Teklanika River Campground

Beautiful views, a lot less people, and lot more wildlife, NO traffic, No Phone and No internet! Ranger talks each night were fun and informative. A wonderful way to really enjoy Denali NP. It is in the restricted area for car traffic so you need a permit good for one round trip. You can only drive your rig out and stay. It is a minimum stay of 3 nights. Even have to leave a tow car at the Visitor Center if you have one. No reason for it anyway. The Green Buses are available to take you out to the sights. The best way to see the wildlife too. Only thing better would be to backpack out into the wilderness.

"Tek" offers dry camping only. A beautiful location by the Teklanika River, 29 miles inside Denali National Park, it has a three-night minimum. There are campgrounds further inside the park, but they offer tent camping only. The park road, beyond the first fifteen miles, does not allow private vehicles, but if you camp here you may drive your RV in on the day of your arrival and out on the day of your departure only. If you have a tow car, you will need to leave it behind at the Visitor Center just inside the park.

The sites have decent spacing between them, although some are tight for big rigs. This could present a problem since specific sites are not assigned when you make a reservation. You pick your site when you arrive. On the plus side, this may give you some options. Each site has fire grates and picnic tables. There are rest rooms with sinks (no faucets) for dumping dishwater. Also water spigots. There are no other facilities, no wood, no stores. And there is no cell signal. It is very quiet, with generator hours between 8 and 10a.m. and 4 and 8p.m. There is no dump onsite, but one at the entrance to the park.

Tek, like others in Denali offers ranger programs at 7p.m. each night. This is the only one of the RV campgrounds that offers you a special bus ticket for your entire stay for the price of one bus ride. The ticket allows you to reserve space on your first bus, then ride buses the rest of the time on a space-available basis. Be aware that sometimes the buses are full, so you may not get your first or even second choice. Also, you are not allowed to ride the bus back to the Visitor Center at the entrance. If you need to get back to the entrance, you will need to purchase an additional bus ticket.

As with all National Parks, pets are only allowed on the campground and other public areas, but there is plenty of space for walking your pet. Be aware that this is bear country though.

$15 per night is a great deal inside a national park for camping. Toss in the bonus Road Pass that allowed us to drive 15 miles deeper into the park and the Tek Pass that gave us unlimited access to the bus system; camping here is a steal!
The Tek Pass is by far the best reason to venture out this far into the park, but I’ll touch on the details in the next section. The location is scenic and the trees are lower than Savage which is good for solar power. The one downside was there didn’t seem to be as much separation between campsites. So during generator hours this place hums with the sound of RVs making power.

It is a very popular campground so we made our reservation about 6 months in advance. Your reservation is for the campground not for a specific site. There were a number of sites that would have accommodated us but I wanted to arrive early just to make sure. Once we reached Denali, we parked our toad in the day parking area (vehicle restrictions on roads) and arrived at the campground around noon. There were still lots of sites available - it didn’t completely fill to closer to dinner time. Although the road was very, very dusty it was not difficult to drive.
We stayed in a great location on loop 2 for our solar panels (only ran generator to use AC and microwave) but i thought that the sites on loop 1 had better views. There was easy access to the river for hiking. Our site was level and had greenery which gave us privacy on both sides but it backed onto 3 other sites. A site not he outer ring would have been preferable.
We used the bus system twice with our Tek pass. The first (guaranteed seating) was for The 6:45. Bus to Wonder Lake. The bus was already full when it picked us up and we couldn’t get seats together. Later buses looked like they had more room. I would do that next time. The 2nd day, we caught a ride on a camper bus and there was a lot more room.
It cuts down on travel time if you sign up for a Discovery Hike while you are staying at Teklankia.

There are already a lot of good reviews. A few observations and additions.

The road was in really good condition. We got a really great site with a great view of the riverbed, site 13? Most sites can accommodate large rigs. People came and went each day opening up sites that you could move to if you wished.

The camp loop roads had a lot of potholes! The sites were tired and need some TLC. Pit toilets and food storage shed were in good shape. There was fresh water available to fill jugs, not to fill your RV. There is a sink behind the outhouse to do dishes if need be. Camp host was located at the entrance of the campground. Lots of wildflowers.

We did not do the Tek pass with the road closure in the park. We rode our mountain bikes out to the road closure and up to the slide. We stayed 4 nights, in retrospect, 3 nights would have been plenty. Oh, and yes we saw Denali!

We stayed 4 nights in the first loop. Was easy to find a spot to accommodate our 32 ft fifth wheel, mostly back ins but there are one or two pull throughs in each loop. Drive in was very scenic, although wildlife was at a minimum our entire stay. Because we have a toddler riding the bus wasn’t an option (they require you byo car seat) so we hiked the main road in each direction and also along the River. It rained a few times, and we mostly had low clouds so no views of Denali. Mosquitoes were minimal for our stay. Only downside was noise during generator hours and dusty drive in.

There were quite a few empty spots every night, and unfortunately when we talked to the campsite registration they said they’re unable to release sites that have no-shows, so even tho the CG was fully booked it wasn’t actually full. This is the same case for Riley and Savage.