Horseshoe Bend Campground in Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area

Have you ever heard of Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area (NRA)?  Nor had I, but Barry had read about it at some point and added it to our travel bucket list.  Boy, am I glad he did. This turned out to be one of the most special and beautiful places we've had the pleasure of visiting during our travels.

After leaving Garryowen, Montana, we headed south to Lovell, Wyoming, the closest town to the south unit of Bighorn Canyon NRA, about 10 miles away.  We stopped in town briefly at the visitor's center, then made our way up the road to the entrance, then just a bit farther to the Horseshoe Bend Campground.

They forgot to mention "bicycling"

Nice view towards the canyon from the visitor's center

The drive into the canyon was beautiful and got more awe-inspiring the closer we got.

When we turned on the road to the campground, I think we both said "Wow!" at the same time.

The "wow" moment

Horseshoe Bend is a first-come first-serve (no reservations) campground with a mix of sites with electric and water hookups and primitive sites.  When we arrived on a Thursday afternoon around 2 pm, we first drove into the A loop, where all the sites with hookups were taken.  Uh-oh. We started getting a little nervous about getting a good site. 

Fortunately, we were rewarded in the B loop, where at least six sites with hookups were still available..  In fact, we liked the B loop better than the A loop, simply because there were fewer campers and rigs.  The site we ultimately chose had great separation from other sites, a view of the lake, and vistas.  We felt very fortunate!  Even better, we paid only $10 per night (half price) with Barry's senior park pass, since this is a National Recreation area and part of the National Park Service (NPS).

​Our site doesn't look all that exciting from this angle...

But how about from this one?

I couldn't stop taking photos of our gorgeous site and experimented with some different camera settings to get some interesting effects!

Here's an overall view of the campground showing Pearl on the far left.  You can see just how far we were from other sites even though the campground was mostly full.

There was a short hiking trail from the campground that led over to the Bighorn RIver. It was so windy the first time we hiked it that it was almost hard to walk as we got near the edge of the canyon.  Fortunately the winds calmed down the next day.

Bighorn River from the farthest point of the hiking trail

Here are a few other shots taken from around the campground at various times of day.  We had beautiful sunsets as well as lovely sunny days.  And we took an epic bike ride on the canyon road, which I'll cover in the next post.

Bighorn Lake

"Angel" in the sky