Best Equestrian Camping near Cora, WY

This is about Cottonwood Campground, not just the group site. It's pretty small, about 16 (?) sites. It's about 8 miles up the road from Hwy 89. The road is mostly one lane, though a little wider in some spots, so if you are towing, hope you don't encounter someone coming the other direction. There are some potholes all along the road, so if you're towing, it's slow going. 

The campground is about 1/4 mile or less from the lake. Group camp is up the right hand fork (not towards the lake). The Group site is large, with room for several tents. When I was there a church group of about 18 people with 5-6 tents was there. The sign says it requires reservations. There are 2 pull through sites up the right hand fork; the rest are back in or walk in. The walk in sites do not have tent pads or even room for a tent so I'm not sure what you would do there. The left fork goes to an equestrian area with a couple of non-equestrian sites also.

Each site has a picnic table and fire ring. I collected a lot of trash from fires rings.

There were vault toilets that were very clean to start with, though a camper pooped on seat in one of them, so gross. I don't know why people are so filthy sometimes.

There are trailheads from the CG and from the south end of the lake.

No signal on Verizon.

I enjoyed staying here.

Campground Review: As you enter the forest boundary, there is a sign alerting you to road damage. The road is pretty rough getting into the campground. You will encounter some pretty significant potholes and washouts. Just take it slow, you’ll be fine. Also, the campground is not on the lake, it is about a 1/4 mile from the lake. The campground is quite nice back in the trees. There are 2 separate forks, one for equestrians and the other allows off-road vehicles.

I camped at site 13. It was near the water supply and a couple sites away from the restroom. It was also very close to the ORV trailhead. The only bear boxes are located by the restroom, which I though was unusual. I just made sure any food items were stored away in my vehicle and locked vs storing in the bear box. The campground was about half full on a Friday. The group site does require a reservation. The site I occupied had a small iron fire ring with a grill component. Some other sites had much larger cement fire rings. The lake is spectacular! it is the prettiest shade of teal. There is a boat dock at the far end of the lake. Near the parking area there is a beach area where you can kayak and paddle board from. The lake has brown and cutthroat trout. They were jumping like crazy in the evening and the fly fishing was excellent! I used my favorite yellow caddis. It was a little more difficult from shore but the boaters were killing it. I could have easily spent the whole weekend up here. My reason for visiting this area was to get away from the madness of the Lincoln County Fair that I was in the area attending and supporting my kids in 4-H. I prefer the solitude of camping in the forest ca the commercial campground at the fairgrounds.

This campground is recommended it you are interested in the following: horseback riding, fly fishing, kayaking, paddle boarding, canoeing, hiking, ORV, wildlife viewing. Something for everyone!

Gear Review: Humangear http://www.humangear.com/ Quick Bites, Go-Tubes, FlexiBowl. As a Ranger with the Dyrt, I occasionally receive gear to field test while camping. While planning for this trip, I brought some easy dinner items to quickly toss together. Prior to leaving, I mixed up some sauce at home and transported it in my GoTube. It was perfect! The opening to the soft silicone container is nice and wide. I added some chili sauce, soy sauce, and Sriracha to the tube and replaced the lid and shook it to mix. The lid has a nice mechanism that will lock the lid to prevent it from opening during transport. When squeezed, the contents are very controlled and there is no drip once you release. I used the FlexiBowl to mix up my concoction at camp. I emptied a tin of canned chicken int the bowel. The top inch or so of the bowel will fold down to create a wider opening. I used my Go-Bites spork to mix the sauce i brought with the chicken. I ate this on crackers. It was delicious after a long day. Pardon my dark demo video, it was 9 pm when I got around to eating. Prior to having the Humangear Go-Bites double ended spork, I had a light my fire spork. I was doing a side by side demo of the strength and barely put any effort on the ends of the light my fire sport and it split in two. I'm a fan of the Humangear eating utensils. I have also use the DuoBites which are a fork and spoon that slide into each other for transport and so they stay together. I really like both utensils that i have tried! I also have to throw in a GREAT word for the Humangear CapCap! This is a huge step up in my Nalgene game! I don't know how i got by without one! No more spills down the front of my shirt! Bonus!

Great dispersed camping area. Appears to be used by a lot of hunters. There is a nice big picnic table at one site and a few spots with campfire rings and meat poles. There are no other amenities. The Greys River is right near camp as well as Spring Creek. The Spring Creek Falls trailhead has a river crossing at the 2 mile mark, sign states it is 5 miles to the falls. I didn’t venture further than that. I stayed at this campground because I was hiking up Wyoming Peak in the morning. Wyoming Peak was a wonderful hike, highly recommend! This summer has had the most amazing wildflowers!

This ski area has developed summer camping options. There is a camping area with several tent cabins, teepees, and 6 RV spots. Also a general tent camping area. Shower house is available to campers or $5 fee if just buying a shower. The 6 RV spots are very tight together and have zero shade (hence the three stars). RV spots with water and electric are $30, $20 no hookups. Tent cabins and teepees $30, bring your own tent $12. There are hiking and Mt biking trails for summer use. However, Fremont CG and Trails End CG are only $12/$6 senior per nite for "dry" RV camping and that is likely why the camping area at white pine was completely empty on a week in July. Too bad as it is a small local operation...but the close proximity to FS CGs is too much.

So I used to like this place in the last years but now I started to have second thoughts I don't know if I was unlucky this year, but I was surprised to have some disappointments here. One of the things was find a single RV site accommodating one RV, 3 cars, tent and multiple families. I understand if a single family brings one or two extra adult to stay in the RV with a couple of kids plus an UTV but overpopulating with an RV, multiple large cars, more than one single family and children(lots of) also building tent that's for me was a little disappointing. Another thing I was worry, even with that amount of people, there was a moment I went out and I saw they left the fire burning and unassisted. My list of concerns didn't stop here, I noticed some vehicles would not respect the speed limit of the campsite(in a place with kids! What is happening with this world!). In addition, because the kids were be walking around, they stressed out my dog which barked and I was the one reported! In respect to the facility I stayed inside of the RV with my dog(not the the way I had planned to spend my vacation and I did lots of rv travel, this was the first time I got reported for my dog!). On the other hand there were a day some kids were playing with some toy gun(not sure what kind, pellet, bb gun, whatever) that even our friend(yes we travel in group, everyone with their own rv site) who was few sites on the left of us that heard the shots of the toy gun. I just hopefully it wasn't a pellet/bb gun because we have people, pets and other kids around here. And there was the dog poop! This year it seems we got some bad dog owner, for the first time we encounter dog poop in some areas we used to walk.(again, what is happening with this world!!!) About the overpopulated RV site, I asked about the reception if they don't have restriction about the limit of people and cars, families, tents to receive on a rv site they pretty much I was told there is no restriction. So if you want to bring multiple families in several vehicles plus RV, built tents around the rv to accommodate everybody and all cramped in a single RV site to save money, this is the place to come. Another episode that startled me. The day we arrived, we started to unpack and I was laying on the ground the panels of the dog playpen on the grass near to the behind of the rv to assemble and suddenly a cart/utv comes driving over the grass toward to the panel I had just laid down on the grass. I signed the driver to watch for the panel and instead of stopping or slowing down he just drove over and neither stopped to apologize or check if he caused any damage, he just drove away. Either this drive was an employee or another bad customer that thought it was ok to drive over the grass area between the sites and the river. I never saw this happen in the past years I came here. This year unfortunately I didn't have much of a good experience here. Usually I don't write reviews but I want to make sure people that has certain expectation for their camping vacation like I do be aware of what they may experience here.