At the end of May (right before Memorial Day), we decided to do a fun family vacation with just our little family so we decided to check out Capitol Reef. I haven't been there since I was little and Nate had never been there. We were able to get a hotel close to the entrance that had a gorgeous view. It wasn't the nicest hotel, but when you have views like that, it doesn't matter so much.
Logan was having fun with the camera in all of these
We drove out on Thursday, checked into our hotel, ate dinner at Slacker's Burger Joint, and just drove into the park to the visitor's center. That evening, Kylie decided to learn to walk!
On Friday, we got up bright and early (because that's what our kids do), ate the continental breakfast, then headed out to the park. Our first stop was Panorama Point. It was just a little hike up a hill to a lookout.
We drove a little farther down that road and came to Gooseneck Trail. It was a steep hike, but very short to another lookout. This one looked over the river and how it's been cutting away at the rocks to form "goosenecks." It was just beautiful.
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| Someone kindly volunteered to take our picture |
Then we drove over to the Fruita school house. Mormon pioneers had settled this area and they have some of the old buildings restored to show what life was like back then in Fruita. The school house was also used for church, I believe.
Then we hiked a little to see some petroglyphs. I'm not sure if Logan really understood how cool they really are because he just can't wrap his little mind around how old they are. On the trail, we saw a bunch of caterpillars on the railings and some were in cocoons. Logan really liked that!
After that, we went back to our hotel to each lunch and to have a little rest. We were hoping Kylie would take a nap, and Logan was being so good at being quiet, but it just didn't happen. After lunch, we hiked Hickmon Bridge. It's a natural bridge, or arch. It was pretty hot in the beginning, but we got a little sprinkle of rain at the top at the bridge. It was a really fun hike. Not too long, not too hard, but it was a real hike. Logan did an awesome job with it! He is a great little hiker! Kylie fell asleep for a bit in the carrier. It was cool too because we got to hike under the bridge and made a little loop around it.
After that, we did some driving and visited Behunim cabin. The Behunim's were a pioneer family who had 13 kids and lived in this tiny cabin. I just tried to imagine having that many kids in there, but I bet they were outside working or playing except at meal times and night time. There were some beautiful cliffs behind the cabin where I can imagine the kids climbing all over it.
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| Selfie in a little hole in the rock |
Then we stopped at Sculpting and Master piece viewpoint to view the Capitol Dome. This is part of where Capitol Reef gets its name. This dome looks a bit like a Capitol building.
Nate and Logan "hiked" down to the river while Kylie and I stayed at the viewpoint
Then we drove to an old blacksmith shop and went across the street to the Ripple Rock Nature Center. When we got there, a ranger was talking about the geography of the place and even though we weren't there for the whole thing, he gave Logan a Junior Ranger badge. Inside the center, there were a lot of science activities for the kids to do. They had tons of fun.
After that, we came out of the park and ate dinner at a local pizza place. The food was good, but they didn't have any child seats and Kylie fell off of the chair and cried so hard that she almost passed out. I had to take her out of the restaurant for a bit to calm her down and make sure she was ok. The was the second time she had done this. It's so scary! After that, we went back to the hotel and got the kids to bed by 7:30. After they fell asleep, Nate and I just read on our tablets until we were tired enough to go to sleep.
Saturday we were up early again and went down the scenic drive. This is the only part of the park that you have to pay for and it was totally worth it! Absolutely gorgeous and not as crowded! You do have to be careful in this part of the park about rain because they do get flash floods, but we ended up having a nice day. At the end of the drive is the Capitol Gorge Trail. This was a really fun hike, kind of a slot canyon, but not too narrow. Along the trail, there were petroglyphs and pioneer signatures carved on the rocks. One particular spot is called the Pioneer Register because it is full of names with the dates. I thought it was interesting how high the names are now from all the erosion. There is no way to reach them without a ladder, but I'm sure when they actually carved their names, they were just standing on the ground. Logan was worried at first about people carving their names in the rock because that is a bad thing to do, but we explained that it was a long time ago and they didn't know it was wrong. Not long after we passed the register, Logan was getting tired and wanted to turn around so we didn't see the tanks. But that's ok. Logan is really such a great hiker and he held our camel pack on his back most of the time.
Pioneer Register
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| Petroglyph |
After that, we ate lunch at the Gifford house. It's a little store now but it used to be someone's house. We bought a giant cinnamon roll from there to share as a family. We really wanted to get a shot glass souvenir, because that is what we collect, and we hadn't found any in the park so we went to Torrey to try to find one. Well not one of the shops had shot glasses. We ended up just buying Kylie a book and going to the Visitor's Center where Logan picked out a stuffed animal and Nate and I got T-shirts. Then we went to our hotel to rest, where once again, Kylie did not nap.
After that, we did a fun hike called Fremont River Trail.We originally just planned to hike the easy part where it's basically just a stroll next to the river. Logan was complaining about being tired and hungry, etc. Then we got to the really steep part where you have the drop off on one side and the mountain on the other and suddenly Logan didn't want to stop hiking! I was scared out of my mind that Logan was going to slip and fall off the cliff so I didn't want to go to far, but Logan wanted to keep going and going. We didn't make it to the top, but we got far enough to get some beautiful views. I finally relaxed once we got low enough that a fall wouldn't mean great injury or death. On the walk back to the car, Kylie dropped Owlie. We didn't even notice! Nate said she heard her make some sort of noise but she wasn't screaming about it. We were loading up the car when a couple came by and asked us if the pink owl was ours! Thank goodness they saw it and us or we would've had a terrible night! It was an answer to a prayer we didn't know we had to pray about! Kylie is very attached to Owlie and even named her herself.
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| It is just too hard to get the whole family in a selfie. You can kind of see Kylie's head. She was probably asleep anyway. |
That evening we went to dinner at a Mexican place that was right next to our hotel so we just walked there. Then the next day was Sunday and we just drove home. We normally would try to find a place to go to church, but I wasn't able to get a sub for my Sunday school class, so we just had to come straight home so I could be back in time to teach. We had a really fun time! I just love all of the geographical wonders of Utah!
