Today was our last day of vacation. Steve goes home tomorrow and he's leaving me behind so I can attend a conference in Park City, UT. We stayed in Escalante, UT, last night and had about an hour and a half drive to Capitol Reef National Park. Our drive was along the rest of Scenic Byway 12 which is incredible! The views on this road are like looking at another planet. You get a feeling of just how big our country is when driving this road. Comparing it to the east coast, everything at home seems so tiny.
We spent all day in Capitol Reef National Park today, which was park #200 for us! We're almost halfway! Our halfway point will be during our Michigan trip this summer unless we can squeeze in a long weekend somewhere (doubtful though). This park is a lot like Scenic Drive 12 - it seems like it's another planet, but it's beautiful! It's a very interesting park because it has all the hiking and outdoors-y type of activities that you associate with parks, but it also has other points of interest, like the Fruita district which has active fruit orchards. When in season, you're welcome to eat what you pick while in the park (or if you take some home, there is a small fee for that). Fruita was a Mormon settlement in the 1800's, so there was also the Gifford House which had some information about the settlement as well as homemade pies and ice cream for sale. We always love it when it is required to eat food in order to experience something about the park, and the pie and ice cream did not disappoint! :-) We enjoyed a peach pie and we tried each flavor of ice cream - strawberry, chocolate, and vanilla. The strawberry was our favorite!
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| Park 200!! |
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| Peach pie |
We started our hiking with the Fremont River Trail which starts as a nice, easy hike along the Fremont River (bet you didn't see that coming!). It's only a one-mile long hike, but the last half-mile gains over 450 feet in elevation along a very steep cliff with a very narrow foot path. I will fully admit, I gave up pretty quickly at that point because heights terrify me! Sometimes I wonder why the park service doesn't put a guardrail in places, and this would have been a very suitable place for one, but I digress. Steve continued on to get some gorgeous views of the canyon, but he told me I made the right choice to skip the rest of the hike because there was a part where he had only enough room in the path to put one foot.
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| View of the canyon on the Fremont River hike |
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| There were about 6 more deer in the area on the Fremont River hike |
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| On the scenic drive |
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| On the scenic drive - beautiful, right? |
We did part of the Grand Wash hike next so we could hike in the canyons. The reason we didn't do all of it is because the ranger in the Visitor's Center told us that if we do the first mile, we'll get the idea of what the rest of the hike looks like (which was only another mile longer). Not to mention, this hike has no shade. Thankfully, we were hiking this in 60-degree weather, so it was still pretty pleasant. But if you are hiking this in summer, you will need lots of water and lots of sunscreen!
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| Grand Wash hike |
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| Grand Wash hike |
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| Capitol Dome - how Capitol Reef got part of it's name |
After Grand Wash, we did the Hickman Bridge hike. This is about a mile one way, and gains about 400 feet in elevation. Again, this hike has no shade either, and it's essentially uphill the whole way. But at the end, you see a pretty cool natural bridge that is 125 feet high.
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| Hickman Bridge |
We ended the day in Capitol Reef doing a very quick walk on a boarded path to see the petroglyphs. This is a very easy walk - very short, no uphill, and sort of shaded.
And that's the trip! We had a great time and Utah is simply beautiful! Thanks for following the blog, too. I'll try to add some posts in between our trips to catch you up on some of the parks we've been to, but that won't be happening for a little while since I'll still be in Utah for a conference next week. I hope our trip has inspired you to "Find Your Park" on your next vacation! Don't forget, the park service is celebrating it's centennial this year, so lots of cool things are happening in the parks!
