RV Rental Near Gateway Campground (Cody) in Cody, WY

Every summer I get a version of the same call: someone flying into Yellowstone Regional Airport (COD), maybe an hour before they plan to drive the North Fork Highway, asking if I can have an RV ready and waiting at a Cody campground by the time they land. Gateway Campground is one of the first places I mention — it sits right in town, which makes the logistics simple, and it puts guests within a clean twenty-minute drive of the Yellowstone East Entrance on US-14/16/20. When I deliver and set up a rig there, I can usually have it level, connected, and ready to sleep in before you finish checking your bags at the carousel. That is the whole point of the Fireside RV Rental delivery model, and Gateway is one of the campgrounds in Cody where it works especially smoothly.

Why I Deliver So Many Rigs to Gateway Campground

Gateway Campground’s location on the east side of Cody is genuinely convenient for how people actually use this area. The campground gives guests a stable, full-hookup home base right inside the city, and from there every major destination in the Big Horn Basin fans out in a different direction. Yellowstone is west on US-14/16/20 — the North Fork Highway is one of the more scenic drives in the country even before you hit the park boundary. The Chief Joseph Scenic Byway (US-14A) heads northwest toward the Beartooth Plateau. The Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area is roughly two hours east on US-14. Guests can spend a week at Gateway and drive a completely different direction every single day without repeating a view.

From an operator standpoint, a Cody in-town campground is also just easier to service. I can get there quickly if a guest has a question, I know the pull-through and back-in site layouts well, and I’m not navigating a forest service road to make the drop. For first-time RV renters especially, I like starting them somewhere that isn’t thirty minutes down a canyon. Get comfortable with the rig in town, then go explore.

How the Delivery and Setup Process Works at This Campground

Here is exactly how a typical Gateway Campground rental goes on my end. After you reserve the RV, I ask which site you’ve been assigned — the campground staff can tell you when you book. I coordinate my delivery timing around your arrival, and my goal is always to have the trailer or motorhome fully set up before you pull in so you are not standing in a parking lot learning to level a rig after a long travel day.

Setup means: the RV is parked and leveled, shore power is connected, the water hookup is run, and I’ve done a full walkthrough of every system — the water heater, the furnace, the awning, the slide if there is one, the holding tanks, all of it. I also walk you through breakdown before I leave, because the end of the trip goes smoother if you know what to expect. If anything comes up mid-stay, call me directly at 307-222-8547 or email [email protected]. I’m local; I’m not routing you to a national call center.

One practical thing I always mention: let the campground know you are doing a rental delivery rather than driving in yourself. Gateway’s staff have seen this before and they are accommodating, but a heads-up avoids any confusion about check-in time for the site versus your personal arrival time. I typically contact them myself as well.

When to Book — and What the Weather Means for Your Trip

Cody’s busy season runs hard from mid-June through Labor Day, and that is when demand for delivery slots at in-town campgrounds like Gateway is the highest. I have had summers where I was fully committed three weeks out for July Fourth weekend before most people even thought about booking. The Cody Nite Rodeo runs every night of the summer, Yellowstone visitation peaks in July and August, and the campground fills up accordingly. My honest advice: if your dates are in July or early August, book the RV and reserve your campsite at the same time, ideally six to eight weeks out.

June and September are genuinely underrated in this part of Wyoming. June mornings can still be cold — I’ve seen frost on the North Fork as late as the second week of June — but the crowds are lighter and the river is running high and green. September brings cooler nights, golden cottonwoods along the Shoshone, and elk moving down from the high country. Cody in September might be my favorite time of year to be out here. The RV heater gets used at night, but that is what it is there for.

October is the shoulder shoulder season. Some Shoshone National Forest campgrounds close, but Cody itself stays open and the weather can be spectacular, or it can bring early snow. I can help you think through timing if you call — I’ve driven these roads year-round and I’ll give you a straight answer about what to expect, not a sales pitch.

What to Do When You’re Based at Gateway Campground

One of the things I tell every guest based at a Cody campground: do not spend your whole trip inside Yellowstone and miss what is right here. The Buffalo Bill Center of the West is a genuinely world-class museum complex — five museums under one roof — and it is a five-minute drive from Gateway. Old Trail Town, the collection of original frontier-era structures on the west side of Cody, is worth a morning. Shoshone Canyon is right there at the edge of town and it is dramatic in a way that surprises people who have only ever seen it from the car window on US-14/16/20.

For day trips, the lineup from a Cody base is hard to beat anywhere in the region:

• Yellowstone National Park (East Entrance): About 53 miles west on US-14/16/20, the North Fork Highway. Plan for Yellowstone Lake, Hayden Valley, and the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. Allow a full day minimum — traffic at the park entrance can add time in peak summer, so leaving by 7:00 a.m. from Cody makes a real difference.
• Chief Joseph Scenic Byway (US-14A): Head northwest out of Cody toward Clark and up into the Absaroka Range. This connects to the Beartooth Highway and eventually Cooke City. It is a stunning drive and less trafficked than the North Fork. Dramatic switchbacks near the top — trailers don’t run it, but it is perfect when you’re parked at Gateway and day-tripping in a tow vehicle.
• Buffalo Bill State Park and Reservoir: About six miles west of town on US-14/16/20. The reservoir is large and beautiful, the campgrounds there (North Fork and North Shore Bay) are great overflow options if Gateway fills, and the wind is almost always blowing, which makes it popular with windsurfers.
• Sunlight Basin: Take WY-296 (the Chief Joseph) north and drop into Sunlight Basin — one of the most remote-feeling valleys in the Big Horn Basin, with great wildlife viewing and the deepest gorge in Wyoming (Sunlight Gorge). This is a half-day loop from Cody.
• Hot Springs State Park (Thermopolis): About 84 miles south on WY-120. The world’s largest mineral hot spring, free soaking pools, and the Wyoming Dinosaur Center nearby. A full-day road trip worth planning at least once during a longer stay.
• Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area: Roughly two hours east via US-14 toward Lovell. The canyon is stunning — sheer 1,000-foot walls above the Bighorn River — and far less crowded than Yellowstone. Medicine Lodge State Archaeological Site near Hyattville is a good add-on if you’re heading that direction.

Nearby Campgrounds If Gateway Is Full — or If You Want to Move the Base

If Gateway is fully booked — which happens during peak summer weekends — the other Cody-area campgrounds I deliver to regularly include Ponderosa Campground in town and Yellowstone Park KOA just east of the city. Both are good options and the delivery logistics are nearly identical. If you want to be deeper in the scenery right from your front door, I can deliver to the Shoshone National Forest campgrounds along US-14/16/20: Wapiti, Rex Hale, Elk Fork, and Eagle Creek are all strung along the North Fork of the Shoshone River between Cody and Yellowstone. Those sites put you in a canyon with the river running past, elk in the meadows at dawn, and black bear in the area — beautiful but definitely more remote, and some sites run short on length so I size the rig carefully when I book those.

Buffalo Bill State Park has two campground areas — North Fork and North Shore Bay — that sit right at the reservoir. Both are exposed and can be windy, but the sunsets over the water are worth it. I match a sturdier, lower-profile trailer to those sites when guests are going in peak wind season. If you’re thinking about any of these alternatives, it is worth a quick conversation before you book so I can match the right rig to the right site.

Ready to Book Your Gateway Campground RV Rental?

Call me at 307-222-8547 or email [email protected] and I’ll walk you through the right trailer or motorhome for your group size, the campground, and the time of year. I’ve been delivering rigs around the Big Horn Basin long enough to know which setups work at which campgrounds in which months, and I’d rather spend ten minutes on the phone with you now than have you show up with the wrong rig for a tight site. You can also browse the fleet to see what’s available for the Big Horn Basin area, and check out our full campgrounds and RV parks guide for a deeper look at every site I deliver to around Cody and across the region. Let’s get you set up right at Gateway — or wherever the trip takes you.