After our night’s stay in Casper, we debated whether to head to the state park in Glendo or Guernsey. Both looked nice but we landed on Guernsey State Park. We didn’t have a reservation but we figured there wouldn’t be a problem given the time of year and it being a weekday.

Skyline Campground

We stopped at the park gate and were directed to one of the first-come-first-served campgrounds (the park has 19 campgrounds with 250 sites). This particular campground — Skyline Campground — had newly installed electric sites and we ended up having the whole place to ourselves for the night.

Tunnel Mountain Trail with train!

There was an access point to the Tunnel Mountain Trail so we laced up our hiking shoes, grabbed our walking poles, and headed up the side of the hill. We hadn’t given the name of the trail much thought until we realized that we were, in fact, on top of a tunnel. Turns out the  Guernsey-Wendover Cutoff included 3 tunnels through the mountain at one time, although one of them — Guernsey Tunnel No. 2 — was replaced with a bridge due to structural problems. The highlight of our walk was watching a coal train approach and enter into one side of the tunnel.

A castle and another historic toilet???

After resting up after our hike we then drove to see what else the park had to see. Top of the list was what is known as “The Castle”, which is an elaborate stone picnic shelter built in 1933 as a demonstration project for the newly formed Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). Near the castle is a stone latrine that is still in use. It is known as the “Million Dollar Biffy“, apparently named by the workers because it took so long to build. We had to laugh because we had run across a different historic toilet just a few days earlier in Saratoga. Was this our toilet tour?

Time to call it a day

There is only one bathhouse for the entire park, so after our afternoon adventures we took a short drive from our campsite for Lisa to wash her hair. It was at this point that she started not to feel well. To be continued…