RESERVE YOUR SPOT

If you are RVing to any National Park and want to camp inside the park borders, make sure you plan ahead. Reservations for most campgrounds open six months in advance, and at certain times of year they fill up fast. We chose to stay outside park limits, which opened up some options for us. The right campground for you depends on what you want: Are you looking for convenience, full hookups (electric, water and sewer), and perks like swimming pools and onsite restaurants? Or are you hoping to get away from it all to the wilderness where you might dry camp or boondock without the amenities?

We did a bit of both. On the road on the way to and from Colorado, we opted for full-hookup KOA sites because they are absolutely everywhere and easy to reserve. We could roll in, spend a night and roll out.

For a longer four-night stay in Colorado Springs, we got a spot at the full-service Mountaindale Cabins & RV Resort. It was just outside of town, far enough that it actually felt like camping (in fact, we encountered some black bear cubs while we were there and woke up one morning to see a little family of elk munching on some grass right outside our windows) but close enough that we could easily get to some fun sites.

During the second part of our trip, when we explored Rocky Mountain National Park, we stayed four nights at Hermit’s Hollow Campground 10 minutes from Estes Park. Hermit’s Hollow had zero hookups and was very remote and rustic, tucked up on the mountainside. The site we chose was enormous, with tons of room for the kids to run around, a rocky area where they could climb and our own personal sprawling vista that looked out over the mountaintops.

After that we stayed at Jellystone Park. It had the most amenities of all (full hookups, laundry, showers, swimming pool and more). But after the idyllic beauty of our spot at Hermit’s Hollow, Jellystone Park just didn’t feel very fun.

Trip Tip: Go Solar

Our travel trailer had solar panels, which made it possible for us to stay at off-the-grid places like Hermit’s Hollow while still maintaining some comfortable RV perks like air conditioning, running water (using our tanks), and fully functioning appliances.

biting cold. We tried to walk the Tundra Communities Trail to the very top, but we couldn’t handle the wind even though we were bundled. We took in what we could before driving to the Alpine Visitors Center to warm up with cocoa, hot tea and muffins. The cold might sound a little intense, but we truly couldn’t get over how interesting the tundra was, and to this day it’s the part of our trip that Eli, Oliver and I talk about the most. (Eloise, on the other hand, only has eyes for Garden of the Gods.)

The next day, we almost skipped the Alluvial Fan. At only about a ¼-mile, the paved path didn’t feel exciting enough to spend our time on. We knew it ended at a cascading waterfall that flows though a boulder field formed by a 1982 landslide—but we were feeling kind of meh about it. We were in the area, though, so we visited. It wound up being one of our top favorite spots in the park. The path was easy to navigate, meaning we didn’t expend all our energy on the walk. So the kids had plenty of oomph left in them to climb around on and slide down the sides of boulders of all shapes and sizes. We spent the whole morning there, taking in the mountains rising up around us on all sides and enjoying the sound of the water rushing beside us.

Just Take The Trip

This all sounds so magical, right? Like everything went perfectly?

Well, no. We had some hiccups. We weren’t able to ride the gondolas across Royal Gorge because of extreme wind. I got a bit of altitude sickness. The solar pooped out on the RV when we were boondocking at Hermit’s Hollow Campground, and we spent one very cold electricity-free night surrounded by condensation-soaked windows. But it was one night. The next day, we were due to switch to a campground with full hookups anyway. We made the most of it all, and everything worked out. I only remember one day when the close quarters in the RV got the best of us (and by “us” I mean “me” because I was 100% the grumpy one), and the kids had surprisingly few bickering battles.

I think it all worked out so well because we just decided to go with it. We knew before we left that we had no idea what we were doing, that we’d be crammed into a small space in that RV, and that we’d be learning as we went. We told ourselves we’d need to roll with the punches, and for some inexplicable reason, just saying it seemed to make it happen. We rolled with the punches, and we had so much fun. More fun, truly, that we’d ever had on vacation before.

This trip required us to be easy going. It required us to unplug from work and the hustle of life. It required us to be physically close all day, every single day. And we embraced the heck out of it. The result was two weeks packed with new sites, new memories and a new appreciation for unplugging. I’ll never forgot when Oliver told me, “Mom, if we can be happy in that little RV, maybe we don’t need our big house.” (We do, though. We do need our house and won’t be adopting an RV-allthe-time lifestyle change anytime soon.) But I really appreciated the sentiment. We left most of what we owned behind us to seek out gorgeous vistas together. Who needs all the stuff that clutters up life when you have that?

Pack It Up

There are a few ways you could do this, and I went with the most intense option: I entered every single storage space in the RV in a spreadsheet and then listed out exactly what to pack in each one to maximize the space we had to work with. Or you could be a little saner and just wing it. Either way, my biggest tip is this: Don’t over-pack. For our two-week trip, we only packed about three outfits for each person and utilized campground laundromats. And aside from a few books and playing cards for lazy evenings and a stuffy or three for our daughter’s bed, everything else we packed was totally utilitarian. Don’t over-pack your food either! You can always restock at the grocery store.

Trip Tip: Create a Car Kit

Fill a little plastic tub with daily necessities for your away-from-camp adventures. With unpredictable weather and drastic temp changes throughout each day, we found it useful to pack coats, hats, gloves, sunscreen, bug spray, snack bars and extra water.