The Best in Tent Camping: Colorado A Guide for Car Campers Who Hate RVs, Concrete Slabs, and Loud Portable Stereos

by Lipker, Kim; Molloy, Johnny

• ISBN13: 9780897326452
• ISBN10: 0897326458
• Edition: 4th
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-06-18
• Publisher: Menasha Ridge Press

Summary

The only guide to Colorado's best tent camping just got better! Completely updated, re-organised for ease of use, and containing five new campgrounds, The Best in Tent Camping: Colorado continues to lead tent campers to the best of Colorado's best. The newly designed campground layout maps, UTM and Latitude/Longitude coordinates for each campground entrance, descriptive text, and ratings for security, quiet, and beauty makes the new edition of The Best in Tent Camping: Colorado a must-have for every tent camper's library.

Author Biography

Johnny Molloy is an outdoor writer who averages over 100 nights in the wild per year backpacking and canoe camping throughout the U.S. He has written numerous books and articles for magazines and websites.

Colorado native Kim Lipker is a guidebook author and has a regular parenting column in Rocky Mountain Parent Magazine.

Table of Contents

(1) Introduction (2) Browns Park (3) Byers Creek (4) Cold Springs (5) The Crags (6) Dinosaur National Monument (7) Golden Gate Canyon State Park (8) Irish Canyon (9) Jacks Gulch (10) Longs Peak (11)Rainbow Lakes (12) Rifle Falls State Park (13) Shepherds Rim (14) Steamboat Lake State Park (15) Timber Creek (16) Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Monument (17) Buffalo (18) Colorado National Monument (19) Cottonwood Lake (20) Curecanti (21) Dominguez Canyon (22) Elbert Creek (23) Fulford Cave (24) Geneva Park (25) Gold Park (26) Kite Lake (27) Lost Lake (28) Lost Park (29) Mirror Lake (30) Mueller State Park (31) Ruby Mountain (32) Supply Basin (33) Weir & Johnson (34) Weston Pass (35) Alvarado (36) Bear Lake (37) Burro Bridge (38) Cathedral (39) Great Sand Dunes (40) Lost Trail (41) Mesa Verde (42) Mix Lake (43) North Crestone (44) Ridgway State Park (45) Rio Blanco (46) Silver Jack (47) Stone Cellar (48) Transfer Park (49) Trujillo Meadows (50) The Prairie (51) Bonny Lake (52) Jackson Lake

Excerpts

Snowy, granite domes of the Sangre De Cristo Mountains plunge down to a forest of spruce and fir. This in turn gives way to an open meadow and Bear Lake, where you can enjoy tent camping, in the most southeasterly slice of national forest land in Colorado. Fishing comes naturally with all the water around, both still and moving. You can move along many trails in the vicinity and make a side trip to the Spanish Peaks, a National Natural Landmark. The campground is well placed next to the dense forest and mountain meadow above Bear Lake. Along the campground's gravel loop, several wooded campsites are situated to your right with obscured views of Bear Lake. More open sites with occasional stray aspen are in the center of the loop as the road swings around into the grassy meadow. What these campsites lack in privacy they make up in views of Steep Mountain above, the nearby meadow, and a cathedral of peaks beyond. A few campsites on the outside of the loop face into the clearing, which has a stream flowing through it. The Indian Creek trailhead starts just beyond campsite #9. The loop road begins to climb into the forest again. Another creek rushes from the high country through the campground to Bear Lake. The next few campsites are in the spruce to your right, offering the most in campsite privacy. This is one of the highest campgrounds around, so bring that extra blanket and expect to find temperatures around, or possibly below, freezing through out the summer. Be prepared for windy, cool conditions any time at Bear Lake. Stake your tent down extra taut as well, because the gusts of wind from the peaks above can blow mighty strong. Cover yourself from the penetrating rays of the sun. Experience taught me these lessons the hard way. On my visit I failed to bring enough clothes for the chill, my face got sunburned, my tent was blown over, and I froze my tail off that night. And I still like this place.