Best Dog-Friendly Camping near Medicine Bow-Routt NFs & Thunder Basin NG

This review is for the abundant dispersed camping, not the two official camping loops.

I love this place. With an asterisk. This seven mile dirt road is filled with sprouts of other dirt roads that is stunningly beautiful and fairly quiet. Beautiful spots to camp and you can tuck yourself away behind a rock formation and far from your neighbors. 

Great rock formations for climbing, mountain biking, abundant Aspen trees for your hammock and right on the edge of Curt Gowdy State Park, which has a broad network of wonderfully maintained mountain bike and hiking trails and plenty of motorized and non motorized water sports. Showers and flush toilet bathrooms and a camp store can be found in here in non-COVID days. 

The animal life is great too. We've had moose and pronghorn deer right at our campsite. And that gets me to…the asterisks. Not only are moose around, but so are mice. In 2 of my 7 visits here we have taken on mice. The last time it was a lot of mice. I mean a lot of mice. I now carry mouse traps with me because of this place. We had tens of mice inside our camper for two days straight. Eating our food and gnawing on wood. Ended up bringing some of them home with us too. The cat got 3. I trapped another 5. Our garbage can was like a Civil War photograph for mice. Also, this place has become popular and can get a little overrun on the weekends with people running generators, shooting shotguns and running around on OHVs. Hard to be more annoying. Last, Wyoming is synonymous with wind. So be prepared for that possibility.

Leave no trace (and run no generators)

This spot was a very pleasant surprise and quite frankly didn’t think this part of Wyoming would be so pretty! The sites are very well spaced so once you’re parked, you feel completely alone. There was a decent amount of road traffic but that wasn’t bothersome to us. We found a lot of good walking/hiking nearby with the closest being the medicine bow picnic area that we walked to from our site. We drove down nearly to the end of the road and are really glad we did because the sites were really nice. Cell crevice wasn’t great on t-mobile. Loved how close to the highway this spot was but how far away it felt. The gravel road was one of the most well maintained we’ve been on. Great easy access with trailers of just about any size. Would return!

Big Creek Lakes Campground, Colorado (close to Wyoming border): camping here is only open for 3 months out of the year: June, July & August. It's camping at over 9,000ft elevation and requires for you to be extra prepared for snow even in the summer months, bears, mountain lions, mosquitos, aggressive horse flies, leeches, strong winds, thunder storms and altitude sickness. They do provide water which tastes fresh like newly melted snow. You can boat, fish, even hunt at some spots with a permit, hike, and swim at your own risk (can be cold, leeches, snakes). It is truly beautiful up here and the drive up the Poudre river makes it worth it. You can also spend the day rafting down the river or fishing.

We were up at Brooklyn Lake over the holiday weekend. The campground was closed but apparently in Wyoming a campground becomes dispersed if it’s not officially open. We had to walk our things in to our site as the gate was down but it was worth it. We got a site just above the lake and it was quiet and very beautiful. Bring bug spray as the mosquitos are very bad. There were three trail heads at the campground all with multiple hike options which was really nice to have access to some beautiful hikes without getting into the car. The toilets were even open despite the campground being closed.

This campground had great facilities and sites, especially for only$10 nightly. If you stay at the loop furthest from the highway, you feel like you’re deeper in wildness because you no longer see or hear the highway traffic. We camped here because it’s so close to the nearby world-class rock climbing. It did get pretty windy during or stay(gusts up to 30mph) but otherwise our stay in mid-August had comfortable temperatures. The bathrooms were pristine. Campsites has ample distance between each other and we had no issues with noisy neighbors.  Plenty of well-behaved dogs - dogs are allowed everywhere as long as they are leashed. Unfortunately the water hookup has been off for a couple seasons, so you need to drive 15 minutes away to get potable water. The scenery is beautiful during the day and night. We plan to stay here again!

We travelled to Vedauwoo on a suggestion from friends and were tremendously surprised by the beauty of the area nestled between Cheyenne and Laramie.

We camped on the dispersed area just to the east of the campground in a pleasant spot in the trees and boulders a good distance from the dust of the road. One of the great things about dispersed camping in this area is it affords some distance between campers and gives you a sense of your own space.

August weather in Wyoming is plenty warm during the day and cool in the night and it met our expectations. The fabled Wyoming breeze was actually less than expected. The only drawback was the fire ban in effect due to the wildfires in both Wyoming and nearby Colorado.

We would encourage visitors to explore the various trails as each one we set out on rewarded us with magnificent views and the surprise of a swift creek feeding a number of picture perfect beaver ponds.

This is a great camping area and is close enough to Laramie for any needs. Vedauwoo is well worth a visit. Thank Wyoming!