Estes Park area

Thunder Mountain wrote:

jomimac wrote:
Does anyone have an opinion regarding campgrounds in the Estes Park, CO area? We are planning to be there from 9-15-16 through 10-1-16 to see the Elk and other sights. We have probably waited too long to book a place in the National Park sites, but would interested in any comments on private campgrounds in the area.

Good information from knowledgeable fellow RVers. Just be prepared for huge crowds, traffic jams and rip your eyes out prices for most everything. Lived in EP for 31 years. September used to be a sigh of relief. It was the month of the newly wed and nearly dead. Now it's just the fourth month of summer. Weekends are especially bad with all the people coming up from the Front Range.

^^^ This, regarding the crowds and traffic.

Was up there last season, toward the end of the season in late September. We had been up in the park and coming back down in the evening to Mary's Lake CG. The drive from the Beaver Meadows gate to Mary's Lake should have taken us maybe 5-7 minutes. It took us almost an hour to go just a few miles. Why? Because tourists had pulled over down near the RMNP entrance sign about 2 miles from the Beaver Meadows gate, and were viewing the elk. Many of them had not pulled off the roadway -- they simply stopped in the middle of the road! Absolutely no thought or consideration of the many folks lined up behind them. Gotta have that photo op! It even took local law enforcement and park rangers a while to get there and clear out the tourists to break up the traffic bottleneck.