Cedars shade the pads at Apgar and Fish Creek on Glacier's wet west side, where the motorhome spends its first nights. From there the rig swings south around the park on US-2, over Marias Pass and down onto the east side, where the trees thin out and the wind comes straight off the Divide. The last nights belong to St. Mary and Many Glacier, and Many Glacier's lake, lying flat under a wall of peaks, is the view that stays with people.
Going-to-the-Sun Road is the shortcut over the top, and a family-size rig can't use it. Between Avalanche Creek and Rising Sun, the Park Service bars vehicles longer than 21 feet or wider than 8 feet, bumpers and mirrors included. Those switchbacks are the part of Glacier a 30-footer only sees from a shuttle window, with the motorhome waiting back at camp.
Glacier's campgrounds from Apgar to Many Glacier
Which campground you book decides which rig you rent. Apgar and St. Mary take RVs up to 40 feet, and Fish Creek, Many Glacier and Two Medicine take them up to 35, so a 30-footer fits any of them while anything longer is down to Apgar and St. Mary.
The nights inside the park are dry, since none of the campgrounds has electric hookups and dump stations run seasonally at several of them. Roll in full of water from a hookup park around Whitefish, the base the Whitefish RV page covers, and use a park dump station before the drive over Marias Pass so the east-side nights start with empty tanks.
All of this is a summer trip. Many Glacier's season runs early June to mid-September and Fish Creek's mid-May to early September, while Apgar and St. Mary drop to primitive camping off-season, and early or late snow shuts the high passes. The Glacier National Park RV page goes campground by campground, shuttle included.
Two people who want to drive the Sun Road themselves and sleep at St. Mary in something short enough to fit can follow the Montana campervan page, which also runs the long road east from Kalispell to Billings.
Yellowstone's Montana gates at Gardiner and West Yellowstone
At Gardiner, elk graze the lawns in town and bison wander the road up to Mammoth, and the stone Roosevelt Arch still frames the north way into Yellowstone. West Yellowstone holds the other Montana gate, the one nearer the geyser basins. In both towns the rig stays plugged in at the park's edge and the days are spent inside.
In West Yellowstone, Grizzly RV Park has full-hookup sites for RVs up to 45 feet, back-in or pull-through. In Gardiner, Yellowstone RV Park has full hookups at every site along the river. The park's own campgrounds, and what they hold, are on the Yellowstone RV page.
Glacier and Yellowstone show up together on a lot of Montana itineraries, and the drive between them is long enough to want a night in the middle. On the Yellowstone end, make the first night the hookup park at the gate and work into the park from there.
Flathead Lake and a parked week at Wayfarers
Cherry stands line the east shore of Flathead Lake in summer, and off the cliffs at Wayfarers, near Bigfork, the water is cold and clear enough to see the stones on the bottom. The campground sits among wildflowers above that rocky shoreline, and it's where the rig parks for the week nobody wants to drive.
Wayfarers takes RVs and trailers up to 40 feet, with showers, and private resorts around the lake cover the rest of the shore. The lake week in full, from those resorts to Big Arm on the west side, is on the Kalispell RV page.
Two more rig trips sit farther from the parks. South of Missoula, the Bitterroot Valley runs flat between the Sapphires and the Bitterroot Range, and the Missoula RV page plans that week from a hookup park. On the Missouri south of Great Falls, Holter Lake and the boat trip through the Gates of the Mountains belong to the Great Falls RV page.
