Dietz Summer Road Trip

     
Capitol Reef is only about 2.5 hours from Moab. You drive through the middle of nowhere Utah to get there, as evident by the fact we went 40+ miles without any sign of a bathroom. (Almost had a close call).

Once we got to the park we got a campsite at the Fruita campground within the park. It was a super sweet campground, no showers, but right beside the Fremont River. 

  

  
Probably one of the best actual spots for camping we have had so far. Your neighbors were not too close either. We set up camp and headed to the nearby town to check out some options for lunch. We landed in Torrey, at a place called Slackers Burger Joint. Boasting to be in the top 75 burgers?  Not sure if that is in the USA or just in Utah, but nonetheless it smelled delicious and they had wifi.

       
 
One of the things to do at Capitol Reef is the Scenic Drive. It is about 20 miles round trip from one end of the park and then back again. Before we did that they stopped at Gooseneck Point. In order to get there you had to go “off road”. John loved it, he put the the truck in 4WD, mounted the go-pro camera to the dashboard and took off. At the end of the road you get to a neat overlook where you can see the “reef” or the different layers of earth. Apparently Capitol Reef is THE go-to spot for a budding geologist. They offered a lot of Ranger guided talks about the geological makeup of the park and what not.

   

    
 
After Gooseneck, we spotted at another outlook spot called Panoramic Point and also got a better look at “The Castle” which is a rock formation near the Visitor Center that in fact looks like its namesake.

      
  
 
 
We filmed the rest of the drive on the go-pro and it was awesome. You drive through cliffs with awesome red and orange rocks on either side of you. When you get to the end of the paved road you can continue a little further if you have 4WD. We kept going and reached the trailhead for Capitol Gorge Trail. This ended up being a pretty easy 2 mile hike through huge cliffs. The coolest part was the “Pioneer Register”. Early pioneers would pass through this area and they would carve their name into the rock by standing on their wagon. The names and dates where pretty cool to see dating back well into the 1800’s. On the way back John saw a snake and we high-tailed it back to the car.

 
  
 

   

  

 

Back near the Fruita Campground (the only campground on the park, and the one we were staying at) are fruit orchards. Remnants of the early homesteaders to this area. This is the largest Nationally protected fruit orchard in the US. You can pick and eat the fruit for free. Also right near the campground entrance is the Gifford House. It is a little museum and store which sells homemade pies and cinnamon rolls. We had to pick up some and planned to eat them for breakfast the next day.

We went back to the tent, made a fire and started cooking dinner. Another storm rolled in and we were secluded to the tent. It rained pretty much until 6am the next day. Unfortunately we missed out on the night sky. Capitol Reef is supposed to have some of the best night skies in the country, but we will just have to take the Ranger’s word for it.

Since we didn’t have any cell-phone or wifi, we will just combine this post with the next days. We woke up the next day, ate our breakfast, and drove about 2.5 hours to Bryce Canyon National Park.

  

In order to get there we drove through Dixie National Forrest which separates the 2 parks and offers some killer views. Its amazing that all within 2 hours you go from Sandstone deserts to rich pine and dogwood forrest. Dixie National Forrest peaks at 9,600 ft above sea level. The drive is winding, you have to spot for deer and cow the whole time. By the time we started to descend Danielle was throughly nauseous and needed to take a Dramamine. (Which is probably why we have no pictures of this drive either). We stopped at a sweet coffee shop called “Kiva Koffeehouse” that was the only business in sight. It was a round structure (like a kiva) with big glass windows that overlooked the state park. Got some Jasmine Green Iced Tea and Espresso.

It wasn’t much longer until we reached Bryce Canyon National Park. We were able to land a spot at North Campground which is where we will be until Sunday. There are showers here! However they cost $2- only accessible by using Sacagawea gold dollars… this is the only time in our lives we ever saw this. So we set up our tent with haste because we heard thunder in the distance. (Seriously it must rain everyday in Utah). We were pretty tired so we decided to drive the park and stopped at some of the overlooks. It is about 36 miles round trip to drive the park. We stopped at Rainbow Point and saw some sweet views of the canyon.

   

 

  

We headed back to the tent, no hikes today, naps instead. So we just hung out there until dinner time. It turned into a legit storm so we headed to the closest restaurant called “Ruby’s”. It was a buffet style restaurant at a Best Western that also had a gift shop, museum and your one stop shop for all things. It wasn’t bad. We headed back to camp and went to bed. Planning to see more of Bryce Canyon tomorrow!