Capitol Reef National Park

We're on the road in Utah, continuing south in search of warm weather. We weren't on the road for long before we saw the landscape changing. Tall walls in shades of red and white were suddenly our stunning road companions.

The red colors deepened, as we headed into our next destination--Capitol Reef National Park.

This park got its name from the unusual rock formations that line Highway 24. "Capitol" comes from  the white domes that look like the national capitol. "Reef" comes from the challenge these mountains gave to the early settlers making their way west.

Because we didn't get here until afternoon, we found the campground inside the national park was already full. It's a first-come-first-served park, and we obviously weren't first today. There are no utilities and it costs $20 per night to park in the campground. So we filled up our water tank, and headed for a disbursed camping site along the highway about 7 miles west of the national park. We don't have a bad view considering it's free camping!

Some of the pioneers coming west stayed here, naming their tiny community Fruita. Settled by Mormons in the 1880's, they found that fruit trees grew well at the foot of the tall sandstone cliffs. The national park has continued to keep these orchards active, replacing trees as the old ones have died.

This fruit is available to national park guests. Of course the peaches, apricots and cherries are all finished for the year, but this is prime season for the apples. Guests can pick and eat as much fruit as they want while meandering through the orchards.

We found red, green, and gold apples with all different flavors. It was like an apple smorgasbord right off the trees! This just became Denisa's favorite national park ever!

If  you want to take fruit out of the orchard, there are scales and a lock box for your payment to cover $2 per pound of fruit.

We have decided to stop by the orchards every day for a snack. We feel good about that decision, knowing that the ripe fruit is falling from the trees and going to waste.

The local deer are part of the clean-up crew in charge of eating the fallen apples. Of course, they are leaving behind some other (ahem) debris that we are having to sidestep in the orchard.

There was a group of does and their fawns in the orchard we were snacking in. The bucks were resting in the field nearby.

Other wildlife must be nearby, and these guys are obviously hard on the orchards. It looks like the local beavers in the Fremont River have been gnawing down some of the trees closest to the water.

Even though the fruit trees have been replaced over the years, there are still some of the original shade trees left from the earliest settlers. The gnarly old trees are still standing in the section of Capitol Reef National Park that pays homage to the Mormon settlers. 

Several old buildings are still standing in this area, including the Gilmore cabin. 

Now turned into a museum/store, its most famous merchandise are the home-made pies and cinnamon rolls. Yes, we had to buy one of the pies, but only to be sure that it was as good as the reviews we had read.

That brings us to the real reason we are visiting Capitol Reef. Not for the pies or the apples--it's for the great hiking. It was on one of those hikes that we just happened to start up a conversation with a fellow hiker. We didn't take a picture of her, but we found out that she bakes those pies and rolls and delivers them to the park every day. We did take a picture of Mark, enjoying the rocky view from our first hike in the park.

That first day we picked a short hike, and found ourselves at Hickman Natural Bridge. It's hard to get a sense of the size of the bridge. But Denisa doesn't look very big as she stands under it on the left side of the picture below.

We tried taking pictures from the other side of the bridge. Even though Mark climbed up on a big boulder on the left, he still looks very small under that opening that is 133 feet high.

Here's the last picture of the bridge, just because the blue skies are so beautiful and we took so many photos. You also might notice that we have the bridge to ourselves. After visiting very busy parks like Glacier and Yellowstone, it is certainly nice to have small crowds and open places in the parking lots!

We stopped at another bridge on the way back to the car, though it wasn't near as impressive in size. We managed to get several miles of exercise on this trail, and we're looking forward to some longer hikes before we leave.

By the time we left the park, the setting sun was lighting up the sandstone formations along the highway. We have obviously wandered into another of God's wonders today.

We stopped in at Sunset Point, but the sun was too low in the sky to reach into the canyons by now. This is a picture down the goosenecks. That's national park talk for the winding canyon that was carved by Sulphur Creek, cutting gooseneck-like curves through these walls of sandstone.

Our camping spot along the highway has filled up with fellow travelers. It's time to get home and start the generator so we can cook some supper and charge our RV batteries. We can tell we're really going to like it here at Capitol Reef!