By Matt Hoisch

Margaret and Steve Albertson are leafing through a big book

“You could use this as a booster seat. It’s so thick,” Margaret says. “This is kind of like the Yellow Pages of RV travel.”

The RV Travel and Savings Guide is about 1400 pages. They’ve brought it to plan their trip in Margaret’s parent’s RV that’s taken them from LA to a spot in the Telluride campground. But they’re one of the lucky ones because they planned ahead for the campground.

“We made the reservation in July,” Margaret says.

”In the past, [the] Town of Telluride has been a first-come-first-served campsite. But with COVID, we had to move to an online reservation system,” says John Wontrobski, Projects Coordinator with the town’s Parks and Recreation Department. “Either way, the campground has been packed. I don’t have numbers for it, but it’s somewhere near 99% full. Generally people will call and say they want to stay in an RV in town. The first thing I tell them is that Telluride is not particularly RV friendly.”

That’s because only 10 of the town’s 33 campsites can accommodate RVs, and there’s a local law against sleeping in vehicles parked on public property.

Paul Jackson and his fiancée have been on a two-month COVID-induced road trip with a trailer. They’re both engineers and can work remotely. But they didn’t think to make any reservations like the Albertsons. So they had a bit of a surprise when they got to Telluride.

“The biggest thing we saw was these signs about sleeping in your vehicle. That was the first time we experienced that. And that’s on public roads, but that’s the first time we saw anything like that on our trip,” Jackson says.

So, they paid to park in a private lot in town for the day.

“At least for today we'd do this and pay the money to explore and then figure out a plan for tonight,” he explains.

Wontrobski says more driving travelers were predicted at the start of the summer with COVID, and that’s what the town’s seen. And since there’s limited RV capacity in town, he says he tries to send them to other campgrounds in the area.

But other campsites aren’t faring much better.

“Literally every campsite has been at capacity since the middle of June. And usually we get some breaks in there. But not this year,” says Megan Eno, Norwood District Ranger for the Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre, and Gunnison National Forests. She says in addition to more car and tent camping, there’s been a significant increase in RV camping this year. And those RVs, she notes, can leave lasting impacts on the land. Especially when drivers can’t find spots in already-filled campsites. 

“And as a result, what you’re seeing is people pulling off of forest roads into meadows that are very easily impacted,” Eno explains. “Once those tire tacks are there, they’re here to stay. And then the next person that drives by sees those tire tracks and is like ‘Oh, that must be a designated spot,’ and pulls off into it.”

So, Eno’s turning to management. She says her team has dusted off an old plan from the 90s to add 50 to 75 campsites around Priest Lake that would include more RV sites. She hopes they can move quickly and take advantage of new funding available through the recently passed Great American Outdoors Act. But even then, she estimates, any new sites wouldn’t be ready for three to five years. So, she’s also planning for more signage and staff on the ground to help out for the coming seasons. Because the RV increase, she thinks, is here to stay.

“I think the days of just car camping and the old family station wagon are probably behind us and we’re trying to brace ourselves for this new way that people want to recreate, which is far more motorized than we’ve seen in the last few years,” Eno says.

One data point for that prediction is Margaret and Steve Albertson. Back at the Telluride Campsite, they confess their trip has converted them.

“It’s pretty great. We have never even thought to venture out in my parent’s RV,” Margaret says. “And now we’re like ‘Why didn’t we take this thing sooner? It’s pretty awesome."‘“

But the 1400 page RV travel guide is a bit much. Margaret says after a few minutes, she just looks for directions on her phone.