Alpine North Loop Campground

Date of Stay: June 2015

Needing a place to stay on the way to the Grand Tetons, Alpine Campground fit the bill. I mean, who doesn’t like a nice little National Forest Campground?

Nothing too remarkable about this particular campground (even though, yes, it is nice). Fairly small. Nice host (as of June 2015). No dump station, but there is one just down the road in Alpine proper (the National Forest Campground is literally right outside the city limits).

Usable Verizon 3G service and AT&T signal.

We stayed in site 11 which happens to have a water connection right next to it, so I used it. However, the connections are scattered around the campground, so don’t expect to be able to hookup.

There is a bit of noise from the highway, but it wasn’t too crazy and calmed down at night.

A cool “feature” is that the campground is right on the Wyoming/Idaho border, so if you walk to the west to view the reservoir, you actually end up in Idaho. Take the stroll and watch the water birds. And chill out while you are traveling to two states.

We made reservations for 4 nights but decided to move on to our next location after two night. The highway noise only calmed down after 11pm. Our site #12 was next to the pit toilets and in the heat of the day we would get a whiff. There are no hook-ups. The thing that made our one-day stay awesome, was that we drove to The Lunch Counter rapids on the Snake River, parked, walked down the path, then watched the surfer's surf the rapids. They were extremely talented. The nearest grocery store is Alpine Grocery. It was recently bought out and therefor improved. They have a good deli, very good bread and the produce was nice.

We originally booked 3 sites for 4 families. The sites weren't next to each other and nothing else was available. The camp director was great and let us upgrade to a group site. It was perfect for us! One family had an RV while the other 3 were in tents. We were able to make a group fire area and the tents were spread out a little.

It's an easy walk down the hill to the reservoir. The kids loved swimming and relaxing on tubes. The only issue we had being next to the water was the mosquitoes. None of our mosquito sprays helped. We lit a couple large citronella candles in the camp which helped if you were next to them. Sitting next to the fire helped as well. We didn't see a single yellow jacket though which made eating food much more pleasant. I didn't have to break out the food cover screen.

On our first night a boat was slowing going up and down the beach with it's stereo on loud. This went on until a little after midnight. The occasional road noise did help drown out the top 40 from the boat. The 2nd night was nice and quiet.

The only other downside was the dust in the group site. I didn't see the same dust in the individual sites we originally had. But the group site had a fine powder dirt all around the camp fire ring. The kids remained filthy any time they were out of the water. The seclusion we had in the group site was worth it though. We had 19 people total and being in the group site was perfect!

We have a 38’ motorhome and could not camp here. The road to drive in is very narrow and the tree branches are low. Had to find some where else to camp. None of the sites were level and looks like max length would be around 30’ or less. Looks like a fine park if we were in something smaller.

We showed up later on the 8th of July looking for a 1 night stay. The host walked out immediately to greet us. He said because of the long holiday weekend he had one spot and it wasn’t that great. It was in the baking sun. We went to go look at it and agreed it wasn’t for us and were going to move on. As we were about to leave he came up on his golf cart and told us to follow him. He took us over to the group sites and showed us a spot over there we could have for the night. Super nice guy. And a great site

Lovely campground down a scenic byway. Close to Jackson, Tetons, Yellowstone. Overlooks Palisade Reservoir.

Standard Forest Service campground that was kept very clean by the hosts. The vault toilets two sites down were probably the cleanest I’ve ever seen. The sites were spacious and had plenty of room to maneuver and set up at least one large tent. We got the only pull through site and it was awesome. We could peek through the aspen and pine and see the reservoir right below us. The trees provided welcome shade in the July heat with enough sun to keep our solar panel charging. This site has parking below and a RR tie retaining wall with two sets of steps leading up to the table and big tent site. Water spigot was just across the road with a couple more in easy distance.

We strolled down the hill to the shore of the reservoir and could walk in either direction along an ATV trail. The water was active with boats, and nonmotorized Water activities (rafts, SUP, tubes). We didn’t go all the way around the lake but there were several dirt turnoffs to lake access points. Lots of boondocking sites also available.

The town of Alpine was just a mile away with several recreation stores, eating places, and service stations. Lots of birds, including pelicans on the lake, eagles and eagle nests along the highway - so cool!

It was a little hard to get specific information about shore fishing and whether I would need a Wyoming or Idaho license. Also we were there on the 4th of July and experienced lots of fireworks fairly near at hand so stayed in with the dog so she would be okay.

We stayed here for its proximity to Jackson, Grand Tetons NP and Yellowstone NP without having to deal with camping inside the NPs and still stay fairly close to our next stop in W Montana.
The park is one small loop. The sites are spacious and clean. The pit toilets are clean. No showers. AT&T service was non-existent for data... phone coverage was just ok.
The camp host is very friendly. He was able to point us to an RV dump station at the Palisades Dam campground where we were able to dump after we left.
The only negative about the park was the bugs. Not just mosquitos, but also other annoying bugs.
The only wildlife in or around the park were squirrels and birds.

Beautiful campground location overlooking Palisades reservoir. Campground host could not have been friendlier or more accommodating, especially when car issues resulted in our needing to postpone our arrival by one night. We dry camped in a small travel trailer so didn’t use the restrooms. Perhaps because of its location near the lake, it gets very buggy at dusk and in the early evening hours (at least when we visited in mid-August), so be prepared. We would definitely stay here again!

I reserved site group 3 to get close to the reservoir. Thought the price was high, but we ended up with the entire C group section to ourselves for $50. Social distancing at its finest by mistake. Reservoir was too low but the group site and are was great for us. Loved being by ourselves and Paula the camp host was great!

Great setting! A bit noisy, Highway nearly! Site was not level. Awesome hostess! Very friendly, and accommodating! We enjoyed our stay here.