We stayed at Chief Hosa for 2 nights in early August. There was a fire restriction in place and the campground hosts had spotted a black bear in the area a few days earlier. The campground is small, but very well maintained and the sites are large. They use a keycode system to restrict access to the centrally-located bathhouse (there is only one in the campground), which I thought was clever. We were lucky that our site was relatively close to the bathhouse, but some of the tent sites on the perimeter of the campground would have a decent trek to use the restroom in the middle of the night. The bathrooms were VERY clean and seemed to be pretty new - plenty of bathroom stalls, sinks, and large showers. They were quarter showers for 2 minutes of hot water, so basically less than $1 per shower, which is great.

The campground is close to the highway and even with the fans on at night in the pop-up we could still hear some of the highway noise, but it wasn’t a big deal. I’m sure it would be a bigger deal to tent campers. About a mile up the highway there is an exit with a Wal-mart, a Soopers (local grocery chain), a McDonald’s, etc. With the fire ban in effect, we couldn’t use the Biolite to make coffee in the morning, so it was nice to be able to drive to McDonald’s in 3 minutes in the morning to grab some coffee.

From Chief Hosa, you’re about 45 minutes from downtown Boulder, 25 minutes to Denver, and 35 minutes to Water World, which is the reason we stayed in the area for the night. There are closer Denver Parks and campgrounds, but in the summer their sites are reserved well in advance. Water World was a ton of fun for the whole family and we went into Boulder that night for dinner. We ate at Mountain Sun Pub & Brewery, which was delicious and extremely reasonable for the beers, the amount of food that we ate (their burgers are awesome), and the fact that it’s Boulder, which I heard was relatively expensive.