Rainbow Lakes Campground — Hotel in Nederland

Hello I picked Rainbow Lakes Campgrounds to take a friend out on a vision quest, as , this campsite has always served me and my guest well! However I was met with NOTHING but problems from Ranger Rick! I had paid camp site 11, paid for with a guest on site! I Made arrangements with Ranger Rick that I need to go to boulder to pay my rent and bring in more supplies and may not be back till 2-3pm to pay for another two nights if my guest Don Jackson could make up his mind if he wanted to stay longer... he said not a problem. When I returned they both were drunk and Ranger thought I should put out!! We had a disagreement and I went to my tent. I could not sleep listening to them both talking sexual smack!!! So ,I pulled out of camp with ALL my gear and guest on a PAID site! I also carry a native American bundle medicine bundle. EVERYTHING is GONE!!!!!!! My guest is in Ranger Ricks site ,with ALL my expedition gear And medicine bundle are gone!!!! I have filed a police report with Nederland and Boulder County State level police and will go up the chain, and will go file a complaint to the Federal Government and BLM Land Management. I have been and all season guild up here for over 30yrs and have never had such a sexes problem before!!!!! I will also go on to tell ALL my guides NOT TO EVER USE THIS CAMPGROUND again!!!!!!!!!!!!! they both went into Ned to Drink both nights and Don Jackson was just out in detox for a 2.9 BAC last week in boulder. GO CHECK INTO THE MILL SITE AND THE OTHER PIZZA JOINT TO SEE THEIR TABS!!! I'm SURE THEIR IS A DUI AND DRUNK DRIVING FROM A RED RANGER AND PUBLIC INTOXACATION AT CAMPSITE, IN CAMPGROUNDS LEVEL!!! I WILL ALSO BE PRESSING CHARGES ON A FEDERAL LEVEL. WORST TRIP OF MY LIFE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I would like ALL me outdoor expedition gear and native bundle back. Dis enchanted...

I am only giving a bad review because the road leading to the Rainbow Lakes Campground is a stranded family waiting to happen. This does not take away the beauty of this land; I am just surprised that not all 4 of our tires popped only driving 2 to 3 miles an hour on a 5mph speed limit lol. I am from Colorado. I know the good ol town of Nederland has too much money to not invest in making sure whoever is in charge of the forest safety has the machines necessary to lay gravel and fill all of the giant holes and big rocks on the way to camp. There are hardly any places to stop if someone had an unfortunate moment on that road and there was another campground that forks with the same rocky road that was even worse than the one we went down to get to Rainbow Lakes. It was very unsafe; trucks and jeeps were visibly struggling to make it in and out of this campground. The campsite in general was magical though the roads were not. We drove around hoping to find a spot after driving through the shaky road but there were only 17 campsites at this location and it was full on a Monday. We still wanted to see it and immediately regretted it after the drive down the road. Please fix it! It is lovely up there and we wanna go more without worrying about our tires! The camp manager was a nice guy that was very helpful and sent us to Kelly Dahl (bigger campsite but not near any streams you can hike near). It was great there as well and its camp manager was also pretty cool. We cant wait to try and take a shot at camping at Rainbow Lakes another time and i hope i can update my review to the 5 stars it...

Campground was beautiful, but I have never encountered such an unprofessional campground host. Arrived and picked out a spot around 11 am, all spots were 1st come 1st serve and we had even clarified with the host what spots were available; all she had mentioned was that as long as you paid within 30 min of taking the spot it’s yours. We gave her cash in hand, wrote our receipt to claim an open site, and had even told her that we planned to go explore the area and come back in the afternoon.

Came back around 5pm to somebody setting up in our site, who when we confronted said they just talked to the campground host who had just given them our spot. All the host had to say was because we didn’t set up our camp, she wasn’t able to hold our spot. When asked what was the point of us paying then, she could not give us an answer (or atleast one that made sense). In all my years of camping first come-first served, I have never heard of such a rule… as long as you paid that is all that matters.

The least she was able to do was give us our money back after she had happily taken it in the morning, thankfully we had got lucky last-minute at Kelly Dahl campground where the hosts actually respected the 1st come-1st serve rule, we drove by plenty of sites that were reserved with no one set up, but reservation was...