WR is situated beside the Colorado River (here, just a stream). The area is heavily forested with lodgepole pines. There were moose in the meadow this morning and hummingbirds were not shy about making themselves at home on our feeder. This weekend was our 3rd time to stay at Winding River. There are horses to ride and a chuckwagon breakfast ($5/person; AYCE pancakes, sausage [$.50 extra after the first 2 links], coffee, orange juice, and mostly good company). Some sites have their own pens for horses. There are some good tent sites, and they now have a field for RV's - parking-lot style. They also have some cabins. There are two sets of restrooms, 1 on either end, and 2 laundry rooms (although 1 was not working). This made for a long walk for those folks on the middle. There was also much horse-droppings everywhere, along with the associated aroma if the wind blew just right (and it did). The camp store had a little bit of food and a few camp supplies (you had to really look for it). Now it is mostly touristy stuff...t-shirts, sweats, jackets, books, cards, trinkets etc. The road to the site was dirt (that's ok) but very bumpy. Looks like it had not been graded this year. When we arrived and took our site, we found it barren and treeless with large ruts made by a lumber truck. The trees had been cut down winter of 2005/06. The fire ring was about 50 feet in back of the site. The 'site' was somewhat level (only had to use 2 linx blocks) but barely wide enough for our PUP with slide-out and awning. This area of Colorado has been heavily infested with the Pine Bark Beetle, which has killed millions of pines. The campground had to cut down and haul out their infested pines. This is not something they could prevent. The management told us of none of this when we made reservations (4 months inadvance),and would not move us to a more pleasant site. We camped here in a Tent Trailer.

This is the second time that we have stayed here. As stated, the roads are not paved. Also, there are not many full-hook up sites and some of the water and electric sites have funky hook up. But so what. You are camping at a very large facility just outside of a Nation Park in a relatively remote part of Colorado. If you want everything fancy, stay in Estes Park. Both times we stayed in the heavily treed area northeast of the entry (Site 43 this time and 41 previously). Beautiful. Moose walked right up to the trailer in the morning. But development is encroaching along the east boaundary and next time we will move to the area of Sites 60-68. Still treed but neighbors are a little closer. The headwaters of the Colorado River run through the property so bring your fishing rod. We camped here in a Fifth Wheel.

Intially it looked pretty good. It may be fine for families in smaller sites and horse folks. The new area for motorhomes had great views in all directions, but the dirt roads soon became irritating. Not only campers but staff drive way above the posted speed limit and dirt flies everywhere and coats everything. In addition, site maintenance is non-existent - high weeds, etc. The owners seem to be focused on horses and let the RV portion just exist. Too bad, I thought it was going to be a great place but came to hate it by end of four day stay. Others may love it. We camped here in a Motorhome.

This campground has the potential to be a really nice facility. The pot holes and dirt road are the biggest drawbacks. The sites were just open spaces in the trees with water and electric hookups. We had a beat up picnic table and a fire ring. Some of the sites are hard to locate and there is no site maintenance. Just dirt and exposed tree roots. All of this said we are going to stay there again. The site we had was quite isolated and it was like a National Forest campground in that way. Not much noise and could only see two other camp sites. We don't have an need for the other facilitys except the dump station which is at the end of a very dusty, pot hole filled dirt road. We camped here in a Travel Trailer.