Utah's National Parks Trip: Day 4 (Capitol Reef)

Tuesday May 5th we were checking out of our rental in Moab and headed to another area of Utah. Alec had been fighting off a cold so we let him sleep in and ended up leaving around 8. We stopped in town at the adorable Bonjour Cafe for a breakfast take out. Everything looked so good... but I wasn't hungry enough to get anything. I did try a bite of my husband's egg sandwich on a croissant and really liked it. 

We set our GPS for Capitol Reef National Park and with a nearly 2 hour drive ahead of us we settled in for the haul. I read my book while also taking photos along the drive. There were long stretches with not much of any signs of civilization but the scenery kept changing. 

We saw the sign and knew we had arrived!

But we elected to drive right to the visitor's center (for the bathrooms and water bottle fill up station)... it was packed. It's a pretty small visitor's center. 

 

We tried to hike Sulphur Creek trail (that's how it's spelled) up to the waterfall but with upwards of a 1/2 dozen creek crossings we didn't make it very far. We all remarked that the creek was really high which would make for a great waterfall view but that meant stepping in more than ankle deep water... so when you can easily cross the waterfall would probably be rather pitiful. Also this was one park I was kind of annoyed that their park map wasn't all that informative as no hiking trails were listed and while I had the names of a few we might want to try we floundered around far too long figuring out where to go.  

Once again my photos loaded in a weird and random order but here are the ones Evan and I took on this aborted hike.  

 

 

an old limestone kiln from the pioneer days/ early settlers of Fruita region

 

After giving up on our hike and getting back to the visitor's center we decided to head to a nearby picnic spot to eat lunch.   

Sulphur creek runs through here too but in the opposite direction of where we were hiking

 We decided to drive the 8 mile scenic drive and added on the dirt road down Capitol Gorge.  

We decided to hike the Capitol Gorge Trail all the way to "The Tanks." It's a dry slot canyon and it was really neat hiking near such high walls on either side. We saw petroglyphs carved into the wall along the way a few times. 

The tanks were hard to photograph as these are basically cave-like pockets of water that get left behind in large rock potholes where microorganisms grow and wait out the next flood level water to release them. 

By the time we got back to our car it was nearly 3 so we drove back down the dirt road, back down the scenic drive and back through the Fruita area (where the orchards are & we ate lunch) to the Visitor's center to once again hit up the bathrooms and the water bottle refill station. 

Then we plugged in the address of our next rental and drove west out of the park (meaning we drove both of the main roads in the park from start to finish). We had nearly another 2 hour drive and while this was filled with a couple more small towns and more scrub/grasslands I was too tired to take any more photos. 

We ate dinner at Henrie's Drive In-- burgers, fries, shakes, sandwiches, etc. Then went to the grocery store down the road called Joe's Main Street Market and picked up a few days worth of food before checking into our newest AirB&B. Everyone we met was so super nice and our new rental was quite pretty. 

 

Others in this series: 

Our Trip by the Numbers 

Day 1: Travel day

Day 2: Canyonlands  

Day 3: Arches 

Day 5: Bryce Canyon

Day 6: Zion 

Day 7: Red Canyon & Travel Home 

Linking up with: