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Lake Louise, Banff National Park
Our 6th week in the Canadian Rockies was a vacation week for Michael. We were in Lake Louise, the most iconic and most popular area of Banff National Park. Lake Louise is a teeny tiny village with a huge campground, a ski resort, and a stunning turquoise lake with a resort-style hotel. There is an even more stunning lake named Moraine Lake (cover photo) nearby that is one of the most photographed sites in all of Canada. We stayed at the Lake Louise Hardsided Campground, which has been our least favorite of the amazing Parks Canada campgrounds we’ve stayed on this trip. It’s an electric-only campground and 99% of the…
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Jasper National Park
Weeks 4 and 5 of our Canadian Rockies road trip were spent at Jasper National Park. We felt like we’d won the campground lottery getting a 2 week reservation in a full hookup site at the recently renovated Whistlers Campground in Jasper. A lot of trees in this area have been wiped out by pine beetles, but the openness of the campground gave us mountain views and a great Starlink signal. The campground was a 5-minute drive from the cute mountain town also named Jasper. And there were seemingly endless beautiful sites close by that we could visit in the afternoons after work. Jasper NP is huge and we ventured…
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Icefields Parkway
We spent our third week in the Canadian Rockies on the Icefields Parkway, the very scenic 144 miles of Alberta Highway 93 that links Lake Louise in Banff National Park to Jasper National Park. It’s known as one of the most stunning drives in the world, lined with mountain peaks, glaciers, and glacier-fed lakes and rivers. We’ve wanted to visit this area for a long time and it is just jaw-droppingly beautiful. We stayed at Silverhorn Creek campground. There were no hookups, no water source, no dump station, and no cell service. But our solar panels and Dishy worked great with the open sky. And we had views of glaciers!!…
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First Two Weeks In Canada
After loving the beautiful mountain scenery of Glacier National Park last summer, we were excited to visit the Canadian Rockies this year. Months before I had somehow managed to get 8 weeks of reservations in various campgrounds in 4 Canadian National Parks. It’s a chaotic lottery system, with up to 50K people on the website trying to make reservations for the entire season at the same time, so we felt very lucky with what we got. Our luck ran out in Montana when we noticed a heavily worn trailer tire and had to limp across the border on our spare. Besides that problem, the actual border crossing was a breeze.…
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Family Trip To Yellowstone & Grand Teton
The first week of July finally felt like summer! Michael had the week off work and my brother and his family came out to visit us and experience the magic of Yellowstone and the Tetons. This was part of an epic 3-week trip that my sis-in-law planned for them. Our niece graduated high school and our nephew graduated elementary school so this was the perfect time and I know a lot of memories were made! I completely forgot to get photos of our campsites but we spent 3 nights at Yellowstone Grizzly RV Park in West Yellowstone, Montana, and 3 nights at Fireside Resort in Jackson, WY, and were within…
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Cody From Cody, WY
We decided to make the big 570-mile move from Dillon, CO to Cody, WY in 2 days, spending Saturday night at Riverside City Park in Douglas for free. Several states, mostly in the plains, offer free camping in city parks for travelers which is very appreciated. And on Sunday, we settled into a nice lakefront water/electric site at Buffalo Bill State Park for 2 weeks. We came to Cody for a few reasons. First, we wanted to be hanging out near Yellowstone because my brother and family were coming out to visit us!! Also, we wanted to do a couple of scenic drives in the area as well as go…
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Twin Lakes To Dillon Lake, CO
After our stay in Colorado Springs, we moved back into the mountains just ~35 miles north of where we’d been previously near Buena Vista. I found a boondocking spot overlooking Twin Lakes that is going to be hard to beat. This was free dispersed camping in the San Isabel National Forest off county road 24 at an elevation of 9,700ft! We had unbelievable views of the lakes and the highest peak in Colorado, Mount Elbert (14,439ft). The flip side was this was the worst spur road we’ve ever taken the trailer on and I spent the week wondering how we were going to get out. But of course, Michael maneuvered…
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Colorado Springs, CO
I had read many accolades of the campground at Cheyenne Mountain State Park in Colorado Springs so when trying to decide where to make reservations for a holiday weekend, we thought it’d be a great choice. This is a relatively new state park, built above the city on the side of Cheyenne Mountain, the former headquarters of NORAD. It overlooks Fort Carson, so close that you can hear the bugle calls. The park is huge and feels like you are in the middle of nature, yet you are 5 minutes from anything and everything you would need in a city. There are a ton of things to do in Colorado…
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Boondocking In Buena Vista, CO
We spent the workweek before Memorial Day boondocking in a meadow in the San Isabel National Forest. Our spot was on Forest Road 274 between the Arkansas River towns of Salida and Buena Vista. This was an ideal spot because the road was in great condition (in terms of Forest Service Roads), we had an open sky for solar and Starlink, and we were minutes away from hiking trails and cute towns. And until the views that we have at our current spot, these were some of the best views we’ve ever had from a campsite. We could see two snow-capped 14ers, Mount Princeton on one side and Mount Antero…
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Great Sand Dunes National Park
We’re planning to be in Colorado for at least a month this year and other than the week of Memorial Day, we don’t have reservations because we wanted to do some boondocking and first come first serve camping. Our first stop was San Luis State Wildlife Area near Great Sand Dunes National Park. The San Luis Valley is a large rural valley with elevations starting at 7500ft in south-central Colorado. The Sangre de Cristo Range is to the east and the San Juan Mountains are to the west. With a Colorado State Parks pass, this first come first serve campground is free and has electric hookups and a dump station!…
