Blue Mesa Recreational Ranch- Gunnison, Colorado (May 2018)

This is the first time we camped in a place that billed itself as a ranch. Our mental vision of the Cartwright boys on the Ponderosa Ranch was very different from what we encountered at this RV ranch. For example, I don’t remember seeing Hoss or Little Joe Cartwright having to contend with blowing dust. But, the reality at the RV ranch was that dust was a way of life.

Blue Mesa Recreational Ranch

First, this is a membership type park. You are supposed to buy something similar to a timeshare to camp in this park. Unsold and unused sites are rented out on a day-by-day basis.

Sign at the entrance to the campground

As with most campgrounds, there are positives and negatives about this park. I’ll start by pointing out some of the positives I noticed. 

• The park had a nice swimming pool
• The park had a hot tub
• The park had a good clubhouse 
• The park's chef cooked huge cinnamon rolls ($1.50) and biscuts with sausage gravy ($2.50) one morning while we were there

Some of the “not so positive” things I noticed:

• Our site was mostly dirt with a few stones thrown in
• Some people in our caravan were unable to level their trailers and had to be reassigned to a different site
• Utility connections were a distance from the trailers. We ended up with a 20+ foot run to the sewer connection. Several Airstreamers in our group ended up having to use the dump station because they could not reach the sewer connection 
• Our water connection was in a deep trench. To make things worse, the trench was on a hill. This made working with the water both scary and dangerous 

Here are some specifics about this campground:

• Our site had 20 and 30 amp electrical service. According to AllStays, the park does not have 50 amp service 
• Our site was one of the few in our caravan group that approached level
• We had no service from AT&T at our site
• You could purchase WiFi service from the park. Several of our friends said the purchased WiFi was terrible. 
• Our site had a cable TV connection that brought in ABC, CBS, FOX and NBC from Denver
• The park had clean and up-to-date restrooms and showers. An annoyance was that the showers operated by pushing a button that would give you about 30 seconds of water at a temperature set by the park. 
• The park had a nice laundry facility 

The big draw for the timeshare was the watershed lake created by the dam about a mile down the road. Many of the people camping here brought their boats and spent their days on the lake.

The park a few miles from the campground

Our group at Black Canyon National Park