Elk Meadows Lodge & RV Resort

I’m a little conflicted by this one. Here’s why:
Pro: Wildlife close by, the elk come in regularly.
Location in conjunction to the National Park and close to town
Great staff
Full hookups
Long pull thrus are very roomy, no trouble parking your extra vehicle
Picturesque

Cons: Sites are un level, bring blocks to put on wheels. Many off the ground on one side.
The amenities are ok but miniature golf etc. are falling apart.
The water spigot and sewer were semi buried
Lot of ground squirrel holes, be careful where you walk (I guess it’s to be expected)

All in all it was a nice stay, the park has potential but needs a lot of TLC.

I really can't say everything about how great this place is in the time I have for this review, but here is the highlights:

- Wifi Worked (I work from my RV so that is important)
- There is a restaurant attached to this place that you have to book but it has live music and food!
- The number 1 restaurant on Yelp (Rock Inn Mountain Tavern) in Estes is within walking distance with a full bar and micro beers...with food that is locally grown...and live music.
- You are less than a mile from the park.
- Gail (who helped me) was a saint and sweet
- It's on a hill with semi-tiered places to park your RV so you have great views.

Must stay place!

After reading the reviews and looking at their online website I had high expectations! It did not live up to the website. For the price I would expect level sites or preferably concrete pads. The restrooms were very clean and up to date. All the laundry facilities worked well and were in good shape. I could get on the wifi but then it was too slow to go to any site. The cable TV worked well. The swimming pool was heated and clean. But I believe for the price everyone is paying that this place could use a face lift. I would look into their sister campground Spruce lodge because it is on the river or consider the KOA by Lake Estes.

We tried to get into the National Park in case there was a cancellation, so this was the closest to the NP. Very expensive for what you get. You do get cable, not very good wifi. Very close to your neighbours.

Unfortunately there aren't a lot of campground choices in Estes Park, and two of the main choices are owned by the same company. First the good stuff: Elk Meadow is certainly in a beautiful location with mountain views in every direction, and is very close to the National Park entrance. They have a decent-sized dog park which we used several times. Check-in was easy and friendly. The sites are pretty close together, but at least they're not right on top of each other like some commercial RV parks near National Parks. Drawbacks: First, the roads and sites are dirt, and it was windy the entire week we were there. Every time a car or rig drove down one of the roads a huge cloud of dirt covered our rig and came in through the windows. We eventually just had to keep our windows closed. This park seriously needs to pave the interior roads! The free WiFi almost never worked, which I've come to expect at commercial RV parks. However, even though our Verizon hotspot had 5 bars of signal, it too was extremely slow and often unusable... I'm guessing there's only one Verizon tower in the area and it's overloaded and can't handle the number of customers there. Our AT&T was slightly faster, but still quite slow. It was a week of very poor internet connectivity for us. Most of the sites are somewhat unlevel (we needed blocks under our wheels), and the grassy part of the site is much more sloped, so don't expect a level picnic table unless you move it behind your rig like many folks did. The price ($65/night after taxes for a weekly stay with Good Sam) is too high for what you get. And if you have more than 2 people add an extra $5 per person. And on top of that there's a 50% cancelation fee, even if you cancel months in advance, which is unheard of. The park just has too many drawbacks to justify these rates, fees, and policies. Unfortunately, there may not be a better option in Estes Park. Tips: Rock Inn Mountain Tavern is a short walk from your campsite and has good food. Antonio's NY Pizza in town has excellent pizza (I'm originally from NY so I'm picky about my pizza).

it's pretty dusty at this place. It was basically our first adventure in our new Airstream so we wanted full hookups. And I needed help backing into our spot so BLM would have been a bit risky for the first trip

We are full timing now, but when we lived in Colorado, raising kids, we stayed here one or two times per summer. This time, I was recuperating from hip replacement surgery, so we needed full hookups for 3-4 weeks. The RV places around Denver really suck, so we decided on Elk Meadow.
Pros- The crew were very friendly and helped a lot. It is located right next to Rocky Mountain National Park. Trash pickup from your site daily. There is a pool, but nothing special. On Saturday nights they did have live music with beer and wine.
Cons- Estes Park is a zoo in the summer. Hard to get a round and park downtown. RMNP is way crowded also. There are long lines to get in daily. The traffic coming back into town in the afternoon gets backed up from town into the park. We could see the highway from our site. The take away is if you are ok with crowds, great. If not, stay away during the tourist season.
Elk Meadows is way over priced. The weekly rate is $455 with GS, but there is a 10.7% 'Camping Tax'. $1,511.06 for 3 weeks. They charge $2.50 per page if you want something printed. They charge $4.99 for a 10lb bag of ice.
They need to drop the word 'Resort' from their name. The park is dirt and gravel with small patches of native grass between the sites. When it rains (as it does almost daily in the mountains) there is a lot of dirt washed into the site.
No mail delivery. The park does not accept mail of any kind for the guests and the post office in Estes Park does not accept general delivery. We were told that UPS and FedEx delivered to the site, we tried FedEx, but the driver just blew us off for the day. I checked tracking and there was a delivery attempt recorded 20 minutes before I checked which was BS because we were there all afternoon. After complaining to FedEx, the driver did deliver the next day.
Buy your groceries before coming up to Estes. The Safeway is way over priced.
You would think with all the money you over pay for everything the roads would be good, but no, they are in terrible shape.
The Verizon towers were overloaded all the time we were there. OK signal, but pathetic throughput.

This was our second time here, the last being 14 years ago when we had site B24. Elk Meadow was in much better condition then.
This time we arrived on Labor day weekend 2019 and were lucky to get a "level" spot that I had asked for before making my reservation. The campground roads were horrible with washouts caused from rain run-off. They were never repaired the three days we stayed. Now our spot. It was not level and required lots of cribbing to get our 36' Alpine Coach level. On a positive note, an employee did bring me an arm load of 2x12's to help me out. I could not find our 30 amp plug pedestal, it ended up on the back side of the site next to us...a shared pedestal. Additionally when I finally hooked up to dump the tanks I found the the sewer hookup to be held together with duct tape, it came apart in my hands. A few hours later we could dump our tanks.
It would appear that the owners of this campground are not even interested in keeping up with just maintenance. But then why should they if they are selling out. Someday I suspect this campground will be bulldozed for condos.

Good Sam discount CO RV Parks are all more on the expensive side, but Elk Meadow is on the lower end of those around them. Great access to the RMNP (5 mins max!), as well as to downtown. Beautiful views of Longs Peak! Nearest grocery is close (5 miles away). Elk occasionally pass thru the front area which was really cool! There is also a little area next to the RV park where I think they park stored vehicles and it's a great place to walk. It's dirt, but about the size of a track.
GUEST SERVICES = great customer service! Friendly staff anytime I went into the office; they shuffled around to accommodate out extended stay on the spot so we wouldn't have to relocate and could stay at our site the whole time we were in town. We appreciated that!
WIFI / CELL SERVICE = provided, but not reliable. We used our AT&T hotspot the entire time bc we work remote. Cell service was 4 bars and worked fine in the entire campground.
LAUNDRY: Not the cleanest laundry room we've been too, but it worked. There was a soap and water station in the laundry I used to wipe down the inside of the washer (by the chlorox holder) before using. The trashcan always seemed to be overflowing with lent and trash, but again, clean enough.
SITE: Wide roads and turns; easy to navigate throughout the campground; quiet; picnic table; spacious, no shade, needed levels on one side of our RV; dirt roads throughout so, unless it rained, it was very dusty and so we didn't open our windows as much as we wanted with the fresh mountain air. When it rained and calmed down the dust, then it was perfect to open the windows.

$59.99 is the daily rate with Good Sam. We were in back-in B17 facing other rigs and the road. If you can get a site facing the opposite way, you'll see Longs Peak which is MUCH better. We also had trouble getting level in the spot. We were there during peak time and they only had the one spot for us that was available the whole time. If you go when more spots are available, I would ask to choose your own as you can see what's level and the size of the yard varies widely.

There's a pool, hot tub, mini golf ($3), and music and limited food on the weekends. They have expensive laundry and you can find cheaper down the road and in town if you're inclined.

You are right next to the entrance for Rocky Mountain National Park. While there we saw a couple of elk (mama and baby) walk by while eating dinner and bear prints on our car.

Verizon picked up signal, but was SLOW!