Best Equestrian Camping near Taos, NM

There are a bunch of different roads you can turn off to camp on if you’re driving from Taos to Durango. We mapped Forest Road 578 and it took us to a dirt road with a lot of flat spots you can camp on. We spent the night there and it was very quiet and peaceful. If you keep going to Durango you’ll get to Carson National Forest, which is not too far from the coordinates on The Dyrt. That’s where more people are camping, you can pull off right before the 64H road marker. You’ll keep passing camping spots as you drive to Durango so you can really go almost anywhere!

My wife and I have stayed at Hopewell Lake twice now. The first time we stayed here, we stumbled upon this little gem of a site while driving from Durango, CO to Taos, NM. It was enchanting enough that we made sure to make it back for an opportunity to take in the scenery and relax during a long weekend. The only issue we ran into was an abundance of mosquitos, but this should be expected during the late Spring/early Summer in northern New Mexico and can be easily addressed with a citronella candle and a bit of bug spray. Our most recent stay was on one of those rare nights where you can pull off the rain fly and not worry about a midnight downpour, which left us with a wonderful view of the stars, and the sites are private enough that, as long as you don't set up next to the table, it's comfortable with an open tent and away from prying eyes.

The campground is nice, very well maintained, and the site host is friendly and helpful. The grounds are a

We stayed at this site on the way back to Texas from our Colorado trip this summer. This is a great National Forest Campground south of Taos in the Carson Forest. The campground is just off the highway and situated in a beautiful mountain pine forest and next to a great trout stream. You have great shade during the hotter summer months. It’s far enough away from the highway that you don’t hear the traffic. It has a huge meadow and group camp site which look fantastic. The individual sites have some privacy between the sites and come equipped with fire pits and picnic tables. We made a reservation but the camp had a number of open sites in the peak summer season. The highlight here is the proximity of great hiking to nearby lakes and fishing in the trout stream. They had great facilities including clean pit toilets and some historic log cabins. They have a camp host and the sites accommodate tents and smaller vans and campers. I would give this another visit on our next trip to NM.

This is the first campground I’ve found in New Mexico where I felt like I was camping in Colorado, it was so green and beautiful! The camp sites were nicely spaced, so we felt like we were primitive camping, but it was nice to have a picnic table, especially because we have a small child. Family friendly. We wish we would have brought our 4x4 vehicle because we had initially planned to camp at little blue lake, but my Subaru Impreza was not powerful enough/didn’t have high enough clearance to make it up the road that lead to the lake! We are definitely planning on camping back to check out the lakes. The only negative thing was that we found some trash at our site from the previous campers. Also, some cows woke us up early in the morning, which was cool, but also scared the shit out of us!

The park is HUGE and just so beautiful. 10,000 acres of aspens and ponderosa pines only one hour away from the town of Taos. All sites offer a fire pits and some come with nice picnic tables under roofs by the clear river. Only $25 a day you can get to enjoy the nature. We didn’t take our TRD pro Taco coz we thought our All wheel super handling SUV would be good enough but definitely there are some off-roading you can enjoy. Be sure to bring your truck or Jeep to enjoy more. No cell phone reception. There are no water available and porta potties were not ready yet. The lake was closed but we still had so much fun hiking and exploring the acres of wonderland. Will definitely go back there!

A remote location and popular with horse campers and hunters.  The campground has sites with horse corrals installed. The campground was quiet and mostly clean. There are pit toilets on site and well maintained. Level spots with good separation. Nice hiking accross some flat lands and a smal creek runs near by. Early one morning we saw a herd of elk down in a valley near a turn out off the road.  Bears frequent the area trying to raid the garbage bins during the night. Makes tent camping a bit unnerving. If you want to explore the area, this is good place to camp.  It takes an hour to get to the campsite on a graveled road off the highway out of Cimerron.  25mph was best speed to go to handle the washboard road to the campsite.