Rifle River Campground
Janine P.
Reviewed Jul. 11, 2017

Decent views, unhelpful staff and difficult sites

This campground offers sites for tents and RVs, has water and electrical hookups available, and has bathhouses (if you can call them that). You can also rent canoes, kayaks, and inner tubes to traverse the river with; they drop you off upstream and you bank right at the campground for them to collect the various watercraft. There are fire pits placed periodically around the camp, however, they do not correspond to specific sites and are communal with whatever sites are nearby.

While the views of the river are great from the majority of sites, the entire campground is on a hill. There are few - if any - level areas to camp, and very few hammock-friendly trees. The staff are crotchety and disorganized; they will give you one answer one hour and a different answer the next; they add charges on for every little thing (including showers & firewood - you cannot bring in your own), while the cost to rent a site is exorbitantly expensive (compared to other, comparable sites) to begin with. We attempted to rent kayaks; they were out and told us that we would have had to reserve a year and a half in advance, while others of our group managed to rent them with no problem. The times for the bus to take us upstream were constantly changing with no notification Standard policies such as amounts necessary to rent a site, security deposits, minimum nights required, and how many people were allowed per site were also fluctuating depending on who you inquired with and when you did so. It must be said that when we camped there the camp was far from full, so an overwhelming number of campers could not be to blame at the time.

I would not recommend this campsite or canoe livery to anyone.

Month of VisitAugust
  • Review photo of Rifle River Campground by Janine P., July 11, 2017