thefreefive

Thunder Ridge is a small and quiet USFS campground on a ridge above Rampart Reservoir. This is a forested area, but forest fires over the last decade have left burn scars that are starting to regrow.

Overall, this is a nice, quiet, no-hookups campground to get away. There are views of Pikes Peak from parts of the campground, as well as the Rampart Range to the east and Rampart Reservoir to the north. A well-maintained trail leads down to the reservoir itself.

Access requires driving on dirt and often heavily washboard roads with a few tight turns to get to the campground, either from Woodland Park, or Manitou.

This campground and the roads to get to it are definitely not big rig friendly. The 30ft length limit is accurate, and only a few sites in this campground can reasonably fit a 30ft RV. Several sites are only big enough for a van and are typically used by car campers.

There are nice vault toilets and water stations scattered about the campground. There are no hookups or other amenities. A host on site sells firewood, and sites have a fire pit.

Cellular coverage is minimal on all three carriers, especially for uploads, even with high-gain antennas and modern cellular modems. Starlink here would be problematic due to the trees, although some sites have fewer trees than others. Do not expect to have good connectivity here.

While this review applies to the Windy Hill campground, the bulk of it also applies to most of the other campgrounds near the reservoir.

Overall this was a great campground. It was uncrowded, which made the experience so much better and we were able to snag a site with a great view.

Cost: Nominally $20 but $10 of that is for access to the park. If you have an America the Beautiful pass, or another annual pass good for national forest access, then camping is $10 a night.

Sites: The sites are fairly spacious, level and gravel. All have a picnic bench, steed awning, and fire pit. Most sites have trees. Only the host sites have hookups - this is dry camping.

Most sites can fit larger RV's with no problem (we had plenty of room for our 40-foot class A plus our minivan toad), but some of the curves could be a challenge for larger RV's and some of the trees could also be a problem.

Facilities. Windy Hill has showers and flush toilets, a very nice bonus. There are also plenty of water faucets and dumpsters scattered around. There is, however, no dump station - it's located up 188 at the Tonto Basin Dump Station.

Internet Access: This site is remote, but we had good internet access. However, signal throughout the campground is highly variable and you can go from no signal to 5 bars within a short distance. Those who need internet access should check at available sites. We had good access on AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile:

AT&T: This area is an HSPA+ area. We generally got around 4Mbps peak, slightly slower in the evenings.

Verizon: LTE is available but we only got about 7Mbps peak - around 5 was more typical.

T-Mobile: T-Mobile was about the same as AT&T but latency was quite a bit higher for us.

Rocky Ridge is one of the campgrounds for the 11 Mile State Park. The campground consists of several loops, two loops have electricity. There is no sewer or water hookups at any site.

Reservations for the vast majority of sites must be made online, you technically can't show up late after closing and take a site.

We paid $36/night for an electric site including the online reservation fee. In addition, campers are required to purchase a park pass at the entrance which is not included in the campground fee (unless you have an annual Colorado park pass). Passes are $8/day per vehicle - motorhomes with toads only count as one vehicle.

The loops are literally on a rocky ridge above the lake and most provide good views. There are also tent camping sites including walk-in sites. The facilities are basic - pit toilets in the loops but clean and well maintained.

Since the campground is on a hillside many sites are not flat and bigger rigs may not be able to be leveled. It's difficult to tell from the online reservation system which sites are actually flat and which are sloped.

There are few trees near most sites, so do not expect shade. Also, the location on a ridge at the edge of a vally means wind is common.

There is a lot to do in the area, especially for those interested in fishing and boating. The marina is very popular on the weekends.

Cell service is sporadic. Verizon had decent data connection. AT&T was either good or bad subject to micro-terrain and the quality of the modem. With AT&T's flagship Nighthawk M1 I got consistent 5-6Mbps but other AT&T devices were roaming or well below 1Mbps. A cellular booster did not help these devices. Sprint and T-Mobile were not tested.