Hi...
I would like to know if anyone has stayed at the colter bay tent cabins. I have looked at the pictures and read what few reviews I could find on this site...one that answered a lot of the questions I had.
In the pictures that were posted I see that there is a fire ring in front of the tents. I take it you can build a campfire at night....but can you cook on it (even roast marshmellows?)...it looks like it has a grate...yet in one post it says that any food is prohibited...yet in another picture I see someone at the picnic table with a cooler and food eating a meal.
The top bunk beds look a little frightening especially with a cement floor to hit....so I was thinking about bringing along an air mattress for the kids to sleep on.
If we can%26#39;t cook at the tent are there other picnic/grilling sites? How close are they?
We really need to hold back on the eating out in order to do all the things we want to do on this trip.
Any info would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks!
colter bay tent cabins
We were there the summer of 2007 with our kids for I think 3 nights.
They are fine. They are just like camping, except you don%26#39;t need to take down the tent!
My boys were 8 %26amp; 11 at the time, but I wouldn%26#39;t have let them sleep on the top bunks. They are quite high. And they are narrow-ish. We laughed about how if you were a big/heavy person you wouldn%26#39;t be able to get up there and you wouldn%26#39;t be able to sleep comfortably. The mattresses are thin and on squeaky coils, but I still thought it was better than sleeping in a tent. We had the kids sleep in the bottom bunks and they were fine.
Food is allowed on the sites, and there is a bear-box near where you park your car for your campsite. The box is shared between the two connected tent-cabins that are on a site. It is basically a very heavy steel box that the bears can%26#39;t get into. Yes, you can cook on your fire (there is a fire ring for each of the tent-cabins) and there was a grate included. You just want to make sure you clean up well after cooking and all food goes in the bear box instead of being left out or in your tent-cabin or car. At check-in, they even tell you not to take the food that you cooked in into the tent-cabin (basically, t-shirts smelling strongly of bacon, etc). We thought it was all a bunch of hype until we saw a mother grizzly with her 3 cubs not a mile from the Coulter Bay tent-cabins (scared the bejesus out of me!). The rangers at the tent-cabins told us that she traverses back and forth through the campground from their lair to the lake. Oh! After that we followed all the rules because no way I was messing with a mama grizzly (grizzly!) being lured to my tent-cabin! :)
An airmattress for the kids would be fine. There is certainly enough floor space availabe. The canvas of the sides come down and hit the cement floor, but do not attach to it so bugs/mice can come in...but I can%26#39;t say we saw anything other than one spider that had taken up residence in a newspaper and hopped out on my husband%26#39;s bare chest as he opened it up while lying in his sleeping bag one morning!
One thing, all the campsites are close to bathrooms. But to SHOWER you have to drive down to the lakefront (about a 3 minute drive) and pay for a shower. I remember it struck me as a little pricey. Enough so that my boys just ';bathed'; in the lake for the days we were there. I, of course, couldn%26#39;t start my day without freshly shampooed hair so they totally had me!
Any other questions let me know and I will try to answer them!
colter bay tent cabins
I just looked back through the reviews and found the one I posted for the Colter Bay Tent Cabins. I think they are in chronological order....mine is dated July 21, 2006.
I forgot until reading it that they have bars (like bedrails) available at check-in for kids using the bunks. I wouldn%26#39;t have trusted them though for the upper bunks. My sister-in-law used them for her kids ON THE BOTTOM BUNKS and they were fine (kids were then 3 %26amp; 5). As I noted in my review (and had forgotten) my 8 year old rolled out of his LOWER bunk onto the cement floor in the night, all tangled in his sleeping bag. No harm done as he is the amazing bouncing kid. But then ensued me having to get out of my sleeping bag (in the pitch dark!)and off my bunk (without jumping on him!) and find the light switch and turn it on and get him back in bed and arranged then flip off the light again and get back in my upper bunk without stepping on his head.....you know the drill. Somehow we didn%26#39;t wake up the entire campground with all of our hullaballoo.
If you%26#39;re tent campers, then you will be fine here.
If you don%26#39;t like sleeping in a tent, then pick someplace else.
We actually enjoyed it after 10 days of being on the road from Michigan, sleeping in little roadside motels that either smelled strongly of old furniture or mildewy airconditioners or of Febreze! The mountain air was such a RELIEF!!!!!!!! :)
Thank You So Much!!
I did find your review and all of this information really helped!
There was not much info on the tent cabin site.
I have booked two nights there....we were able to stay an extra night because the price was so good...I couldn%26#39;t believe that the cabins are so pricey now...any way they were all booked and this is going to be perfect...think it will be great to sit by the fire after exploring.
Wish we could find more places like this!
When you drive by the cabin-cabins, have a look at them. Yiiiiick. We thought they looked like they would smell musty and gross inside. We much preferred the look of the tent cabins!!!!
And staying in the tent cabins, you can use the pool.....which is a drive but is at....one of the lodges. Can%26#39;t remember which. Our kids enjoyed that for a few hours one afternoon when we just couldn%26#39;t hike anymore.
I had no idea you could use the pool. We won%26#39;t be that long and we have one here in Florida so we will probably be mostly in awe of the nature around us....but on second thought might be a way of cleaning up the kids :)
It looks like you were there about the same time as we will be ...mid July...do you remember what the temperatures were like?
Once again being from Florida we get cold pretty quickly and I was just wondering how warm the wood stove would keep the tent.
Thanks Again.
Oh one more thing...
Maybe I am thinking a little too much about bears...but it seems like all the cooking going on with the grills would attract some form of wildlife.
We didn%26#39;t actually see/smell any people doing any huge amount of cooking while at the tent-cabins. The rangers said that because everyone follows the rules so closely by cleaning up the campsites of any food stuffs and using the bear boxes for storing food, that the bears know they%26#39;re not getting anything there so they don%26#39;t generally go looking. Ditto for other wildlife (here in Michigan, any campground is overrun by raccoons, but we didn%26#39;t see a single one there). I think the bears are also so well-fed by nature that our s%26#39;mores didn%26#39;t entice them.
Bring warm sleeping bags. I think ours were comfort rated to 30 degrees and we were fine. One night I remember specifically it was COLD feeling (my nose was sticking out and was cold) so it was probably in the low 50%26#39;s. We were toasty in our bags and didn%26#39;t use the stove at all. Once the sun comes up it warms up nicely. One of those eat-breakfast-with-a-sweatshirt-on then strip down to the t-shirt by 10 a.m. The coolness in the evening was just right for enjoying the fire. Check the weather for a few weeks before you go to see how low it%26#39;s dropping at night.
One thing we really liked was renting boats at the Colter Bay Marina (just kind of rowboat things with motors) and zipping around the islands.
The boats sound like a great idea...I am thinking about adding an extra night since we will get there late in the afternoon the first day.
I was trying to decide if we were going to freeze at night before doing so :)
We do some tent camping here and even with an air mattress I find that three or four nights is all my back can handle!
Thanks once again for all the help!
When we stayed there my husband was still recovering from falling off the roof of our house and breaking 2 vertebrae (have to love these Michigan winters) and he had no problem with the mattresses (or at least he didn%26#39;t complain too much).
Are you going to Yellowstone, too?
I%26#39;m trying to remember, but I think we stayed 3 nights in GTNP before heading to Yellowstone. That seemed about right. It%26#39;s actually a very small park!
Hi Again!
I actually have a great trip planned the problem is I keep adding days! I have been to the Tetons before and in the beginning had decided to skip this part in order to spend more time in Glacier...but the more research I do and the more I find a resonable rate I tend to add days.
We will spend a night in red lodge after flying into billings and then to cody for the night and now I have added two nights in the tetons and then three in yellowstone (canyon) one in gallatin to split up the ride to bigfork for two nights...one night in a tipi on blackfeet reservation and then three on the east side of glacier and two on the west and then one night in corte de arlene on the way to seattle to see friends for a week or so.
So after rambling on you see we have quite the trip planned...
and as you can also probably see I am having quite a blast planning it!
Looks like you have done quite a bit of this...please feel free to send any suggestions....you have really been helpful and thank you!
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