RVing Colorado Springs: Cheyenne Mountain State Park Campground Review

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travel dates: June, 2025

We set off from Kansas City for that very long and very flat drive across Kansas on I-70–a drive we’d never done before this summer but have now completed three times. We’ve done an overnight stop midway in WaKeeney all three times, both because it’s a pretty good midpoint and because it has two nice campgrounds right off the highway and right across the street from each other. The first time (i.e. on our way to Colorado Springs) we stayed at Rosie’s RV Park, and the other two times we stayed at the KOA. Both of these are fine options and similarly priced. You might opt for Rosie’s because of the on-site restaurant (and we did eat breakfast here). But it doesn’t have a bathhouse or a pool, and we ultimately opted for the KOA for our other two WaKeeney stops largely because we wanted the KOA amenities if we were paying the same price either way (and it’s always hot in Kansas in summer, so the pool is nice to have). Anyway, here’s Rosie’s at sunset, with one of the wagons they have for rent:

But really this post is mostly about the campground we stayed at in Colorado Springs: Cheyenne Mountain State Park. Which was our first Colorado stop and the next place we went after WaKeeney. Our 2024 trip was our first time RVing in Colorado, and it was an easy call to make because our oldest kid, Ari, had just moved to Denver for grad school, and we were excited to have an excuse to spend lots of time with him and his girlfriend, Abby, AND to finally spend extended time in a great RVing state.

Our route took us first to Colorado Springs, then up to Rocky Mountain National Park, over to Fort Collins for a quick stop, and then back down to Denver for a full two weeks. I can no longer remember how we landed on this particular order of things, but it worked out well. First up was five nights in Colorado Springs at the amazing Cheyenne Mountain State Park.

Cheyenne Mountain State Park

We became huge fans of Colorado State Parks on this trip, which is probably not hard to understand just based on this picture of our trailer in our site:

We stayed at Cheyenne Mountain State Park and then later at Cherry Creek State Park outside of Denver, and both were absolute gems. Huge, full-hook up campsites with concrete pads for under $50/night–nice work, Colorado!

And in the case of Cheyenne Mountain in particular, you get amazing views from your site:

Cheyenne Mountain is probably most familiar to Gen Xers as the home of the military complex where they take Matthew Broderick in War Games: i.e. the home of the W.O.P.R. That’s still there, but it’s not open to the public, sadly. There’s also a military base right across the street from the state park, and a fun feature of the campground is that you can hear Taps played every evening. The location is great–it’s just a 15 minute drive from downtown Colorado Springs, and within easy reach of places like Pikes Peak and Manitou Springs. But it definitely doesn’t feel like urban camping, with its spacious sites, abundance of hiking trails, and expansive views.

This was the site next door to ours (site #24), and I think they might have had the best spot in the campground for getting this shot of RV with stunning backdrop. I was jealous. I should photoshop our trailer in where that fifth wheel actually was:

The big thing to know if you want to stay at Cheyenne Mountain is that you’ll have to be on top of things as soon as reservations open up. I won’t say too much about the online system because things might be different by now, but here’s what I have in my notes: “booking! Is hard. I set my alarm for 2 am (12 MT) 6 months before. But then it said not to use reservation.gov, but that was the only way I could get it to work. So it took awhile while I worried I wouldn’t get a site, but it worked out fine. But you definitely have to be on there as soon as reservations open.” To clarify, there are two different reservation sites–reservation.gov and then their own site, and the website tells you to use the latter to book. Only it wasn’t working when I was trying to book, so I had to go through reservation.gov. Basically, it was frustrating, but it was okay in the end, and we got a great site. Also, most of the sites are great. It’s a sprawling campground with several loops a good distance apart, and I spent a good bit of time trying to read up on the best sites, but…everything we saw would have been totally fine. We probably like the Meadows area the least of the ones we saw, but it was nice, too (and you likely won’t be able to be very picky anyway). We were in Puma Swift in site 25 and were very happy with it, for reasons of the views mentioned/shown above. There was also a nice trail that came out right by our site, and the dogs appreciated this:

The deer seemed to like our site a lot, too:

(But be careful! Ari and I were out for a walk one evening and passed a little too close to one deer, and he made a very angry sound at us! We ended up taking a very long detour to make him happy). Also in this picture up above you can see the tie down that we had to put over our slide topper, because it was very windy here! All the sites have concrete pads plus a big gravel area, picnic tables, and fire rings. Ours was in a cul-de-sac and super easy to back in to, and all of them that we saw looked to be well-laid out and similarly easy to get into.

The drive to the campground is pretty easy as long as you avoid downtown Colorado Springs (Apple Maps routed us around it coming from I-70). Once we got the campground, there was no one to check in with; we were buying a Colorado State Park pass since we were staying so many nights between here and Cherry Creek later (if you don’t have one, you’ll need to pay a daily entrance fee in addition to campground fees), and we were able to do this at a kiosk near the entrance. Then we had to stop by the visitor center when they were open the next day to show our receipt and get the sticker for our car. The drive up to the campground from the entrance is pretty steep; our van was not entirely happy about it, but we made it!

Amenities were nice and modern; we had a restroom close to our site and a bit of a hike to the bathhouse with showers. It appeared that the showers were coin operated at some point, but they’re free now. You do have to keep pushing a button (every minute or so), and you can’t adjust the water temperature.

Our favorite amenity, though, was the trail system. Most of the trails in the state park don’t allow dogs, but the 2 miles of trails that wind around near the campground do, and it was really lovely exploring them in the evenings after it cooled down.

There is some scheduled programming in the park. While we were there a local group was hosting “moth night” over by the bathhouse/playground, so we walked over. It was a bit of a bust owing to a lack of…moths. But cool idea. Maybe sometimes there are lots of moths!