Lock in the night at Moraine Park before anything else. The campground sits in ponderosa above the meadow in Rocky Mountain National Park, northwest of Denver, and the elk drift down at dawn and dusk. Summer sites go fast on Recreation.gov, so you book the site first and the van second, before you leave town rather than when you roll up to the gate. Timed entry is a separate permit from late May through mid-October, except on the nights you hold the site, when the camping reservation covers your entry.
With the night settled, Trail Ridge Road takes the day on either side of it, and it is worth driving early before the pullouts fill. Get out of Denver too late for that and Golden Gate Canyon holds the first night an hour out in the foothills.
Trail Ridge Road and the Bear Lake hikes
Trail Ridge Road is the reason to bring the van up here. It runs 48 miles between Estes Park and Grand Lake, and for eleven of those miles you are above the trees on open tundra, cresting at 12,183 feet. Pull over at Rock Cut for the short Tundra World walk, where marmots and pikas work the rocks and bighorn turn up on the slopes below. Up top it is 20 to 30 degrees colder than town, windy, with hard high-altitude sun, so pack layers even in July and give the whole drive at least half a day.
Skip Old Fall River Road in a rental. It is a 9.4-mile unpaved one-way that bans anything over 25 feet, and Trail Ridge is the paved high road that does the same job better. Park campgrounds cap rig length as well, so if you want more room than a van without outgrowing the site, the Colorado RV listings size up.
Bear Lake Road is the park's other half. Bear Lake sits under the cirque at the end of it, and the trails from the lot ladder up through Nymph, Dream, and Emerald, a run of alpine lakes you can knock out in an afternoon or stretch across the whole day.
Come in September or October and those meadows are the elk rut. The park closes Moraine Park and the other big meadows to off-trail walking from evening to mid-morning, so you watch from the road and the pullouts, which is where the bugling carries anyway.
Golden Gate Canyon for the first night
Golden Gate Canyon is the mountains without the mileage: pine hills and aspen-rimmed meadows within an hour of the metro, with 35 miles of trail and a lookout at Panorama Point that takes in more than 100 miles of the Continental Divide. Reverend's Ridge holds the electric and tent sites, and it works two ways, a first night before you push up to the park or a whole Front Range weekend that never leaves the foothills.
Reserve the site on cpwshop.com or 1-800-244-5613 up to six months ahead, and budget for a daily vehicle pass that is charged separately from the campsite. In winter Reverend's Ridge runs on limited services with the showers and dump closed, so it earns its keep in summer and the shoulder seasons more than in January.
Red Rocks between park days
Between park days, Red Rocks Park is worth an afternoon. Red sandstone fins tilt up on either side of the open amphitheatre bowl that faces the hogback west of Denver, and you can walk the rows when there is no show. It is day-use only, open an hour before sunrise to an hour after sunset, and overnight camping in the lots is prohibited, so treat it as a stop, not a night. On concert days the amphitheatre closes to walk-ins around midday, so go in the morning.
Flatirons, Mount Blue Sky, and Garden of the Gods
The Flatirons and Eldorado Canyon are Boulder's country, and that trip lives on the Boulder campervan lander. Mount Blue Sky and Echo Lake belong to Evergreen and its campervan lander. Garden of the Gods and Pikes Peak are the Colorado Springs run down I-25, on the Colorado Springs campervan lander.
