Best Campgrounds near Mesa Lakes, CO

It was a nice place to spend some quite time until 4 semi trucks loaded with over 10k sheep showed up haha! They said the let the sheep on their own for the entire summer time, so glad I was leaving the next day because they did left me a present of their particular smell 🤭 I did fund some trash and glass in the are. I tried to clean the most I could. It is about 30 min from town and the morrow bumpy road didn’t make to easy for me and my 21’TT but 2WD will do ok. I didn’t want to go all the way down to the creek so I stayed on the info round around.

Beautiful but small FCFS campground. Do your research on which Black Canyon Park campground you’d prefer before starting your drive, as the east and north campgrounds are at least an hour and 45 minutes apart.

The North Rim campground was pretty and quiet. I arrived right at 1 to make sure I could get a spot the Friday of Father’s Day weekend. By 5:30, all the spots were full and were full earlier the following night, so be sure to arrive early. Cool drinking water access was a nice surprise, and there are bear boxes for each site as well as two clean vault toilets and a dumpster. There is (limited) WiFi at the ranger station but zero service anywhere in the park or campground, so plan ahead.

The campground is down a long dirt road, it was well maintained but be prepared to be in a remote location.

The South Rim Campground at the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park is a fantastic place! I should know, my wife and I are the current volunteer campground hosts. Stop by and say hi while we're up here all summer. You won't believe the variety of songbirds we have up here this year!

I'd like to correct a couple of misconceptions that might be coming from faulty info here or in other listings outside the recreation.gov system. All reservations for all 75 available sites must be made through recreation.gov in advance (6 month rolling). We've had multiple reports from guests saying that they saw something about C-loop being first-come, first-serve. That's just not the case. Things only shift to fcfs for the winter months - October-April (ish).

There is drinking water available with bottle fill stations at each of the three loops. This is a difficult place to get water to, and so this is low pressure bottle fill only; not something you can fill freshwater tanks from.

Toilet facilities are pit toilets. There are no showers or camper kitchen facilities. Campers are encouraged to use a gray water collection systems and dispose of waste down the hill in Montrose or wherever you are headed next. Small amounts of dishwashing gray water can go into the pit toilets in a pinch.

Fire pits are provided and well utilized. Bring your own wood, preferably from a local source. There's a great spot just down the road at the crossroads as you head up the mountain. They even have an honor system to pay if you happen by after hours (please be honorable). In a pinch, ask the camp host - we collect a fair bit of random leavings and would prefer you ask than go scrounge around and burn up our habitat.

Electric sites (22 of them for $34/night) have brand new 20/30/50 amp service. Everything is working great! All other sites are $20. All sites are really pretty cool and workable for most folks. Pay attention to the driveway length figures in rec.gov as they are pretty accurate.

If you are not going to make it or need to leave early, please go ahead and cancel your reservation. We are almost completely booked for the entire summer and have to turn a lot of people away. It is a really raw move to squat on a site digitally and not show up physically. I know the rec.gov situation sucks with all the damn fees the big contractor gets to keep. So, if you don't want to hassle then please call the park or let us know as camp hosts. When we get those cases we can get someone else into a site. They'll pay the going rate, and everyone will come out happy enough.

All that may have sounded negative and preachy. Sorry about that. But with the business out of the way, I'd encourage anyone to come up and visit this gorgeous place. Right now as spring is moving to summer, I'm routinely seeing and hearing 10-12 songbord species at exactly the same time as I sit in the morning sunrise, sipping my coffee, and petting my dog. The Black Canyon is a supreme work of Creator's art you don't want to miss.