[RockyMtnRay]

I just finished making all my camping reservations for the summer...the entire summer, I might add. 'Twas a marathon (~10 hour) process to determine how I could get the exact campsite I wanted in each campground and somehow schedule my trips around considerations like the effect of snow levels on hiking/mountain biking opportunities (a BIG concern until at least July). Or the diminishing lake water levels for kayaking which become a BIG concern by late summer. Took most of the 4/16-4/17/05 weekend (part of Saturday, all of Sunday) to schedule 5 camping trips.

Most of the primo developed camping here in Colorado is in public campgrounds (National Park, Forest Service or State Park). By "primo" camping I mean in campsites that are located right on a gorgeous lakeshore (or right beside a nice stream)...or have killer views of surrounding mountains. With exceedingly few exceptions, you are not going to get views like this one of Mt Audubon (elev 13223) and the Indian Peaks from any commercial RV Park (this photo was taken last summer from my campsite in the Pawnee Campground in the Brainard Lake NRA).


The problem is commercial RV Parks have to be located on private land which is typically miles from the really scenic areas on the public lands. So if you want primo scenery from your campsite, you have to stay in a public campground. I'm assuming, by the way, that the majority of visitors to Colorado are coming for the scenery and therefore having superb scenery from the campsite is very desireable.

Unfortunately there are only a few hundred campground campsites in all of Colorado that are really primo for views or other niceties (like being right on a lakeshore). Because of books like
Colorado Campgrounds: The 100 Best and All the Rest which list exactly which campsites are the best (and why) in each of the best public campgrounds of the state, it's fairly easy to know in advance exactly which exact campsites are the very best and the ones you should try to reserve. Sure, these campgrounds often have many other campsites but many are far less desireable (farther from the lakeshore, no view, hard to get into, small, next to a smelly toilet, etc.)

The good news is that unlike commercial RV Parks (and many National Park campgrounds)....where you make a campground reservation and someone in an "office" assigns you a campsite upon arrival....you can make your reservation for the specific campsite you want. Forget using the phone numbers listed in the Woodalls or TrailerLife directories by the way...these will get you to a government bureacrat who will in turn send you to a national reservations call center (manned by clueless people). Instead you need to go to either the ReserveUSA website or the ReserveAmerica website. Both have drill down maps so that you can evaluate the campground layout (and relationship to surrounding geography like lakes, streams, etc.) Once you locate candidate campsites (or know in advance from guide books which is best) you can drill down further as each campsite has its own description page indicating size/length (max length of equipment), width, type (pull through or back in), surface (paved, gravel, dirt). There are also often notes that describe closeness to lakes, views, distance to water and toilets, etc. from that individual campsite. And once you've identified the campsite(s) you want, there are calendars and other scheduling tools so that you can find find a matchup between your desired dates and the dates that campsite is actually available. And once you finally nail down the campsite you want and get a match between dates available and dates you want (which can cause some trip schedule juggling), then a few clicks and the entry of a Credit Card number will insure that exact campsite is YOURS for the day(s) you want!

Yes, it's very laborious (I sometimes spend two hours per campground trying to nail down the right combo of site and dates) but given that there are literally tens of thousands of folks who will go through the process and only a few hundred truly primo campsites, I think it's worth it. But given the ferocious competition for these truly desireable campsites, you have to make the reservations months in advance (3 to 5 months in advance is NOT too early for a weekend; 2 to 3 months in advance is not too early for a multi-day weekday stay).

P.S. Although it took 10 hours to do, I'm proud to say I did manage (just in time in a few cases) to reserve the most primo campsite in every campground I'm staying in this summer.