Estes Park in Colorado

Two Jayhawks wrote:
Nice place, concrete pads, and Estes Park are mutually exclusive. Unless something has changed all campgrounds are dirt/dusty, many off level, and some fairly tight. I'll throw another recommendation in the mix for Grand Lake CO. The other side of RMNP is less traveled & less crowded. You can still visit the Estes side from Grand Lake and enjoy both. I would add the CG's on the Grand Lake side have a slight edge.

I will second the above, with the caveat that the forest has been decimated by pine beetle, and the campgrounds that used to be forested are no longer forested. Still nice campgrounds, just not the shaded, forested campgrounds they used to be.

Nice place, concrete pads, and Estes Park are mutually exclusive. Unless something has changed all campgrounds are dirt/dusty, many off level, and some fairly tight. I'll throw another recommendation in the mix for Grand Lake CO. The other side of RMNP is less traveled & less crowded. You can still visit the Estes side from Grand Lake and enjoy both. I would add the CG's on the Grand Lake side have a slight edge.

Personally we never go to Estes Park any more and I have lived in the Denver area for 55 years and my wife is a native of Golden. But we enjoy RVing on the Western Slope and go into RMNP through the West Entrance every few years.

We stay at the USFS Stillwater campground, with electric, water, and a dump and great lake views. The scenery around Granby, Shadow Mountain, and Grand lakes is gorgeous and the hiking at Monarch Lake can be as short or long as you wish. One trail will even take you overt the Continental Divide to the 4th of July campground. You can rent power boats, canoes, and kayaks in the town of Grand Lake to water ski, fish for trout and kokanee, or just enjoy the mountain views and air. And dinner on the deck at the Grand Lake Lodge can give you a whole new appreciation for sunsets!

I climbed Long's Peak once. Great if you like wind swept rock piles and thunderstorms.

Even right from Trail Ridge Road, there are some great (and empty) hikes -- this was taken up on Tombstone Ridge, at around 12,000 feet (I think), with Long Peak (I think) in the background:


Click For Full-Size Image.

Tombstone is a pretty level area, with great views, and lots of off-trail possibilities.

profdant139 wrote:
ThunderMtn makes a good point -- if you can hike, you really can get away from the crowds, even on the east side. That is especially true of the very high altitude hikes -- as soon as you are a quarter mile away from the trailhead, you are alone.

DW wanted to go to the east side -- I fought against it and lost -- and I am glad I lost. We love boondocking and solitude, but there are those times when you just have to give in to the crowds.

Hiking is one of the reasons that I go up to Rocky multiple times each season...on the EAST side. Last year we did the Bierstadt Trail starting at the park and ride lot off the Bear Lake Road and saw very few people going up (it's a fairly strenuous hike with a goodly elevation change); most were coming down, having started at the much easier Bear Lake parking lot.

Have also hiked beyond Alberta Falls, a popular destination. Once you go beyond there, you won't run into a lot of people. Hike leads to Lake Haiyaha, and then on to Emerald Lake, Dream Lake, and Nymph Lake. About 7 miles around, you'll run into people going up as you're coming down from Emerald Lake. But rarely are there crowds.

There are many other trails to explore in Rocky. Whenever I'm asked why I go up there so much, that's the answer I give -- lots to see and do beyond Trail Ridge Road, on the east side of Rocky.

ThunderMtn makes a good point -- if you can hike, you really can get away from the crowds, even on the east side. That is especially true of the very high altitude hikes -- as soon as you are a quarter mile away from the trailhead, you are alone.

DW wanted to go to the east side -- I fought against it and lost -- and I am glad I lost. We love boondocking and solitude, but there are those times when you just have to give in to the crowds.

Thunder Mountain wrote:

I'm not saying that RMNP is not one of the crown jewels of the NP system. It is just hard to sit your horizon high enough to find peace and solitude.

Our son is in the CO Army National Guard and was assigned to Estes Park during the 2013 floods. They were put up in the Stanley Hotel and he said the the locals would bring them food and coffee while they were out on duty. He really enjoyed meeting the people who lived there and it still has a warm spot in his heart. It was also his first natural disaster so it's even more memorable.

Dog Trainer,
Pick them up in Denver or Boulder and head west. There are hundreds of great USFS campgrounds. Some of the ski areas have good facilities in summer. I really like the area around Mt Zirkel, Flat Tops, and especiallly the Weminuche. Some nice country around Aspen. You cannot go wrong in Colorado except for RMNP.

If you hate crowds, do yourself a favor and skip Estes Park and RMNP. The wife's family started summering there in 1917. The wife grew up there in the summers. She introduced me to EP in 1969. We moved there in 1980 as a young married couple. We spent 31 years exploring darn near every inch of RMNP. We knew the backcountry so well we didn't carry a map or GPS. Until the mid 1990s or so, it was easy to get away from the crowds. The town really didn't wake up until July 4 and died on Labor Day. Fall except for the weekends was a magical time of colors and beautiful weather.

We lived there for 31 years. The Park's infrastructure is so overwhelmed that they shut down Bear Lake Road to private traffic on almost a daily basis. Even the shuttle system get overwhelmed and runs out of space. People park where they please, leave TP and trash everywhere. Solitude has been replaced with honking horns and road rage. Unless you can hike a minimum of 5-10 miles each way, you will not find any solitude.

The town is total gridlock and chaos. We left in 2010 after retiring because of the overcrowding and cost of living. We do go back every summer to see friends. Thank goodness we have a cabin on the outskirts of town rather than having to stay at any of the campgrounds.

Do yourself a favor and take a look at Buena Vista, Leadville, Lake City, etc. There are some to boondock with a Jeep or 4WD where you will find beauty and solitude. We know places to camp and hike where we will see less than a handful of people or none at all.

I'm not saying that RMNP is not one of the crown jewels of the NP system. It is just hard to sit your horizon high enough to find peace and solitude.