The first night is Junction Creek, five and a half miles northwest of town in the ponderosa, and the summer sites there go early on Recreation.gov, so book the site first and the van second. Morefield inside Mesa Verde works instead if you're driving straight out US-160 in the morning. The reason to be out that way is Cliff Palace, the largest cliff dwelling in North America, four ladders down into a sandstone alcove of round kivas and tan-walled rooms. It and Balcony House can only be entered on a ranger-led tour, and the summer tickets sell fast.
The park road climbs 21 miles of switchbacks from the entrance to the mesa top, so give it a full morning. When the tours are booked out, the six-mile Mesa Top Loop drive reaches a dozen ancestral sites and a Cliff Palace overlook on short paved walks, no ticket needed.
Junction Creek and the Colorado Trail
The way in is 25th Street, which turns to gravel and becomes Junction Creek Road. Forty-four sites sit in ponderosa and gambel oak above the creek at 7,300 feet, most of them reservable and the rest first-come. The southern end of the Colorado Trail leaves right from camp and follows the creek to Gudy's Rest at mile 3.8, a good turnaround if you only want a morning on it.
If the July and August sites are gone, Haviland Lake has another 43 sites 19 miles north on US-550, across the dam. Fires are held to the campground's metal rings under the Stage I restrictions in place as of August 2026, and this is active bear country, so food and trash go in the van overnight.
From camp, the town ride everyone does is the Durango and Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad, a coal-fired steam train up the Animas River canyon to Silverton and back in a day. You catch it downtown and return to the same campsite.
The Million Dollar Highway
North of Durango, US-550 climbs over Coal Bank, Molas, and Red Mountain passes on the stretch everyone calls the Million Dollar Highway, the high leg of the 233-mile San Juan Skyway. Past Silverton the road narrows to a shelf above the Uncompahgre Gorge, no guardrail, the rust-red ruins of the old Red Mountain mines across the valley. Stop at Molas Pass, where an alpine meadow and small lakes open under the peaks and the Colorado Trail crosses the road at 10,600 feet.
For a night up high, South Mineral is the last developed campground on this stretch, two miles west of Silverton then four miles up a forest road, first-come only with a 35-foot limit. The Ice Lake Trail climbs from the campground to a bowl of alpine lakes. The passes stay paved all year but close for storms and avalanche control, so treat this as a summer drive.
Black Canyon of the Gunnison sits closer to Montrose, so if the sheer inner-gorge overlooks are what you're after, base there and read the Montrose lander. Colorado National Monument and its red-rock canyons are a Grand Junction trip, and the Grand Junction lander is the better base for that corner.
