Best Equestrian Camping near Nucla, CO

It was an hour and fifteen minute drive up. The road was very windy and gravel/dirt. It wasn't too bad until the turn off to the campground. That road was almost all dirt. Wash out in some places. Single width for most of it. We trucked along though. We got to the campground and we could see one site from the trailhead, which is also where the restrooms were. It was occupied but looked nice. Plenty of space to park and a lot of space to set up a big camp. However, the other sites were down a much narrower road, that had water crossing it. We opted to not venture down that road. It is a free campground. About 25 miles from the 141 turnoff. You have to really want to be in the middle of nowhere. It is so secluded that not a soul will find you if they didn't know you went. Side note, we did read that the road gets dangerous when wet, we totally can see that as the case, which is one reason we left. Although it didn't really look like rain when we started, it definitely was going to rain once we got there. I imagine with functioning four wheel drive (ours is broken) it might not be so bad, or a jeep, that would probably work great. Being a single width road, it does get kind of scary on the huge cliffs to have to pass a vehicle, we were fortunate enough to be on the inside and pulled off as much as we could, but the other drive stopped next to us and said his wife was freaking out since she was on the cliff side. It was, however, the only car we saw on that road for our two hour drive.

Mud springs is a small campground tucked away on top of a national monument. To enter the monument, there is a fee, but if you are going to mud springs you can tell them that and not pay the park entrance fee. It's up on glade park but kind of off the beat and path. The road was wet from recent rain and a small stream flowed down the washboard surface. The park itself is small but nice. Quiet. A bit muddy when it rains. We saw deer in the morning. We had a nice tent pad and firerings. Room for hammocks. It's a good place with pit toilets. But it's quiet. We did have a couple things walk through our site, we weren't sure what they were but it put our dog on high alert. One had a bell so that was strange. The other we aren't sure of but our dog watched as whatever it was walked past the tent. There weren't many people there so it probably wasn't another camper but some sort of critter. There is also a fresh spring that you can collect water from I think. We looked at it but didn't opt to collect any water. Lots of trees though which is nice. It seems to rain in July there, although they go through severe droughts and then all of a sudden, rain for two days. But both times we've gone in July, it has rained.