Dillon Ranger District – Live Laugh RV

After our week-long stay at Ridgway State Park, we begrudgingly packed up and moved onto our next destination. We were working our way toward Denver to attend a wedding. If it weren’t for the wedding, I’m not sure hubby would have gotten me to cross the continental divide. I have become quite smitten with Colorado’s western slope.

And we say Hello to our new home in the White River National Forest near Dillon, Colorado

Since we weren’t in a big hurry to get to Denver, we decided to stop near Dillon, Colorado for a few days. Lake Dillon and much of the land surrounding the lake (reservoir) are part of the White River National Forest. Although we’ve been to Dillon many a time in the past, it was usually to take the kids snow skiing in the winter. Thus, we were unfamiliar with the campgrounds in the area.

Dillon Reservoir Lake — Lake Dillon aka Dillon Reservoir

I just love the blogosphere. Thanks to all the fellow bloggers out there sharing their adventures, we’ve discovered some pretty sweet spots to explore. It was in part due to Amanda‘s post on the Peak One Campground that brought us to the area in search of our own favorite spot to call home.

During our explorations, we discovered the Frisco / Keystone area around Lake Dillon offers 5 different campgrounds; Peak One CG, Heaton Bay CG (most popular), Prospectors CG, Pine Cove CG (basically a paved parking lot), and Lowry CG. Lowry CG is the least popular, most remote, furthest from the lake, but offers electric hook-ups. Heaton Bay offers one loop with electric but since it’s located close to Interstate 70, we felt the traffic noise was unacceptable. All the rest of the campgrounds are strictly dry camping.

Breckenridge Dillon Colorado — Awesome bike trail from Dillon to Breckenridge

We found a nice large pull-thru site at Lowry Campground and were quickly reminded of the night-time temps that drop at 9,600 feet in elevation……burrrr. I was grateful for the furnace in the RV and the electric hook-up as those overnight temps dropped down into the 30’s (Fahrenheit) and it’s June…..June in the Rockies.

Lowry Campground Keystone — Lowry Campground, Keystone, Colorado

Al and I did drive around all five of the campgrounds and made notes on our favorite sites for a return visit. As is quite common with National Forest Campgrounds, most of these campgrounds were developed many, many years ago……long before today’s modern RV’s were even a glimmer in granddad’s eyes. Thus, the majority of sites are designed for tents, pop-up trailers, and smallish travel trailers.

Since we didn’t have a reservation (yes, they do take reservations over at recreation.gov), we did have a little difficulty finding an available site that would accommodate our 31 foot 5th wheel WITH room to park the trucks. Next time we’ll make a reservation. Most of the sites were too short for us, but since it was early in the season we did manage to score a nice pull-thru site. Once the weekend rolled around, our campground was full.