Completely Smitten by Curt Gowdy State Park

We've fallen in love with another state park and this one's in Wyoming: Curt Gowdy State Park. Named after Curt Gowdy, a Wyoming native, renowned sportscaster in the 1960's - 1970's and accomplished outdoorsman; the park is located midway between Mr. Gowdy's high school home town of Cheyenne and his college town of Laramie.

There are three reservoirs in the park for fishing and boating (no swimming), multiple camping areas, an archery range, 35 miles of trails for hiking, biking and horseback riding all set among rolling hills, lush meadows, stands of ponderosa pine and aspen and large granite formations. During our stay in early June the reservoirs were completely full and the hills were emerald green.

Mountain biking is popular here, but challenging on most trails. We were quite happy to just hike the trails...we hiked at least 15 of the 35 miles of trails and were completely enchanted with the park.

Wyoming State Park websites are not the greatest, so the campground information may not be completely accurate, but they are supposed to have 145 camp sites of which only 35 sites are reservable. There are only 15 water/electric sites, most of which were reservable from May 15 to Sept. 15. We had decent 4G Verizon signal using our booster.

We reserved a water/electric site, and were very glad we did since we arrived on a Saturday and the park was almost full. Water/electric sites are well separated with a large concrete pad and picnic table and BBQ pit, roads are gravel. Many of the dry camp sites are extremely spacious and well situated for water views. Many sites have some slope to them.

The parks dump station is closed indefinitely, apparently the leach field was not large enough to support the high volume of campers that use this park. There are free dump stations in both Laramie and Cheyenne about 24 miles West or East.

We drove into Laramie one evening to have a delicious dinner at The Crowbar, and what a drive it was! Highway 210 took us through Medicine Bow National Forest where numerous dirt roads took off to hiking and boondocking areas...clearly there is much more to explore in this area.

View of the Tumbleweed campground, our rig is the large white one in front.

Granite Springs Reservoir.

On the Stone Temple trail.

There are short "play areas" for mountain bikers off the main trails.
Note the last line item: Remember it is OK to walk!

Marmot

The Stone Temple.

Distant view of Granite Springs Reservoir and storm clouds brewing from El Alto trail.

Crow Creek.

Hidden Falls

Hidden Falls close up.

The Chameleon rock feature.

Boulders, boulders every where!

Granite Springs Reservoir dam is made from the local granite.
It's been a rainy spring and the reservoir is FULL and pouring over the spillway just out of sight.

We saw many tiny streams throughout our hikes due to the abundant rain this spring.

Along Middle Kingdom trail giant slabs of granite formed part of the hillsides.

Crystal Reservoir had the oddest looking dam we'd ever seen...it was also pouring over the spillway.

A dry camp site along Crystal Reservoir.

There are gorgeous views from every trail.

Family time!

Our site, #26 in the Tumbleweeds camp loop.

Another view of our site.

Nice view from our site when the waterfront site was empty.

Watching the geese from the waterfront site.
You can see some of the dry sites across the water.