Best Cabin Camping near Lincoln National Forest

We love Royce and the Camp @ Cloudcroft. We started out coming here NYE. We stayed in the teardrop camper — so cold outside but the teardrop was warm and cozy. Since then we’ve been back several times! They have new beautifully renovated shower houses. They have a Yurt with all you could ever think of as well as a pop up trailer (amazing king size bed). When you rent these, you basically can come with clothes and food. They think of everything else from utensils, grills, stoves, linens, seasonings ... even a deck of cards! There’s WiFi throughout the campground. They also have RV spaces and tent areas. Super super nice staff (Sissy and her pup Mickey). Can’t recommend this place enough and we can’t wait to get back to our home away from home!!

This campground has it all. Beautiful surroundings, not far from downtown shopping in Ruidoso, most helpful hosts on site. My husband was not in the best of health when we went. The hosts helped him set up, with them doing the majority of the work, in the rain. The campground is pet friendly, has an enclosed run where you can take them off the leash for a bit, also has several locations with poop bags available. This seems to be a super secure location as hosts are on duty 24/7. No one comes into the campground without stopping at the office and checking in, anyone failing to do this, will be followed in and information gathered or asked to leave. Sites, once vacated are gone over with a fine tooth comb to make sure Nothing is left behind, the fire pits are cleaned, and everything is in order for the next camper. There are horseshoe pits and sand volleyball available for entertainment. Showers and laundry facilities are available and kept super clean. Rio Bonito flows along the side of the campground

My children and I stayed only one night at the Alamogordo/White Sands KOA, but it was a great place to stop and play! The kids enjoyed the pool and game room, our camping cabin was clean and neat. They had the nicest KOA showerhouse I have seen in my travels. They were having an ice cream social as we arrived which was a bonus after a long hot day of adventure. This was a great base for exploring the area, including White Sands National Monument and the White Sands Missle Range Museum/Missle Park.

Prepare for the heat! There is not much shade on these adventures. My one complaint about this KOA is it needed more shade around the pool.

We tent camped at Eagle Lake aka Eagle Creek campground on the Mescalero Apache Reservation over Memorial Day weekend 2022. The surrounding Lincoln National Forest was closed because of extreme fire risk, so there were very few places to camp in the Sacramento Mountains and escape the heat of El Paso. We used camp stoves because of a fire ban. We camped among the pine trees in the first tent area. There were clean porta-johns in that area. The showers and permanent bathroom were located up in the RV park about a 3-mile round trip walk on the road from the first tent area, so it’s more practical to drive to the showers. The permanent bathrooms and showers were clean.

Very pretty scenery, surrounded by mountain ridges and peaks and pine forest. There were two small lakes and a small creek flowing through the campground.

The campground format is kind of laissez faire because there aren’t assigned sites and it’s first come, first serve. The first tent area seemed about half full and we found a good site. We didn’t scout the second tent area because the host said there weren’t as many trees there. The first tent site was developed on a forested slope albeit they built flat rectangular-like terraces into the slope where you can pitch a tent(s) and park your vehicle(s).

Eagle Creek, near Ruidoso, had a similar feel to the Mescalero Nation’s Silver Lake campground near Cloudcroft, but Eagle Creek had a more quiet vibe. The main drawback was the 10:00 am checkout time, but we were still able to cook up some breakfast burritos as we broke camp. Good times.

Update 6/22/2022: At some point after my review, the Dyrt deleted the actual campground, which is where the road forks and moved my review to the nearby and similarly named RV resort, which is totally different. I love the Dyrt and I’m a pro ranger but sometimes c’mon man.