Red Shale Campground, Montana

Red Shale Campground is a forest service campground in between Broadus and Ashland, Montana, right off of the highway. It is free. The road and sites are gravel. There’s a couple large sites. We were there 7 days and usually had one other camper in the evenings. We figured it would be busy over Labor Day weekend, but we were by ourselves on Saturday, and then it was almost full Sunday, with most of them taking off Monday. What’s weird is that there is a lot of traffic through the campground; just driving through, or stopping to use the vault toilet. No electricity or water; 3 vault toilets (one in the picnic area), picnic tables and fire rings. It’s about a 1.2 mile loop around the campground. There are no other trails, but Curt did walk the fenced area.

We had an excited neighbor (down the highway) come over one afternoon, saying that they had a bear go through their back yard. She had called 911 and they were sending the game warden. Curt happened to be walking that afternoon, but didn’t see it. We did see some deer one day but otherwise no wildlife, not even squirrels. A few woodpeckers. There was a fire through here about 3 years ago. The loop (2 loops) we were in was further from the highway, but you could still hear the traffic. It’s a very busy with semi trucks, but was really a very peaceful place.

We had a storm one evening with hail. It was kind of scary, noisy. They were about the size of marbles, some the large marbles. We had damage to the air conditioner covers on top, and there were pine needles all over the rig and the jeep.