Best Campgrounds in Colorado

Phone rings, feller on the other end wants to know where to camp in Colorado. I tell him the same thing every time: depends what you're after, depends when you're going, and for the love of Pete, book the popular ones the second the window opens. Colorado camping isn't what it was in '88 when I first started swinging a pulaski down there on a detail with the Forest Service, but the good country is still good country if you know where to point the truck.

I retired out of the backcountry permit desk a few years back and these days me and Sadie (my Border collie, eleven years old and still thinks she's two) spend a fair amount of time poking around Colorado in the shoulder seasons. I've got opinions. Some of these campgrounds I'd send my own daughter to. Others I'm putting on here because folks keep asking and I might as well tell you the truth about them.

The list below isn't ranked. Rankings are for sports. These are the camping spots I keep coming back to, with honest notes about what you're walking into.

Moraine Park in Rocky Mountain National Park

If you've never camped in Rocky, Moraine Park is the one I'd send my own family to. It sits in the Big Thompson drainage about ten minutes from Estes Park, and the elk come right through camp in the fall like they own the deed. Which, frankly, they do.

Here's the deal with Moraine — reservations only, and they go fast. Rocky Mountain is a timed-entry park now too in the busy months, so the campground reservation gets you in but you'll still want to read the rules at nps.gov before you show up confused at the entrance station. The sites are tent-and-RV mixed, no hookups, and you've got bear boxes at each site for a reason. Use them. I dont care if you "only have granola bars."

One rambly aside: the loop closest to the meadow is where I'd put my tent if I could pick. Listen for bugling elk in September and you'll forgive the crowds.

Mueller State Park, west of Colorado Springs

Mueller is the one I send people to when they want a real campground experience without driving six hours from Denver. It's up off Highway 67 near Divide, around 9,500 feet, and the campsites are spread out in actual trees instead of crammed into a gravel lot. Pikes Peak hangs out in the background like it's posing for a postcard.

Colorado Parks and Wildlife runs it and they run it well. You can book through cpw.state.co.us and the reservation window opens a good ways out — check before you go because they've tweaked the system a couple times in recent seasons. Showers, flush toilets, the works. Some sites have electric.

I took Sadie there one October and we had a black bear walk through the next loop at dusk, calm as you please. Bear country. Lock up your food in the trunk or a hard-sided container, not the tent vestibule. I'll get into bear stuff more in a minute.

Great Sand Dunes — Piñon Flats Campground

Piñon Flats is the only developed campground inside Great Sand Dunes National Park, sitting right at the base of the dunes off Highway 150 north of Alamosa. It's a weird and wonderful place to camp. You've got 30 square miles of sand dune in front of you and the Sangre de Cristos behind, and at night the stars are about as good as I've ever seen in the lower 48.

Reserve through Recreation.gov. The sites are exposed — there's some piñon and juniper but the wind absolutely will find you, so stake out your tent like you mean it. I've watched alot of cheap dome tents become kites in that parking lot. Bring the good stakes from your tent kit and use all of them.

Creek runs in spring and early summer, kids love it. By August it's dry and dusty and you're cooking under a sun that doesn't quit. Plan accordingly.

Ridgway State Park, between Montrose and Ouray

I'll tell you what — Ridgway is the campground I'd hand to a family that's never tent-camped and wants to like it after. Highway 550 runs right past it, the reservoir is gorgeous, and you've got Ouray (real mountain town, hot springs, no gift-shop nonsense thankfully) twenty minutes south.

Three separate campground areas, hot showers, full hookup options if you're hauling a trailer. Tent loops too, and they're not bad. The Dakota Terraces loop is closer to the water and tends to fill first. Elk Ridge sits up higher and feels a little wilder.

From here you're a reasonable drive to the San Juans — some of the best hiking in the state, if you ask me. Blue Lakes trail up the Dallas Creek road is a stunner. Crowded now, used to be quieter, internet found it.

Dispersed camping in the national forests

Now we're talking. If you're set up for it, dispersed camping on national forest land is free, you don't need a reservation, and the views beat any developed campground I can name. The catch is you need to know what you're doing.

A few areas I'd point you toward:

• Buffalo Pass, above Steamboat Springs — dirt road, high country, find a spur and pull off
• Kebler Pass near Crested Butte — aspens go nuts in late September, get there early
• Cottonwood Pass, west of Buena Vista — paved over now, which changed things, but the spur roads still hold spots
• Rampart Range Road, Pike National Forest — close to the Front Range, OHV-heavy on weekends
• Grand Mesa — lakes everywhere, less talked about than it deserves
• South of Lake City along the Alpine Loop — high, remote, bring chains even in July
• San Juan National Forest near Vallecito — quieter than the Durango side

Rules vary by district. The general one — 14-day stay limit, camp 100 feet from water, pack out everything including the toilet paper. Some areas now require permits or have designated dispersed sites only because folks trashed the easy spots. Check the local ranger district page on fs.usda.gov before you commit to a plan. Fire restrictions change weekly in summer. Read the sign at the trailhead.

A word about bears, weather and elevation

I spent enough years writing up incident reports to know what gets people in trouble at Colorado campgrounds. It's almost always one of three things.

Bears first. Black bears, no grizzlies in Colorado. They want your food, your cooler, your scented chapstick, and they have all night to figure out how to get it. Use the bear box if the campground has one. If it doesn't, lock everything in the trunk of a hard-sided vehicle. Not the truck bed with a tarp. Not the tent. The reason this rule exists is because a bear that learns to raid a campsite gets relocated, then gets killed, and it's because some feller couldn't be bothered to walk forty feet to the locker.

Weather second. Afternoon thunderstorms in the Rockies are a near-daily affair from about July through August. Above treeline by noon, below treeline by one — that's the old saw and it still holds. Lightning kills people in Colorado every summer.

Elevation third. Most of the campgrounds I've named sit between 7,500 and 10,000 feet. If you flew in from sea level yesterday, you're going to feel it. Drink more water than seems reasonable, lay off the booze the first night, and don't plan a 14er on day one. A good sleeping bag matters too — it gets cold up high even in July, I've seen frost in August at Moraine.

Booking, permits, and what's changed

The single biggest thing that's changed about Colorado camping in the last decade is the booking situation. Used to be you could roll into most places on a Friday afternoon and find something. Those days are largely gone for the well-known spots.

Recreation.gov handles federal campgrounds — Forest Service, Park Service, BLM. The reservation window for most sites opens six months out, and the popular ones in Rocky Mountain National Park and Great Sand Dunes are gone within minutes of the window opening on a summer weekend. Set an alarm. Have your account logged in already. Know your site number preferences before the clock hits.

State parks go through the CPW system and operate on their own window. First-come-first-served sites still exist at some campgrounds but they're a smaller pool every year. And a Colorado state parks pass is worth it if you'll camp more than a couple times — saves you the daily entry fee.

For backcountry stuff, every wilderness and park has its own permit setup. Indian Peaks, Maroon Bells-Snowmass, Rocky Mountain backcountry — all different. Don't assume. Call the ranger district. We answer the phone, mostly.

What I'd actually do

If it was me and a buddy with one week in Colorado in September, I'd start with two nights at Moraine Park in Rocky for the elk, drive south and do two nights dispersed on Kebler Pass for the aspens, then finish with two at Ridgway as a soft landing with hot showers and a drive up to Ouray for dinner. That's the trip. Book Moraine and Ridgway in advance, leave Kebler flexible.

If you're newer to this, skip the dispersed leg, do Mueller instead, and spend the saved planning energy on getting your gear dialed. A halfway-decent stove and a tent that won't leak will do more for your trip than any campground will. Check out the rest of the parks list and the trails roundups if you want to build the days out. Drive slow, lock up your food, and pull over for the elk.