Been camping in Wyoming's Snowy Range without any cell/Internet coverage so catching up on blogs...
Drove from Encampment, WY about 30 miles east on Hwy. 130 to Ryan Park Campground in the Snowy Range; this is the Medicine Bow/Routt National Forest in southeast Wyoming. What this Forest Service (FS) campground lacks in facilities (no hookups), it makes up for in beauty and solitude. The campground’s 49 campsites are located at 8,000’ elevation next to a small stream. The buffer of lodgepole pine trees, stream noise, and the minimal traffic make it easy to forget this campground is only a couple of hundred feet off Hwy. 130. All sites at this campground are reservable and most of them were reserved for the Holiday weekend when I arrived so I was happy to find a nice, level pull-through site (Site #34) that fit my rig. The town of Ryan Park (not sure it is an actual town because it is mainly just a few cabins and other facilities for tourists) is located about a mile east on Highway 130.
Like others in this Forest, the Ryan Park Campground has been clear-cut to remove beetle-killed lodgepole pine; this means no shade, which is ok with my solar panels but it can make for warm afternoons. Luckily, being at 8,000’ elevation helps to moderate the temp and since it is Wyoming, there is typically a breeze:). While walking Forest Road (FR) 221 this morning, I thought about my days with the FS; yes, I was not present for much of this walk:) For two years as an undergraduate at the University of Missouri - Columbia, I worked as a biological technician in the Missouri Ozarks studying the effects of silvicultural treatments (i.e., methods for harvesting timber); I continued ornithological research for an additional 3 years on the Green Mountain National Forest in VT while a graduate student at UVM. Walking on FRs through clear-cuts and forests, brought back a lot of memories.
Unlike my previous camping (Bottle Creek), Ryan Park Campground has a volunteer campground host that lives here during most of the season (5/31 - 10/31); a nice couple from IL.
From time-to-time, the thought of being a campground host crosses my mind. In addition to free camping, there is the advantage of meeting a lot of new people; however, the big disadvantage to me (at this stage in my life) is being tied down to one location for 3-5 months. Another disadvantage is dealing with the public on holiday weekends:( Typically, as at this campground, the host site has full hookup, even if the other sites lack utilities.
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