For our stay in Denver, we stayed at Cherry Creek State Park. It was actually in Aurora, Colorado, but it wasn’t a long drive to get into downtown Denver. The nice thing about the park is that you seem tucked away from everyone, but stores are 10 minutes or less away. There were several Costco’s, Targets, and Kings Soopers (Kroger’s for those from back home) within 20 minutes or less. There was also a Camping World and Cabela’s within 40 minutes or so.
To camp in Cherry Creek State Park, you need a state park pass: $80/annual or $4/day. We ended up getting an annual pass because we weren’t sure how many state parks we would be visiting during our stay in Colorado. You can buy online and print out a temporary number. A physical pass will also mailed to you.
There is a welcome office with small shop (postcards, firewood-although there was a wood fire ban in effect when we were there, ice cream bars, etc). When we were there, the office closed at 4:00pm.
The campground is pretty spread out, with a mix of tent and RV sites. RV sites areas are a mix of back-in and pull through. Some sites have shade and others were in full sun.
It looked like all the RV spots had a concrete pad, a fire pit/grill and a picnic table. I was really happy with the layout of our site. It felt roomy. We could even put up Ben’s pop-op gazebo/clam shell shelter, for an outdoor space. The hook ups were on the opposite side of the picnic table (at least for our spot) and on the same side as the RV hookup connectors. It made for an easy set up.
The main shower house had bathrooms, showers (paid), food vending machines, and laundry. The laundry was $1.50/load on both the washers and dryers. There were 4 of each machine. There was also a vending machine with single load detergent and fabric softener. It looked like they were $1 each. Showers were $0.50/3minutes. There was a change machine located outside the laundry room to provide quarters for everything in the bath house. The food vending machines sometimes gave change back in $1 coins!
Although you can see the road in the distance depending where you are in the campground, you don’t get a lot of road noise during the week but some on the weekends. However, you will get airplane noise as it seems to be in the flight path of Denver airport.
There are several hiking trails in the park. Cherry Creek also has a dog park area, a lake (boat rentals available), and a horse rental area. There are a lot of bikers in the park (the bicycle kind) as well. We did not get to swim in the lake, although there is a beach area. There were signs warning of blue-green algae, so we stayed out of the water.
The boys have made another campground walk-through video. Although it was really hot that day, so they stayed on just our section of the campground.
If we were in the Denver area, I would stay here again.
SUMMARY OF CAMPGROUND:
Our Rating: 4 out of 5 hitches
Cell Phone Reception: AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile
WiFi: Yes
Laundry: Yes
Bathrooms/Showers: Yes, paid showers
RV Sites: Pull Through, Back-in
Pop Up Tents/Gazebos/Outdoor Rugs On-Site: Yes
Amenities: Picnic table, fire pit/grill
Cabins: No
Tent camping: Yes
Full Hook-ups: Yes. 20/30/50 amp sites available.
Pool: No
Food On-Site: No
Camp Store: Yes, very limited
Fishing: Yes, need license