Silver Bell Campground

Campsite
You can't go wrong here. Every site is beautiful. You can constantly hear the river behind you. We stayed at site 1. I liked our little site. Though it was at the beginning of the entrance to the grounds, we weren't bothered by that at all, and I'm normally a dispersed camper. We were in relative privacy from site 2 and 3. We could see people at site 2 and 3 but any boys was muffled by the sound of the river. The road is close by, and I did hear some vehicles driving by, but again, with the river I can't complain.

I like that the tent pad is separate from the fire area. That optimizes space. Our picnic table and fire pit had partial shade in the morning and evening which helped keep us cool. Some stores have no shade. As far as river access, the bank was too steep behind our site, so has to go behind site 3 and 4, where they have access. In my opinion, the river was moving too quickly to play in. Though people had towels. There are plenty of places for kids to explore and rocks to climb. It's a wonderful place.

Bathroom
The bathrooms were a few minute's walk up the hill. They smelled like bleach, so they do seem to sanitize something. The toilets were okay. They weren't thoroughly clean. Once I Clorox wiped the front base, it was better. There were flies and bees in the bathroom. It was worse then the lid wasn't closed.

There were bees and flies all over the grounds. The flies didn't bother us as much as the bees. They were hovering around our food and water bottles. I managed to get stung two times. I considered it a battle wound and wouldn't let that deter me from returning. I'm rough and don't care too muchh about being stung. Just be prepared

Water access
There is NO WATER at this and none at Silver Queen up the road.. This was a bit inconvenience. Bring your own water for cleaning and extinguishing fires. We used two leftover gallon jugs to fill up at the river to smother the fire. When I asked the rangers where water spigots were, the rangers said, "at the top."I drove all the way up and couldn't find "the top," unless they meant the actual Maroon Bells scenic area which was a 20 minute drive from silver bell. Never found it. That was rough. Our hands were filthy dirty even with hand sanitizer. We like to have a little sink.

My final frustration was getting consistent info. There seems to be a disconnect between the rangers at maroon bells and the white river rangers. When I called, even though they knew I was a camper, I was told that I had to reserve a room that I could see the Bells and pay $10 got each 4 hour time slot.i parts $20 total for 2 days. When I arrived, the rangers told me I shouldn't have had to pay. Overall that's it. I'm posting pictures of as many campsites that I could find. Sorry this is so long.

We stayed just up the road at Silver Queen CG but I did a drive thru to check out Silver Bell and also to get some water since our spigot was broken in our campground. Check out my review at Silver Queen for some general info on the campgrounds along the Maroon Bells road.

Here I just wanted to make a couple of comments. I liked Silver Queen CG better if you're in a camper. Silver Bell will accommodate a camper, but pretty much only popups or some kind of really small TT. Sites 1, 5 and 7 are your only options if you're in a camper.

Now, if you're in a tent, I really liked sites 8-13. They are more in the open but have some amazing views of the sky, the adjoining mountain side and also of the Maroon Bells off in the distance. There's a short walk to these sites from the parking lot, but it's not far at all.

You can't beat this location and any campground you stay in will be amazing, especially being so close to the Bells!