We were surprised by our campground at the edge of Rocky Mountain National Park. Find out why next. Welcome to the channel, I'm Paul. And I'm Liz and we are full-time RVers. We've been on the road almost four years, but this is the first time that we have camped near Rocky Mountain National Park first time ever and we are at the Elk Meadow Lodge in RV resort. And we were a little surprised because we didn't know what to expect and we've been looking around at other campgrounds in the Estus Park area and we're realizing a lot of things aren't we? We lucked out and landed in the best one in the area. We absolutely did. Just down the road from us there is a campground that's in a ditch basically. Yeah it's in a bowl. It's definitely in a bowl. Now if you stay in one of their cabins you're right on the river. Now that campground is kind of hard to get into with a camper. Other campgrounds that we've noticed are on busy roads or they don't have good views. Here at Elk Meadow we have 360 degree views of Rocky Mountain National Park. We're right outside the park. We could practically walk into the National Park. And if you're thinking about coming to Rocky Mountain National Park know that there's an east side and a west side. We highly recommend the east side because of Estus Park. On the other side which is Grand Lake there's not as much to do there. Now Grand Lake is a beautiful place. It's just it's kind of the polar opposite of Estus Park. It's very low key and that may be what you want. Here in Estus Park you've got pretty much everything you could need. I had to get some parts for for Liz's truck yesterday and there's an O'Reilly's Auto Parts store here in town. There's certainly big supermarkets. There's a safe way. There's a village market. Estus Park has a population of about 6,000 but it is your typical tourist town. There's lots of things to do. There's shops, restaurants, museums, galleries. So if you're camping for a while now for us we're camping for two weeks. We actually can get a shuttle from our campground to Estus Park. So it's a great option you know for going out to E and just for walking around and enjoying the town. And there's also something I'm a car guy so I was really surprised. I had forgotten that the Stanley brothers who made the Stanley steamer one of them became a hotelier and his hotel is right here in Estus Park. You can visit that. It's kind of a I I didn't see the rooms but it looks like it's a luxury hotel. Yes and it's like back in the old days of you know the grand opulence. I mean it's just gorgeous just going through the lobby. Elk Meadow Lodge and RV Resort has 169 full hookup RV sites. It's on 30 acres but there's also cabins, tent sites and teepees. There's also things to do such as there's a miniature golf course here on the property that you can get clubs and balls from the office and go play miniature golf with your family. There's a pool which is open from Memorial Day to Labor Day. There's horseshoes and a playground for the kids. They also have a dog park. Long time viewers will probably remember that we have Starlink now. Starlink works beautifully here. We're getting some of the fastest speeds we've gotten so if if internet is an issue for you this location is a great spot if you have Starlink. Yeah that's another reason to come here because some of the campgrounds we've seen are in such tight places you're not going to have open sky or they're so tree that you're not going to have open sky. So most of the sites are pool three sites. Yes even though I don't have a problem backing up our rig I do appreciate a pool three site once in a while. Of course Rocky Mountain National Park offers you know a full array of things to do with hiking and just taking beautiful driving tours and seeing the pretty lakes and scenery but outside of Rocky Mountain National Park you can also go horseback riding or whitewater rafting just floating down the river. There's really a lot to do like fly fishing. We see a lot of people doing fly fishing. There's a tramway that goes up to the top of prospectors peak and we did that. There's a mountain coaster which we haven't done. I don't know anything about it other than it's called a mountain coaster. I'm assuming a roller coaster in the mountains. Okay so from mid-Sattenberg to mid-October is the best time to come to Estes Park area because of the elk. Talk about the elk and what's happening right now. We're seeing elk every day that we've been here. We've now been here. Haven't gone a day without seeing a herd of elk. Yeah we have now been here 10 days and we see a herd or we see a couple bulls but what's its redding season? What's happening? So the bulls are out you know challenging other bulls for dominance over the herd. So they actually clash. You can actually hear the antlers clashing as the bulls you know go do this fight and that's really cool. It was interesting to know that the fight is not too death. It's just basically a fight to show who's dominant. Who is going to win the herd. And we do see the herds every day. Every day. A little bit more about the elk. There's 2400 elk in the Estes Valley area and in the Rocky Mountain National Park there's 3,400 so it's definitely a great place to see elk. Now earlier in the year you will see them but not down in the valley. They'll be in higher elevation. We also see mule deer and rabbits. Really cute Rocky Mountain rabbits. Another reason to come in September after Labor Day is because of the weather. The weather is a lot more mild. We're having very mild days. Upper 60s, mid 70s. There's probably the highest. Today is the highest 64 degrees but it's really t-shirt weather. And this is a great time to come because there's not a lot of crowds. The village is a little bit crowded. The Autumn Gold Festival is going on this weekend. I went up there yesterday because there was a car show affiliated with this Autumn Gold Festival and of course I wanted to go see the cars. The village is the most crowded part of the area. The park really wasn't that bad. Getting in was slow. The day we went into the park there was a 30 minute wait to get through the gate. But once we were through the gate it was smooth sailing. We drove all the way over the top and down to Grand Lake and it was just a beautiful drive and no problem finding places to pull off to get the vistas and and all of that. It was just a wonderful drive. Yeah the crowd was only the second time when we went into the park. The first time it wasn't. I highly recommend you not try to go into the national park at noon. noon was a little crowded but I think you know just going to a national park after schools in the session if you can really helps you know cuts down the crowds. Yeah that's a good point. When I bought the tickets I don't know what I was thinking but I got noon to two o'clock entry. That was a mistake. If you can get the 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. entry get those. All right let's talk about bike paths. They're actually are several bike paths outside of the village of Estus Park. We had a great time. We went riding by some lakes, beautiful scenery and of course we saw elk. Now bikes are not allowed on the pass downtown but we do recommend that you take a stroll along the river that runs through the town. Now we also enjoyed taking a bike ride on the road that runs past our campground Highway 66. It's not a heavily traffic road and there was a shoulder. It was great scenery and we just enjoyed having a nice ride. If you're into mountain biking there are tons of mountain biking in the area. So who is this campground best suited for? Well obviously for us you know we're older no kids but also this campground is family friendly. It's got a playground but it's got other things for kids to do and it's also good for people that want to be close to the national park and want to be close to stuff. Now who do you think that's campground is not good for? Well somebody who wants to be away from it all like I would say if that is who you are then go to Grand Lake because that would be more suited to your liking I think. Or stay in the national park itself because that kind of camping is very rustic and very away from it all. So we feel like we just lucked out getting El Cometo resorted. Turns out to be the best campground in the area for us. So let us know in the comments what have you booked in the past where you've gotten there and you found out you'd hit the jackpot.