Tumbleweeds Campground

We overnighted here in February on our way west from Colorado. Curt Gowdy State Park is just north of I-80 making for an easy detour.

The park is comprised of two reservoirs with RV parking at each. We stayed in Tumbleweeds on the Granite Reservoir which is closer to the park entrance and brand-new visitor center. It being February we had our pick of sites. We chose T29 because it at the water's edge and level. The other sites had more of a downslope or upslope. There was electricity but no water (again, February) at the site but there was water (and coin-operated showers) available at the visitor's center. Tumbleweeds also had a dump station nearby.

There were a fair amount of Canada geese around the reservoir making for a fairly noisy night. We were also awakened by music in the middle of the night, which was a mystery seeing as we were the only people in the park!

Curt Gowdy isn't more than an hour and a half from our house, yet we are frequent flyers here. There are several reasons for this:
It's a large, well maintained campground that is spread over two reservoirs. Even on a holiday weekend, you don't feel crammed in.
There is a lot to do here. Fishing, boating, hiking, and mountain biking. In fact the singletrack had been developed in part by IMBA and you can find everything from tame to technical here.
The campsites are huge. You will not be camping on top of someone else.
It's easy to get to, but far enough from an interstate you don't feel like you are in a truck stop.
The people that work here are friendly and helpful. We can't wait for Spring and another visit here.

We arrived in late Oct, and had seen some now off the road coming in from a previous storm. So the park was rather empty though I hear it gets crowded during the summer.

There is one loop with power and water, and it being cooler temps everyone was parked there. We drove off to another loop, which was really a peninsula jutting into the water, and had the entire thing to ourselves.

People would come down during the day and fish by us, but at night it was just us. Being later in the year we didn't get enough solar to satisfy our power needs, but I only needed to run the generator an hour or two a day to top off the batteries.

The park is well maintained and the way it is laid out almost all of the sites are large and private. The biggest downside was the dumpsters. Due to it being off season the park dropped down to only two dumpsters in the park and they were only picked up once a week. There are houses out in that area that apparently do not have garbage service (they have to take their garbage to a rural drop) and according to one park employee they are known to just swing through the park and through out their trash, thus overfilling the dumpsters a day after it is emptied.

One day someone didn't bother to close the lids of the dumpsters and birds had picked at the trash and strewn it over making a real mess. To the parks credit they were on it quickly and worked hard to clean the entire thing up.

On the second day we drove down to the second reservoir and I actually liked it down there better. The road down there was a bit washboardy in spots and felt like it needed to be re-graded and that is why I guess there were so few people down there.

We spent time in both Cheyenne and Laramie, and both were a nice drive from the park.

Cell was usable (both AT&T and Verizon).

[Actual Stay 10/20/16]

Curt Gowdy is a jewel of southern Wyoming. I live only an hour and a half away and come frequently because of all it has to offer. If you are in the area and enjoy mountain biking, fishing, paddleboarding, hiking, generally beautiful scenery and/or relaxing by a lake...this spot should not be missed. There are several camping areas both lakeside and off the lake a bit, one of which (Tumbleweeds) comes equipped with electric and water (no sewer). The site that I camped in was level and did not require any leveling whatsoever, but some of the sites would require some leveling so look around and find one that suits your desire to level. Some areas of Gowdy have cell service, some areas have zero cell service.

There are pay showers available downstairs in the nice visitor center. Outside the downstairs bathrooms is even a sunscreen machine on the wall that dispenses free sunscreen! This sunscreen machine blew my mind - genius! Dump site is out-of-commission indefinitely.

We spent 4 nights here and the park is awesome. Great Lake views, plenty of space between sites, nice hiking trails and good cell and satellite service. However we were taken off guard by the lack of dump station. We didn’t dump prior to arrival so we had to be a little bit conservative with our water usage. We used the recommended dump station in Laramie at the Historic Territorial Prison. Easy on and off the freeway and large parking lot to access the dump station.

No swimming in the lake!

Arrived at site and discovered it was a mud pit! Apparently the water outlet pipe leaks! Asked to be moved to another site! Told that we could only move to a site without elec/water, even though other sites with electric/water were open! Also told that we could not get a refund for the difference in amenities if we moved to a dry campsite!

Young female working at gate told us nothing could be done!

Worst experience and treatment we ever had! We’ve been to over 100 campgrounds in 2 years and never run into someone before who could frankly careless about helping resolving the problem!

We left and will never return! Lost our money, but we weren’t staying in a mud pit with a leaking water outlet! Which she also told us couldn’t be fixed even though it was 2 o’clock In the afternoon!

We had a group campsite reserved, and it was clean and nice, but was kind of on a windswept unprotected knob.

The only complaint was the lady at the ticket taker/entrance kiosk. She was SO rude and unhelpful. She was so unpleasant that I complained at the visitors center. (It was a beautiful place by the way!) The manager apologized profusely and it seemed like this was a common occurrence with this staff member.

We explored around the lake and it was very busy with lots of people fishing from the shore line and hiking.

Way better than Gurnsey SP. View of reservoir and surroundings grass-covered hills dotted with pines was pleasant. Grass kept the dust down even though it was windy (...southern WY, ya know...). Glad we snagged an electric site in the Tumbleweeds loop because it was unseasonably warm and most sites have zero shade. Also zero privacy, but easy access. We were there mid week so it was quiet, but I’m guessing it’s busy on weekends. We would have explored the many hiking trails had it been cooler. Vault toilets were clean. Didn’t use the showers (apparently available at the Visitors center up the hill). If we ever need an overnight when we’re traveling thru this area, we’d stay here again.
Had to pay fee for water/ electric site and WY state park fee which made it costly for a 1 night stay, but still cheaper than a hotel.

The RV spots are huge and spread apart. We paid $35 for a single night stay. Partial hookups (50amp and water). Spot right next to the water.

The roads are gravel/dirt but easy to navigate. The site was reasonably level. There's a dumpster and a very basic restroom with a typical camping hole in the ground for a toilet. The restroom was clean but very smelly.

It was nice being on the lake with the views but we took our kids down to the water to skip rocks and ended up leaving pretty quickly with all the goose poop and feathers everywhere.

We were hoping to stay closer to Cheyenne for the annual Cheyenne Frontier Days, but we were happy to have a beautiful site to stay instead of a cramped RV campground closer to town.

We enjoyed our stay our site was on the water with water & electric, nice & private. Great lake for Kayaking when the wind lays down. We had a few good storms here one left us a beautiful rainbow. The park had a trail you can walk, nice easy hike near the visitor center. Volt toilets but a real bathroom with showers at the visitor center. Wyoming ground squirrels everywhere love watching them. Yellow birds, red wing blackbirds and lots of geese. The stars were so beautiful, it was dark there & the sky was vibrant. It was very quiet when we were there the first week of June 2019.

No swimming in the lake was bummed about that it's a water source for a town close by. The geese poop was all over the lake. We drove through the rest of the park to the other side of the lake, saw deer and pronghorn sheep, eagles, rabbits, and white pelicans.

My husband fished from the kayak & did some shore fishing he caught about 25 small trout.