Capitol Reef National Park – 2021, Epic Road Trip v3
Day 10 of Epic Road Trip v3. Capitol Reef was our destination and the 5th national park on this trip. Capitol Reef is about 4 hours away from Zion NP (our previous location) which was one of our shorter drives. I didn’t know a whole lot about this national park, but no worries because we had our trusty GyPSy audio tour app to educate us! My biggest question about this park was about the name. We learned that the park was named “reef” because the large rock formations were compared to a reef in the ocean which hindered travel and “capitol” because one of the rock formations looks like the capitol dome. Now you know! 😉
We learned a whole lot about rocks at this park! At some point our brains needed a rest from all of the rock talk. ha!
The iconic barn. You can see what a little oasis this area was due to a river flowing through here!
My favorite part of Capitol Reef was our campground. It was very quiet and peaceful. The history of this park is that it is a former town of Mormons. Their settlement consisted of about 10 families who lived here from 1880 until 1955. The orchards from this community were taken over by the park and have been maintained by the park service. The orchards produce apples, cherries, peaches, pears, plums and nectarines. We were able to go over and pick the ripe fruit. The fruit was also a big hit with the local deer and marmots who would graze there every day. One night the deer even wandered on to our campsite!
The fruit we picked was not very big, but it was good and so fun to just wander over there and pick fresh fruit!
This community even had a one room school house.
We also enjoyed the homemade cinnamon rolls and pies which the park is famous for, and I got a fun sticker for my new water bottle.
We took a couple of hikes. One was to this beautiful arch, which is actually named “hickman bridge”.
On another hike we went into a “wash”, which we learned is the path which the water flows through when it rains. Because the rocks and land is not porous, the water just flows along so you have to watch out for flash flooding!
In the evening we went to a Rangers program about bighorn sheep. I now know the difference between mountain goats and bighorn sheep!! I was really hoping I’d see some sheep on this trip, but, spoiler alert – I did not.
Our campsite at Fruita was another primitive site, so we used our generator on occasion to cool down the camper, warm up the water for our showers, and used the microwave. I’m loving the ability to do that!
You can see the other stops along our 19 day Epic Road Trip v3 here. Thanks for stopping by!
