Norris Campground — Yellowstone National Park

Elk frequented the very quiet campground. It seemed to be right in the middle of everything.

Norris is a very nice campground with great accommodations. Bath house was clean and the views from camp were great.

This camp ground is first come which made me nervous but the staff was extremely helpful and accommodating. Spots are close together, but you still have a little personal space. We stayed in the c loop with a 25ft camp trailer, little tough navigating in but not bad. Good central location in Yellowstone, easy to travel to main loop.

Went to this one plus many others and Yellowstone all of them were great for camping and tent or trailer

I’ve stayed her a couple of times. Great campground close to a couple rivers and nice meadows. I’ve seen moose, bison and bears in and around the area. The walk in site are in a great spot and not far from the car.

Nice campground in the national park with lots of scenic backdrops!

Yellowstone, being the beautiful place that it is, is one of the most well trafficked national parks in the U.S. This being said, it's campgrounds fill up super quickly. If you're looking to stay within the park, plan your trip pretty far in advance so you can be sure to get a spot. However, there are some campground that don't take reservations and just do it one a first come, first served basis.

Norris campground is one that does not take reservations. When my friends and I were coming through Yellowstone, I thought it was super lucky that we managed to find a site. The sites are pretty nice too; flat and some are pretty secluded. They seemed to have a lot more tent sites than RV sites, so if you have an RV, I wouldn't necessarily bet on finding a site here.

Although the camp is nice, you don't spend much time at it when you're in Yellowstone. The park is beautiful. I prefer the less touristy hikes, but of course you have to go see Old Faithful and The Grand Prismatic Spring and all the other touristy things.

Get out there and have fun!

Bison walking thru campsite, River runs beside it, Back Country trails with campsites if you dare.

Bear Spray a must..Water and Toilets available...Small campsite area only 16 sites...

Mostly tent or small RV's...once again...this is the Slough Creek campsite in the North East corner of Yellowstone...< 10 miles from Lamar Valley where you can watch Wolves...

Norris is a nice campground. It has all the amenities you could ever want.  Only downside is its fairly busy, however I don’t think there is really anyway around this in Yellowstone.

They don't accept reservation so in the high season you have to get there early. The ranger said to get in line by 7am to get a spot for sure. They don't start until 730 but the ranger was nice to give us all the information and paperwork while we waited in line so it went by fast. Be prepared for the cold. It was 31 degrees when we waited in line and 30 degrees the next morning. Day time it was in the 80s.

We picked a walk-in site by the river. It was a short walk to where we parked. Only negative if people don't park well, it can be tight.

Bathroom was 75 yards away with a water and cleaning station. We had a picnic table and fire pit. Sites are closer together. Great place to star gaze. Entrance had ice and firewood for sale.

Con: light smelled of sulphur but with all the geysers and geological formation, its to be expected. You get used to it after awhile.

Cool older campground with tons of old national park character, with TONS to look at in the area between the Park Ranger musseum and well, Norris Geyser Basin

we camped here from June 12-15. The campground only takes limited reservations and the rest first come first served. We arrived around 8.30am and waited in line for around an hour but ended up getting a spot. Good location as is central to the rest of Yellowstone. $20 a night , no showers though so if you are staying more than a couple of days we drove to a campground nearby which had pay showers $4 had a couple of bison visit during our stay and all campsites have bear lockers

I thought this campsite was great overall, but the campsites were very close together and our neighbors were very loud until past quiet hours. There was a sink to wash dishes, and running water which was very helpful and the bathrooms were nice! The location in the park was decent considering how big Yellowstone is. You have to drive over an hour to get to Mammoth Hot Springs and at least 30 minutes to get to Old Faithful visitor center and main area.

In the park and $20 a night. Got a walkin site over Memorial Day weekend which was a miracle! Clean flush bathrooms, no showers. Recycling station at entry to campground. Each site has a bear box and my row of sites had a resident bison. Near the National Ranger Museum. Walkin sites very close together - I could hear the man in the tentsite beside me snoring. Wood and ice available for sale

The sites are pretty close together, especially if you get an inside circle campsite. If on the outside you have more room from your neighbors. There was not enough room for two tents on the little square patch for tents. Perk was it came with a bear safe storage area for food and accessories as well as a fire pit.

This campground does not take reservations, they are first come, first serve. There are only a few spots for really long RV’s, so the camp hosts will escort you back to those, if you are long. At the base of the camp, there are flush toilets, there are pit toilets up in the campground. All of the camp sites have a lot of trees. It is more in the middle of the park, so it is a great “base camp” to go throughout the park

We camped in Yellowstone at the Norris Campground during the summer of 2011. It was at the end of a long trip for us. We used our camp as a base to explore Yellowstone National Park. In our experience, the fire wood was somewhat expensive. The park itself was amazing. Lots of waterfalls and rivers. Wonderful spots to sit. We had a bison walk alongside our car and I was reminded on the elephants I saw at Addo Elephant Park in South Africa. One morning we had deer run through our campsite. It was very disappointing to watch a mother bear and her cub being chased by tourists, whose cars were lined up for almost a mile around a meadow. Old Faithful was faithful as ever. Yellowstone is so huge, I recommend finding the back country parts and having as little impact on the park as possible.

First of all, read the review of this camp site by Danielle V. It describes our check-in experience to a "t," including the gate person telling us to stop one place and then that location having absolutely nothing, a very cold wait in a very long line at Norris, and incredibly kind camp hosts keeping us informed the whole time. I had my two kiddos with me, so I stood physically in line while keeping an eye on the kiddos in the car. It was just too cold to do it any other way. All that said, we ended up with what I consider the absolute best spot in Yellowstone. We grabbed the closest "walk-in" spot, which just meant we had to walk our tent and stuff in maybe 100 yards. It was right on an incredible meadow with a semi-swimmable (though cold) winding stream. The campground is centrally located, especially if you plan to make the big loop driving. Lots to see on the way to and from the major attractions. The nighttime events were also nice. One thing to be aware of is the altitude. This site got very cold, almost freezing, in July, so come prepared. Other sites in this same campground were okay, but I really feel we lucked out with the walk-in ones.

OK, so let's be clear - camping in Yellowstone is a bit of a pain in the neck if you don't plan months in advance. There's a total of 12 campgrounds throughout Yellowstone (some of which may be closed during your visit, so check the website) including 5 campgrounds with ONLY reservable sites operated by Xanterra (a company that is completely unrelated to the NPS) and 7 first-come, first-served campgrounds operated by the park service. The Xanterra campgrounds are generally the most centrally located options, but if you don't plan in advance and reserve a site, there's no way you're getting one in the summer. If you're coming to Yellowstone without reservations, your best bet is to stay at a campground as close to the park boundaries as possible and get to your preferred campground no later than 8 AM. As another reviewer noted, some people start lining up as early as 6 AM. Keep in mind that Yellowstone is enormous, and the park access roads are limited and often times blocked by tourists, the ever-present and always-obnoxious bison, and stupid tourists in the middle of the road taking pictures of stupid bison in the middle of the road. Oh, and lots of traffic. So plan accordingly and wake up extra early, unfortunately!

We stayed at Wapiti campground in the Shosone National Forest about 1/2 an hour from the east gate entrance and started packing up at 5 AM. We got to the east gate entrance at 6 AM and the ranger at the gate told us we may as well swing by Bridge Bay to see if they have any available campsites... which illustrates an interesting point about Yellowstone in that the NPS rangers at the gates and elsewhere in the park literally have no idea what the camping conditions are within the park, either at the Xanterra campgrounds OR at the NPS-operated campgrounds. Not a clue. I find this strange since it's 2017, but that's reality. We arrived at Bridge Bay at 6:45 AM and waited patiently at the park office for a Xanterra worker to open the reservation window - not a second before 7 AM mind you - to promptly laugh at me when I inquired about a campsite, stating that they were actually overbooked. Waste of time. We continued driving to Norris, which is where we had originally hoped to get a site, and arrived about an hour later at 7:40 AM.

At 7:40 AM, we were the 26th group to arrive and join the line waiting for a campsite - it was quite the eye-opener to be honest. 25 groups ahead of us already, all freezing their butts off in line! Thankfully, the campground hosts were AWESOME and did a wonderful job keeping everyone extremely informed of availability throughout the morning. There happened to be 42 sites that they were expecting to be available sometime that morning, though current campers always have the option to renew / extend their reservations through the morning that they are scheduled to leave. The crowd that morning lucked out that so many sites were becoming available, and out of everyone that joined the line, only the real late-comers (those that showed up after around 9:30 AM) were finally told that they were not going to get a site. We did end up waiting in line until approxiamtely 10:20 AM to get our site, since campers have until 11 AM to officially check out of their sites, so even if you get there early, you should plan on standing in line for quite a while. Despite the waste-of-time aspect of it (especially if you only have a few days in the park like we do), we had a great time talking to the other folks waiting in line with us and learning where they were coming from, where they were going next, etc. It was a very pleasant atmosphere and everyone was extremely nice (and also thankful for the great communication from the hosts!).

The campground itself is pretty basic, which is typical for all of the NPS-operated campgrounds in Yellowstone. The sites do not have water/electric and the campground does not have showers, but the restrooms at least have flushing toilets and running water (most NPS campgrounds do not). We stayed in site 26 in B loop. All sites seem spacious and come with a fire ring, picnic table, and bear box for storing all cooking equipment, food, and generally anything that smells like a delicious human to grizzly bears. Each loop has its own restroooms as well as the main ones near the office, and they are well maintained.

Norris is the most centrally located NPS-operated campground, and a great choice if you're primarily interested in visiting the various geyser basins within the park. There is a trail connecting Norris Campground to the very famous Norris Geyser Basin, the park's largest collection of hydrothermal formations - which is AWESOME. As a trade-off, the entire campground smells like rotten eggs (sulfurous gas) pretty much 24-7, but you get used to it. The Solfatara Creek runs right by the A loop and entrance to the campground, and offers some decent flyfishing in the meadow. It's also an excellent area to spot wildlife, and we literally had a lone coyote trot right in front of us near the bridge that crosses the creek. I would also recommend checking out the Museum of the National Park Ranger which is actually on the main entrance drive for Norris Campground - it's small and quick, but full of a lot of great information to make you appreciate the park and the NPS in general.

For us, Norris was the perfect base of operations for our visit to Yellowstone, and while it was anonying to spend essentially 1/2 a day waiting for a campsite to open up, I can definitely understand the problem considering the ridiculous demand for campsites in this incredibly beautiful park.

As few words of caution about Yellowstone:

• Bison are cool and all, but cause hours of traffic jams throughout the park. My family has quasi-jokingly switched to eating bison burgers rather than beef hamburgers because we were so sick of bison after traveling through South Dakota and Wyoming. Don't be one of the people 
• The food in Yellowstone is some of the most expensive, least satisfying food I've ever eaten in a state or national park. Pack picnic meals instead, and then swing into Fishing Bridge for the ice cream (back of the General Store).
• If you're not a big fan of crowds but still need to travel to Yellowstone during the summer due to kids being in school, plan to hit the congested areas of the park BEFORE 10 am or AFTER 4 pm to avoid the heaviest crowds. There are similar signs posted throughout the park, and I fully agree - right at 4 PM, it's like someone flips a switch and the crowds start to disappear.
• Showering in Yellowstone is a bit of an ordeal since the NPS campgrounds do not have showers. On a whim, my husband asked the front desk at the Old Faithful Inn if they have public showers and they do. I believe we paid something like $3.50 for a keycard that grants 2 hours of access to one of the bathhouses within the Old Faithful Inn 'village' of cottages. The showers were fantastic!!! The bathhouse was extremely clean, newly updated, spacious, and contained 3 shower stalls (including an ADA accessible one) that had shampoo, conditioner, and body wash pumps IN the showers so you didn't need to bring your own. I believe you can also purchase showers at: Mammoth Hotel, Roosevelt Lodge, Grant Village campground, Fishing Bridge campground, and Canyon campground - but we did not use those ones and I can't speak to their quality or availability.

I stayed here in September 2016 on a trip to Yellowstone. Having not made prior reservations I got quite lucky landing a spot here for 3 nights. I would definitely recommend reservations for the high season. This campground has level spots for tents, parking, bear proof lockers, clean bathrooms and other basic amenities. Convienient location and many nice hiking trails in close proximity to the campground.

We hiked in a little over 3 miles to site 3L2. Hike was moderate as there was some climbing up hill before hiking back down to the river. Along the way we saw giant grizzly tracks on our trail to camp. To get to the site (or any of the other sites besides 3L1) you need to ford the river. It was late August so the water was only shin deep. I hear the water level in spring can be quite different. The site was nice and private and surrounded by water on 2 sides. There is a buffalo that likes to hang out and we watched him while we ate dinner. There is a bear pole to hang your food and supplies. A nice tent spot back in the woods provided a soft pine needle floor. Fire/cook area had multiple "bones" piled up. As soon as night fell we started hearing growling. We didn't get much sleep that night as it sounded like we were in the middle of a zoo. I think with the population of wildlife on the river I will choose to camp elsewhere for a more restful night sleep. River did provide a good water source.

Setup basecamp at Norris and then hiked to backcountry campsite 4D2 on Ice Lake. Very nice wooded hike around the lake to get to camp. Campsite was VERY private and very spacious. We were able to setup our tent far away from the food/fire area. Forest floor was a soft bed of pine needles. If you have a sub par sleeping pad you will still sleep like a baby. Bear poles are provided to string up your gear. Campfire area was nice but we were unable to have a fire due to the fire ban they had for backcountry sites. Lake was clean and a good water source. The night was very peaceful. All we could hear were the owls hooting. Highly recommend this campsite!

Liked this campground a lot. Its nicely wooded but I do wish the sites had more privacy. Not sure why National Parks put the sites so close together. We had site #82 which met our needs. Each site has a bear box for storage. Loved the proximity to the Norris Basin for hiking. Took a 5+ mile hike through some of the most gorgeous thermal features. Bison visit the campground daily. Big plus is the flush toilets and the camp sink. Quick trip to Canyon campground for showers. There were sites right along the Gibbon river but they were all taken. Campground is first come first serve and you should get there early. Try driving through to get a feel for what sites you might like. 3 different loops are available. Ice and firewood were available on site. Everything else is a short ride over to canyon (gas, showers, food, store, etc).

We got to Norris pretty early to get in line for a vacant campsite, people start lining up in the summer as early as 6am. There are a couple loops as well as some walk in sites. The lower loop and the walk in sites are near the river (I am told it has some great fishing) and spaced out though not very private, and the upper loops are pretty tight/on top of each other. Tents are mixed in with mother homes and small RVs due to the first come first serve nature of the campground. Norris is about 20 minutes from Canyon Campground where showers can be found. Great access to the geyser basin. You may get a whiff of sulfur in the air when the winds are right.

Been Here Many Times As A Young Girl & Now & Now With My Girls!! Campgrounds are decent with pathways to the Norris Geyser Basin where the most active geysers are present in the park. Stay on the path.

We tried to stay here in June. They do not take reservations, so it's first come first serve. We arrived just before 9am hoping to get a site. There was a huge crowd of people trying to drive in, it was chaos. Then we finally just parked & walked to up to where you pay & reserve. There was a line of 40 people, waiting until 11am, the check out time, to see how many people were going to leave & if they would be lucky enough to get a site. We didn't want to wait that long so we left. It would be a much better experience if people had to reserve the # of nights they wanted to stay so the hosts always knew how many spots would be open the next day. It's unfortunate they expect people to just wait around all morning to see if they get a spot when they could be enjoying the beautiful park instead!

We stayed at this campground after staying at the Canyon Campground the night before, and this was WAY better. Though it was a large campground, offering over 100 sites, it still had some peace and quiet. It was centrally located to a slew of different sites, though no matter where you stay in Yellowstone it can take some time to get to places. You also need to always assume things are going to take 30 minutes longer in case you run into a herd of bison (happened to use 3 times). The bathrooms were clean and offered cleaning stations for dishes and such which was nice. There was a field right at the front that offered great views of bison herds each day which was nice. Definitely would stay here again!