Wednesday, June 10, 2015

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.





13 comments:

  1. Boy I can see why you like this. Your pictures are wonderful, the site looks terrific and the weather looks perfect. What a great place. Now tell me it is also affordable. Too bad about their dump site. I guess you have to take one of those two routes when you leave. LOL

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  2. From the pics I can tell why you are smitten with the park. I will make a note of this park and see if this will be on our way in fall coming down.

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  3. That park is a total score! It looks like just the kind of place that would make our "favorites" list, too. Seems to have everything (except a dump station, but who cares when everything else is so spectacular). The weather even appears to be perfect for your explorations. Beautiful photos. :-)

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  4. What a gorgeous park! Will you be doing the bike skills building trail? I like their sign and the reminder that it's ok to walk. I frequently walk!

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  5. That looks like a really nice park. When we were in that area we stayed at Vedauwoo Campground (NFS) just off 80 east of Laramie. We liked it a lot and keep thinking we should go back and spend more time around there. Nice to see all that water in the lakes!

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  6. What a beautiful place. I loved the hikes, the trees, the water, the butterfly, and your site.

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  7. Wow, everything is so green! It's usually not like that this time of the year.

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  8. I can see why...what a gem! The hikes right out of the park sure make it easy to relax and enjoy the peace and quiet of such a beautiful place. Love all the green, the trees, the waterfall, the boulders, and the butterfly on the asters! What a life!

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  9. put that one on the list when we get thru that area...

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  10. I love the wide open, green spaces of the campground (as long as there's no strong winds), and your pics of the trails through the boulders make the area look really perfect. Love the goose family and the butterfly among the wild daisies. I can definitely understand the love!!

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  11. We loved that park as well! We were there earlier this year. I enjoys some challenging mountain biking and had a blast. We also enjoyed many trails on foot as well. It was the VERY off season, back in October, so we had the place all to ourselves. We plan to get back in the warmer weather at some point.

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  12. Great to see lots of water and plenty of green. There have been many years when that has not been the case. Don't you just love it when you "stumble" across an unexpected good find.

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  13. I can understand why you enjoyed this park. Great trails with lots of very cool rocks with water:) I love the open area around your site. Super photo of the butterfly:) We'll have to check it out as we return west.

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