Estes Park Campground at East Portal

Let me start by saying that we LOVED this campground...with this caveat. If you need electricity and water, it's the best thing around for tent/popup/small RV camping. If you're more comfortable dry camping, they I'd stay in the National Park in a heartbeat.

That being said, we camped here for a couple of reasons. When we camped here last summer, we were brand new to the camping scene. We had used our popup twice before this trip and were still learning the ropes. We weren't ready or prepared to bite off dry camping quite yet. When I camp I really like to be in the woods. I don't like RV parking lots that are so common in the private campground world where you're all lined up in a row feet from the next huge RV. Camping to me is being where the sticks, dirt and views are. Not saying that there's anything wrong with private campgrounds in general...and we will inevitably stay at some periodically. But my heart is in the woods. Other than the National Park campgrounds, Estes Park Campground at East Portal is the only place you can find in Estes park with power/water that's wooded.

Planning for our trip last year we could barely find any info at all on this campground. I pretty much had to guess on which site to reserve. Let me jump to the point and say that sites 34 and 38 work well for a camper, 64 being the best (it has AMAZING views and is huge, just a long way from the restroom). Sites 39 and 40 are adequate. If you’re in a tent, A3 is amazing! It’s secluded with a view overlooking the reservoir and the mountains. Otherwise, tent campers should stay on the top perimeter, sites 20, 22, 23, 25, 27, 29, 42-44, 46, 48, 49, 51-54. It’s nice to back up to the woods and gives you a little bit of space. Getting level in the campground can be quite a challenge depending on which site you're on.

So, how are the restrooms??? They actually weren’t bad at all. The restroom near site 38 is older than the other one. It’s cleaned each morning, but got it buggy and grubby towards the evening. The other bathroom is REALLY nice. The last few mornings we picked the newer one because, well, it’s newer. It also has 2 shower stalls that are connected by one open changing area which worked well for me and my boys to all grab a quick shower (might not have been as much fun with a stranger). The showers in the older bathroom are individual stalls. They’re sufficient but nothing special and kind of tight. All together there are 5 shower stalls for male and female. One really nice touch is that each bathroom has dish cleaning sink. We’d never stayed at a campground where they had a wash station and we found that it was REALLY nice to have. And the kids actually loved doing the dishes themselves…now how to reproduce that at home?

There are no laundry facilities on site. We have 3 kids and of course, after a few days, we needed to do a laundry run. We found a great laundromat called Village Laundry that was fantastic. While our clothes were washing we found a really cool little coffee shop called Kind Coffee right on the edge of town along the river. We had a great time letting the kids play around the river while we enjoyed soaking up the sights and sounds (and the free Wifi!). It’s a great diversion.

One thing that was really fun about this campground was the level of intimacy with your neighbors. It didn’t feel crowded, but at the same time we were close enough to our neighbors to have easy conversations with them. We had lots of great talks, had wonderful neighbors and even made new friends with some folks that we were near. Now, if you had bad neighbors, it could be a different story, but overall we were overwhelmed by everyone’s friendliness while we were there. The campground is small enough that we felt comfortable letting our kids roam around. The playground was really nice and a short walk from most of the sites.

Tips

-Stop in at Brownfield’s Souvenir Shop for a little shopping. It was by far the cheapest souvenir shop in town and had some great apparel options for about half the price of the other stores.

–Donut Haus– This little donut shop ranks as the number one restaurant in Estes Park, and for a good reason. You better get there early as the line is out the door till they sell out. They were very reasonably priced too. I think I spent about $15 for a dozen donuts of various sizes and a large chocolate milk.

-Do the hike into the National Park from the camground. It's a 1 mile hike to Glacier Basin Campground in the park and the hike is beautiful.