Dakota Terraces Campground

Our 38’ travel trailer & truck make 53’ and we had no trouble fitting into the pull through site. Half the Dakota loop sites are pull through of various size. T-Mobile is okay for calls but not the Web, and drops out entirely much of the time. Wide open sites, community water avail. so fill your fresh water tank before pulling into a space or carry a lot of hose! Ouray is a delightful mountain town with so much to see and do. Check out the ghost towns and community hot spring facility.

The drive from Durango is stunning but it’s a white-knuckle trip if you don’t have long experience pulling a sizable rig! Many, many hairpin curves on steep grades. Well worth it but I was ready for a cocktail upon arrival, and I’ve decades of experience.

This IS a nice camp ground, spaces are far apart, lots of open area, bathrooms good. Showers good. My biggest negative is the road noise! If your setup doesn’t shield you from outside noise, be sure to bring ear plugs. The first night I barely slept due to the noise. This isn’t a “hum” noise. It’s full on power pulls and engine braking noise.
Also, be prepared for very little shade. It’s July and HOT here (unfortunately) but does cool off once the sun is down.
I also wish they would mow the grass around campsites. It’s nearly 2 feet tall.
One last NEGATIVE: Be aware that when you make reservation, that you are NOT paying the daily fee. So when you check in, they are going to charge you $10/day of your reservation. I was not expecting this and it kind of “stung”.

If you are looking for a quiet and serene camping experience in the winter, this is your campground. Ridgeway State Park has one loop open during the winter in Dakota Terraces. They have winter rates. And they have great cell signal if you have Verizon and supposedly AT&T. (There’s a cell tower in one of the park’s campgrounds.)

[Internet. Verizon via iPhone 12: 14 mbps down and 4 mbps up with 51 ms ping.]

Read all the campground details straight from the park’s website before winter camping. Keep in mind the guest services building is closed for the winter. That means no laundry or showers. The restroom building is open. The dump station is open but the water fill is shut off. You can, however, fill you tanks up using the water spigots throughout the campground. We use a 5-gallon jerry can to transport the water. We’ve been here through a winter storm and they haven’t frozen yet. They also plow the roads.

The visitor center is open which you should check out! There’s an overlook there. This time of year part of the reservoir is frozen. You can get loaner snow shoes at the visitor center! How awesome! Since it’s snowed almost a foot, we’ve been snowshoeing all over the park and through the trails and closed campgrounds.

There’s like 5 campsites occupied. It’s so quiet. We have our own little winter wonderland.

You can drive the Million Dollar Highway, stop in Ouray, Silverton, and go all the way to Durango and see some of the most gorgeous scenery in Colorado. You can also drive the Last Dollar Road for a more adventurous route to Telluride. It's all very convenient from Ridgway State Park.

We stayed in fall and the colors were amazing. The water level however, like all of western Colorado, was shockingly low. We stayed in site 65 in Dakota Terrace. We arrived at 10:15 pm after driving six hours from Denver. We were exhausted but found it fairly easy to level (two leveling Lego blocks). Some trailers struggled to bring their tongue down low enough it seemed so be careful. There was an electric pedestal with 30 amp service and a water spigot that I could easily reach with a 50' hose. The dump station was right on our way out and very easy to access from either direction.

The biggest drawback was road noise. In site 65 you're at the north end and the 550 highway runs very close. I felt like loop A may have been a little more removed from the noise and has a great view but is further from the water. Cell service is spotty. Verizon (Visible) gave us enough to do basic things but I wouldn't work here with it and T-Mobile has no LTE coverage here even with a directional antenna pointed towards Montrose.

Amazing views and the park has so much to offer, unfortunately we didn’t utilize it all since there is much to do and see in the area. We knew we didn’t have full hook ups, but the water hook up between every few sites was new to us. It worked out fine in the end though.
Loved the playground, and laundry facilities nearby, the bathhouse was clean. Sites were level and spacious, would have loved more shade though. The park staff were all very friendly and knowledgeable. To do any of the water sports it was through an outside vendor at the marina, so hours were a little different. Great location to Ouray and Montrose both!

We had a great time here. It’s such a beautiful park with so much to do. It’s a great central location for exploring the surrounding areas, too. Only 15 min from Ouray and about 30-40 min to Black Canyon of the Gunnison NP. They have a swim beach, but we preferred going down to the Dallas Creek entrance where you could pull your truck right up to the water. There were paddle boards and kayaks to rent onsite and at that entrance you could have your dog with you (they weren’t allowed on the swim beach of course.)

Our site was spacious, but one issue was the engineering feat required to level. Also, several of the sites are pull throughs and you have to go around the loop backwards otherwise your door opens on the road side instead of on the side where the majority of your site/picnic table/etc is.

Cell service was extremely iffy. If we had not had a booster, we would have had little to no service. With the booster, we managed to get mostly usable cell/data service but had a problem or two even with that.