the West Glacier KOA of putting a lot of focus on making things pretty and on the flashier amenities while neglecting putting equal attention (and money) into the less visible things that make campgrounds pleasant, easy places to stay. We could admire the landscaping and take in some live music while walking to the pristinely kept pool, but then we couldn’t check our e-mail, or take a shower without waiting in line.
Now that I’m finished with that, let’s talk about what the KOA gets right, which is a lot. There are more/better food options here than at any other campground I can think of. Dave and I went over to grab local draft beers all by ourselves a couple of times. We did this in the upstairs part of the cafe, but there’s supposed to be a converted Airstream serving drinks now (they were still working on it when we were there). We ate a great breakfast at the cafe. They also serve dinner several nights a week (this was VERY popular when we were there) and have food trucks on site the other nights. The camp store sells lots of souvenirs and camping supplies and a good range of groceries. There’s an ice cream place separate from the cafe.
The landscaping, as mentioned, is beautiful. There are two pools, a family pool and an adults only pool.
There are tons of planned activities and entertainment. Live music every night, kids crafts, bear spray demos, magic shows!
There’s a playground, Gaga ball, sports equipment to check out. There’s a lovely nature trail around the campground. There are two dog parks, and they’re top notch. Basically…there’s a LOT here. It’s perfectly set up if you want to spend your days in Glacier and then come back to the campground for an evening of food and activities.
So…would we stay here again if we were visiting Glacier? I’m not sure. I just took a look around online, and there are other well-reviewed campgrounds in the area a lot cheaper. The bells and whistles were nice, but we don’t need them. So I’d say that I’d definitely pay the $90/night we paid last year again, but twice that? eh.
Next Glacier post will talk about all the stuff we did on the west side of the park!
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