Camping in Yellowstone
 

We are planning a trip to Yellowstone in early June. Has anyone stayed at Madison campground and would recommend? I'd prefer to use one of the campgrounds you can reserve rather than trying to be lucky enough to get a spot in one of the first-come-first-served campgrounds, and Madison has availability. Also, we are tent campers and are in need of a new tent. When reserving a site, they want the dimensions of the tent. Since I don't know the exact size of the tent we will be getting, should I just put the dimensions as the maximum allowed so I know they will have room for us? Does the tent size really matter that much? Thanks so much!

Yes, I've stayed in Madison campground. It's fine, no surprises, a Park Service campground. I stayed in a tent, probably rated a 4-person one and we'd requested near the facilities for the wee-hours trips and that's exactly where they put us. Nice to have requests honored. I didn't make the reservation but a quick look on Amazon shows a 4-person tent measuring 7' x 9' so if you don't plan on having a huge one that sounds like a reasonable size for purposes of the reservation.

We camped in the Madison campground a long time ago. Nothing wrong with it, although I think that we preferred the Norris campground that we used a few years later.

Thanks!

I have always camped at the Grant Village campground. It's very large, but quite nice. Lots of trees and the sites aren't too close together.

I believe all the campgrounds have a mix of both reservations sites and first come first served. You have to be there hovering at about 8am to snag a FCFS spot, so yes it's best to have reservations always and especially at Yellowstone, one of the most crowded parks.

The only campground where tents are not allowed is Fishing Bridge. Too many grizzlies like to fish there too.