Camp Dick Campground

Camp Dick is a mile or so down the road as Peaceful Valley Campground. This makes for less traffic, and you are closer to the main trailhead (hiking, biking, 4wd, and horses) but you lose out on one important thing; Verizon. Camp Dick will do in a pinch (or if you do not need a cell signal) and at the same quality as Peaceful Valley, but for me I'd rather find a place to boondock if I had to go without cell.

Pawnee Campground was full & we drove into Camp Dick which had several sites open. Site 41 is the first one on the left after crossing the stream. It's nice to hear the sound of the stream while sleeping. Every morning there was a rabbit grazing on our grass. One night around 3am there was a moose chomping about 5 feet from the back of the tent. Though he moved on after we made some noise, he was back around 6am chomping again. He moved to the other side of the site, but remained in the area as we got out of the tent & started breakfast. We also saw river otters on the stream (closer to Paradise Valley Campground). The hike starting from the end of the campground is a nice look coming back on the 4x4 road. Saw another moose there.

Bathrooms, though vaults, were clean & smelled like cinnamon.

Our plans changed and instead of heading to Utah, we needed to stick around the Front Range so I could catch a flight to California early this week. The idea of duking it out for a campsite on the Front Range was unappealing, but at the last minute I remembered the Camp Dick campground. I've ridden my bike past the campground hundreds of times, but had never stayed there. There is an upper and lower campground, we drove past the lower and stayed almost at the end of the upper campground. Much to my surprise, we had 3 bars of Verizon during the day and 4 at night. I was able to get some work done, which was nice. The campsites are large, and very clean. The camp hosts have done a great job of keeping this place clean and well maintened. They don't go to great lengths to monitor problems. We had one family with a dog that barked 24/7. The dog was tied to a picnic table and left for almost 3 days and barked at everything that moved.
There are a couple of great hiking trails nearby, and the fishing in the St. Vrain is good. We will be back.

We stayed at Camp Dick when my sister came to visit. We don't usually pay for campgrounds, but we wanted to make sure we had a good spot and it turned out great! Its nestled between gorgeous rocky mountains, with great hiking right out of the campground. We reserved in advance but there are also first come first served sites. Cell service was basically nil (we got a tiny bit with a booster). No electric or dump but they did have water that we filled our jugs with. Beautiful spot, only 45 mins from Estes Park and rocky mountain NP!

Very clean site and for the most part, easy access. We stayed on a side loop so we were separated from traffic that was going to and from the main trailhead. Before you pick a site, make sure you consider this, otherwise, traffic may become an issue especially when it comes to the weekend. When the main trailhead gate is closed, the trail can only be accessed by foot, but when late spring arrives (or when the forestry service determines otherwise) they open the gate and the trail becomes available to all Off-Road-Vehicles. Camp hosts are pretty attentive but they sometimes get behind on the bathrooms. On our visit, one side of the vault toilet was a bit overdue for being pumped, the other side was borderline.
This was a quiet night's (3) sleep for us. No road noise and everyone seems to be in their racks just after dark.

My son and I stayed at camp dick last September. We had a very quiet stay as the campgrounds were only about 1/2 occupied. Stayed in the upper loop, away from the main section, and a little walk to the river. due to the OHV trail entrance at the end of the camp, I can imagine it was much noisier in the main area of camp. Our site had plenty of shade and was very lush, with a small creek running behind it. Site and restrooms were clean and well cared for. Will definitely be back.

I marked no cell service, but at the main road there is, so its not more than 3 minute drive to get service if needed.

We have met friends here every spring for years and love it. We typically get a spot near the creek, and enjoy hiking the nearby trails, singing near the campfire, and driving into Estes Park for great variety of meals, movies, groceries, hardware store, you name it. Great place for school age kids. The road in past the gate is one lane so be patient if you have much of a rig at all. It can be noisy but this is rare and camp hosts are consistently on top of things here...

I feel the place is overpriced. You have water locations and a few vault toilets. It is primarily open space with some spots having shade but no real privacy. Again, overpriced in my opinion. There are many trails to hike in the campground. The road in is narrow in spots with trees/shrubs encroaching onto the road. No ATT cell service.

We absolutely loved this campground. You pass through the Peaceful Valley campground to get to Camp Dick. The road is narrow but there are several pull outs so you can pass others. It is not for the wimpy RV'er but it is not the tightest road I've ever traveled with my camper by far (looking at you, Cataloochee in GSMNP). This is no-frills camping which is what we look for. There is no electric but we had no problem putting out our solar panel and keeping the batteries in good shape. Only had to run the generator once due to a couple of cloudy days in a row. there is one water spigot working by one of the bathhouses. The other two were temporarily out of service. Not a problem for us since we filled our tanks before coming in to the campground. The camp hosts were amazing as well. Very friendly and helpful throughout the week. And as another reviewer somewhere posted, these are the cleanest bathrooms, much less vault toilets, that I have ever had the pleasure of using. Sounds weird, but there it is.

There is beautiful scenery, lots of wildlife, and trout in the Middle St. Vrain running through camp. A bear visited the camp along with lots of deer and there was elk sign all over the place. We caught and released several cutthroat right in the campground.

One caveat, this campground has a 4-wheel drive trail at the end of it so there is quite a bit of off road vehicle traffic coming through, especially on the weekends. This did not bother us but I understand that it might be obnoxious to others. There are also no generator restrictions outside of the established quiet hours at night but the people around us were pretty conservative with their generator usage. Again, we are pretty easy going so it didn't bother us. Don't count on any cell service with any provider without a pretty strong booster. We couldn't sniff out any signal at all on Verizon or AT&T during the week but the camp host said he had a good Verizon signal with his signal booster and 20 foot boom directional antenna.

We will definitely camp here again. I even hesitated to put this review in because I don't want the secret to get out ;)

Camp Dick is one of my favorites. Since I have a small trailer (13ft Sunray 115), I can use one of the more remote (but a bit smaller) sites in this campground (31-35). These sites are in a small loop away form the open area, are shaded with trees and away from the busy 4x4 road. I like that it's only 1H30 min from home.
Every time I camped here, we had visits from moose or bears.

- Vault toilets
- Some sites in the trees away from others.
- Some sites spaced enough with trees so that you don't see your neighbor too much.

NOte - no water anymore due to cold weather = rates went down to $17.25.