Want a primo Colorado campsite this summer? Make the reservations months in advance!

[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.

I really dislike reserving campsites! To me this goes against the whole idea of camping. You drive until you find some place you think you might like then find a place to camp. I've seen many good campsites go unused because someone "reserved" them for a night and then did not show up.

Sorry Ray but I just think this is wrong, and so do a lot of other folks. I know we are going to have to learn to live with it but that does not make it right. I guess reservering a site in a selected campground could be right but it should be first come first selected on the site itself. The only reason I'm giving in on the reserve a site in a campgroud is there are just too many folks now-a-days wanting to do the same things that makes that a requirement.

One of the better things about being a little older is remembering there was no such thing as reservations and there was always an open slot or 10 open slots.

[RockyMtnRay]

Originally Posted by Windbreaker

I really dislike reserving campsites! To me this goes against the whole idea of camping. You drive until you find some place you think you might like then find a place to camp. I've seen many good campsites go unused because someone "reserved" them for a night and then did not show up.

Sorry Ray but I just think this is wrong, and so do a lot of other folks. I know we are going to have to learn to live with it but that does not make it right. I guess reservering a site in a selected campground could be right but it should be first come first selected on the site itself. The only reason I'm giving in on the reserve a site in a campgroud is there are just too many folks now-a-days wanting to do the same things that makes that a requirement.

One of the better things about being a little older is remembering there was no such thing as reservations and there was always an open slot or 10 open slots.

You sound like the guy (a full timer) who was complaining about reservations in the latest issue of Trailer Life. Wanted to just wander around at will and plop down for the night whereever they had a whim to do so. Hated seeing unoccupied campsites that they couldn't have because they were reserved for someone who would arrive much later in the day.

Yeah, I too remember there was once a time (maybe still is in places like low population density places like Montana) where you could always find an open campsite on a Friday evening for a spur-of-the-moment weekend get away.

But that was back in the 50s when the nation had barely half the population it does now...and in a time when pretty much the only people who went camping were avid outdoorsmen (hunters, fishermen, etc.). The problem...at least with regard to public campgrounds is that very few new ones have been built or even expanded in the last 50 years...meanwhile the population has roughly doubled and the outdoors oriented population has roughly increased ten-fold.

If it weren't for the reservations system, people who only can get away on weekends would not stand a chance of getting a campsite in any public campground if they couldn't arrive before noon on Friday. Somewhere around a third of all public campgrounds here in Colorado are still first come-first served and you'd better show up Thursday afternoon if you want a weekend campsite in any that are within a 150 mile radius of Denver or Colorado Springs. With roughly half a million people heading into the mountains every summer weekend...and only a few thousand public campsites total...demand greatly outstrips the supply.

And it isn't just the public campgrounds where "plan ahead" is mandatory. Mainly because I can now finally get high speed wireless internet in a couple of commercial RV Parks, I booked stays at two of them. One was for the week of Sept 6th (after Labor Day)...a Tues-Friday midweek stay in Estes Park (right outside Rocky Mtn NP). When the lady called this morning to get my CC number she said she's already about 70% booked for that week and expects to be completely booked up for all of September by mid-May, it not earlier. The other commercial reservation is for a KOA that will have WiFi and that's right outside a major state park in remote northern Colorado...and it's the only commercial RV Park within a 50 mile radius. That booking was for a Mon-Thur (not even a weekend) in mid-July (3 months in the future) and I managed to get almost the last site they had available for that week! Now admittedly these are both high-quality campgrounds (4W's each in Woodalls guide) and they are in extremely high demand scenic areas.

Given that demand for these primo areas continues to grow...and the supply of new campgrounds is NOT growing (at least not in Colorado's resort areas), then reservations and planning ahead are unavoidable. I don't think any of us would expect to just show up at any hotel or motel in a busy resort area during high season and expect to be able to get a room for several nights. So why should it be any different for camping in these areas???

And quite frankly, I like reservations anyway...they allow me to plan and schedule. And equally importantly, having "reservations" with security deposits automatically causes my business associates and clients to have much greater respect for my scheduled travel dates. If I don't have reservations, I've sadly learned that it's much, much harder to fight demands like "you absolutely have to stay here and fix this problem because we have a deadline to meet" So one of the things I'm doing today is emailing my business partner my travel dates for the entire summer with an admonishment that these dates are "hands off" confirmed reservations and are not subject to change.

Quite frankly I see public camping campsites in states like Colorado eventually going to a lottery system similar to the one used for canoeing in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area of Minnesota...or for the backcountry campsites inside Rocky Mountain National Park. Basically you would have to submit a request during the winter for the days you want in the following summer and all requests would go into a lottery. If your request for a given period at at a given campground wins, you get to camp; otherwise not.

HI,

reservations work great for us - since we don't usually get to the campsite late on a friday. It does get frustrating when the campsites are all filled up - but at least when we do make a reservation - we know no matter what time we get there our site will be waiting for us.

Teresa

[rotor_wash]

I'm with Ray. In Colorado, you need to reserve your favorite spots in advance. Especially around holidays. Sorry Windbreaker, but some of the premium spots are already gone for the time I want them. With my limited time off, I know far in advance when I'm camping. It is the system and it works in your favor if you use it. Maybe if I had unlimited time off I'd have something to complain about. There will always be a crappy spot somewhere for the late arrival with no reservations (rarely are more than half of the sites are reservable). Just make notes of the good spots so you know which ones to reserve. (Or learn how to interpret the campsite description on Reserve America)
R_W

A word of caution: You should be in contact with the campground reservation office or the campground host if you have made reservations and you know that you will be late arriving. For example if you have reserved three days and for some reason, you will not arrive in time to use the site on the first day as planned, you should contact the someone to let them know you will instead arrive on the next day(s). Other wise, if you do not show up on the first scheduled day, the camp host may also re-sell your site to someone else. Most, if not all, Colorado State Parks and Federal Parks have instituted this policy.

Hal