Best Dog-Friendly Camping near Norwood, CO

This area is one of the best places to set up a base camp for exploration and adventure. Busted Arm Draw is free and the designated campsites are dispersed, making each site quiet and private.

Right off 44ZS (Lone Cone Road), there’s easy access National Forest access to gravel and 4x4 roads that connect Norwood to Telluride, Rico, Dunton, Dolores, & Naturita. There is great boating and excellent fishing right down the road at Miramonte Reservoir (Dan Noble State Wildlife Area), as well as the San Miguel River. And the area is in close proximity to the Thunder Trails (mountain and dirt biking). And there are a number of NF trails around the Lone Cone. Lone Cone Road itself is along a designated OHV route from Norwood to the National Forest.

The road thru the camping area is very well maintained gravel. Each area is designated with signage and has a fire ring. To protect the vegetation, travel off of designated areas is not allowed. The sites are pull-in, and many are pull-thru, and all can fit large rvs and trailers.

The entire area sits at about 8,000 ft in ponderosa forest. Many of the sites have excellent views of the Lone Cone mountain. The area is a designated dark sky zone, the night sky and the stars will blow your mind!

In the winter, the area closes and locals turn the road into nordic/x-country ski trails. The large parking area at the entrance becomes a snowmobile staging area also. The parking are remains open and is perfect winter camp spot.

Campground Review

Caddis flats is located not too far from Placerville, and a short distance farther in the opposite direction from Norwood. It's along a scenic road that runs from Norwood out to Ridgeway with a turnoff at Placerville that heads out to Telluride. This is a small little campground that has 3 developed campsites with picnic tables and grills. One has a shelter of sorts as well. Two of the three sites are right out in the open, on their own little island of sorts between the road with in the campground. We didn't stay in one of these three developed sites though. We parked by the boat ramp and there was a small trail that led back to an area that had about 4 tent sleeping areas and two fire rings. Due to fire restrictions, the fire rings did not get used by us. It was very spacious and had great shade, along with the rumbling of the river, it was quite nice. We were able to mount our hammocks in the trees and sit comfortably, even if the site was without a picnic table. Our car was close enough that we didn't have to carry anything too far and we used most of our storage tubs as small tables. We cooked with our small camp stove and our jetboil and ate a lot of freeze dried meals from Mountain House Foods. We ended up sharing several meals so that everyone could have a little bit of everything.

The area was quiet and the stars were amazing. The pit toilets were very clean, well stocked with toilet paper and had little oder. There was a bit of traffic noise from the highway that runs through the area but it died down sometime after midnight. The river is right there in the campground and it is running pretty low right now, but still moving along quite nicely. The kids were able to play around with minimal risk while supervised. There was a note saying that the river had changed paths up a ways and impassable by a boat. You could hear the river babbling all night long.

We kept our food in our truck but a bear was sighted a few miles down the road so if you are camping without a vehicle, it may be a good idea to hang your food.

The kids enjoyed biking and it was a nice campground to relax at. There were some great spots for photography and if you are in to geocaching, there is a pretty cool one in this campground!

Product Review

As a Ranger for The Dyrt, I get products to test from time to time - today I am testing the INH640 Aero Light 2 (4 bike) made by Inno. This rack boasts a 4 bike capacity, has a foot peddle to drop the rack down for easy access to the back of your vehicle. It has mounts that attach on the top of the rack as well as on the frame coming down below the seat post. The box arrived with everything from locking pins, adjustments for the hitch size, tools, straps and keys for the lock that is included with the rack.

While it says it holds 4 bikes, I just don't see how it is possible. We had three adult bikes on the rack and struggled to get them situated. With some adjusting we did get them on and they definitely were secure. Our older boys' bike did not fit, the distance between the top of his frame and the bottom was too narrow. But even if it had fit, I'm not sure we would have gotten it on, just not enough room. The feature of the lower frame secure point ended up being a little troublesome. We have water bottle carriers on our bike and we had to pull the bike on and off to make sure it situated correctly as we couldn't adjust with the bike on the rack already. It is insanely secure though, seems to be gentle on the bike frames. Once you get moving, it's a pretty easy install, it was a bit cumbersome at first.

I really like how the rack folds down when not in use to maintain a lower profile. With the included locking pin, you don't even have to worry that someone is going to walk off with your rack. I really like the little foot peddle that drops the rack so you can get in the back of your vehicle. It's the difference between completely unloading everything and just dropping, grabbing and continuing on. This rack will definitely make biking more accessible and should get us out on our bikes more often!

This campsite is great if you want to do Telluride on a budget - it's free. It's right next to the town and is used a lot for Telluride's summer festivals. Its more than a campground it is also where a lot of town events are held and also has sports venues. There's also grills, bathrooms, picnic tables, a dog park, and a pond. Unless you're at a festival, the campground isn't where you will want to spend your time though. The campground is very close to Bridal Veil Falls, a huge free fall waterfall. You can drive or hike up to it, and climb around on the rocks and get blasted by cold water from the falls. It's huge. There's also a bunch of awesome hikes around Telluride - the San Juans are my favorite part of Colorado.

Don’t let the dilapidated mobile home near the entrance scare you away. This place is super well maintained. Every site is well thought out and has great hookups. I thought a plug water and sewer was pretty uniform. Our site had a pedestal with 20/30/50 amp and then another with 30 20 feet further into the site. Lots of shade. The sites along the south edge of the property have amazing views of the Cortez valley and Sleeping Ute Mountain. Really nice communal fire pit, dog park and some trails too. Some sites have a beautiful brick fire ring too.

This was such a magically beautiful location. The aspens were amazing, the surrounding forest, flowing river and waterfalls, and sweeping mountain scapes were breathtaking. Why only two stars? Well, first off, our campsite seemed too perfect to still be open, and it was. Unbeknownst to us, we were the only place for miles that you can get cell service, so we had 20-30 “visitors” a day drive up to our little round about spot to get a phone call or text out. That’s more people I see a day than even my own neighborhood and far more than I want to see on my outdoor exhursion.

Ok, so we picked a bad spot.... but every place we hiked and drove was overrun with cattle. Within an hour of our arrival and set up, cows began to wander over, pooping all over the place. Cows were EVERYWHERE- all the way up to Silver Jack reservoir and further. That made the flies worse than normal. They were the only “wildlife” we saw in four days... 15-20 at a time... hundreds overall. In all of my years camping in Colorado, I’ve never experienced this. Every camper we encountered complained about it. I loved the views, but I’ll never be back to camp.