On Monday morning, we continued our journey along the 124 mile Scenic Byway 12 in southern Utah. As we traveled eastward we made our way through Dixie National Forest and to the northern part of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. This 1.9 million acres of public land offers sandstone canyons, plateaus, unique rock formations, rivers and cliffs. We hope to come back here to spend more time exploring and boon-docking. We stopped at the Escalante Petrified Forest State Park but when the ranger told us that they were doing 24 hour construction with generators and lights running, we opted to continue on down the road. Our friends, Bob and Sue Hicks has told us about how much they enjoyed hiking to Lower Calf Creek Falls. When we got to the Calf Creek Recreation Area where the campground and trail head was located, we noticed a sign that said no RV s over 25'. We put that on our to-see list for another time and headed to Capitol Reef National Park. As early as AD 700, the people of the Fremont culture hunted and farmed in the area but left sometime after AD 1250. However, there is still archeological evidence of the their culture on the canyon walls in the form of pictographs (painted on) and petroglyphs, (incised into the stone).
The early pioneers named the area because of the very large domed formations that reminded them of the nation's capitol. Besides the beautiful landscape of colored cliffs, domes, and canyons, Capital Reef is noted for the Waterpocket Fold, a gigantic buckling of the earth's crust, stretching for 100 miles.
We loved the Fruita Campground nestled among the historic orchards and cottonwoods on the Fremont River.
The Mormon pioneers settled here in the early 1900's and the 3100 trees in the orchards are still producing cherries, apricots, peaches, pears, and apples.
Visitors can pick and eat ripe fruit at no charge and during designated harvest times, can pick in quantity for a small fee. Since we missed the last harvest by a few weeks, we definitely want to come back. The orchards were full of deer roaming throughout and several were eating and bedded down near our site.
We took a ride into the nearest town called Torrey looking for a grocery store but it was so small it had only a general store with very high prices.
We opted to stop at Slacker's for one of their award winning burgers for $4.69 including fries. They lived up to their reputation and offered free WI-fi, too. We called the family to check in and let them know where the Alaska Nomads were. When we got back to the campground, we worked off those burgers by hiking the 3 mile Fremont River Trail, the first half meandered through the orchards and along the river and then we climbed 500 feet to a valley overlook.
It was on the cool side when we woke on Tuesday morning so we relaxed and read before we went on our hike. We first stopped at the blacksmith shop to see all of the well preserved tools and farm equipment from another era. The Fremont Gorge trail was a 1100 foot climb with part of the trail on a mesa. It seemed like we went up and up until we finally came to the Fremont Gorge overlook.
The sign said that it was 2.6 miles but our GPS said 5.5 miles. A nice hot shower and some down time before dinner felt great. I went for another short walk to see my “buddies” over by the river and take some pictures of the deer.
On Wednesday, we woke at 7:30 am. The temperature has dipped to 25 degrees during the night so we stayed in bed until the furnace warmed up our little “nest”. After another one of Bob's scrumptious breakfasts (omelet and home fries), we went over to the historic Gifford House to buy some homemade bread. Bob had already sampled their homemade cherry pie with a 3 thumbs up.
The Giffords left the homestead in 1969 after the Capitol Reef became a national park and it has been well preserved. From there we stopped at the Visitor Center where I picked up some books on the early pioneers and my NP patch and pin for my collection. We continued on to the Scenic Drive with views of the Waterpocket Fold landscaped ending at Capital Gorge. From the trail head we hiked 5 miles RT passing some petroglyphs and one rock called Pioneers Register where names of miners, settlers, and others who passed through the canyon beginning in 1871 can be found on the rocks.
It was hard to believe that at one time they drove cars through this canyon to get to the settlements. After our hike, we came back to our site and had some lunch watching the deer and a woodpecker in the tree above us. In the afternoon, we drove to Highway 24 to the one room Fruita Schoolhouse, the Petroglyphs, and to the Hickman Bridge Trail.
We did not really plan on another 2 mile hike with a 400 foot climb but I wanted to see the 133 foot natural rock bridge.
We met some people from Nashville, TN and Maine and had a nice visit with them before heading to the “barn”. That evening we sat outside as the sun dipped behind the towering rocks and talked about how much we had enjoyed our experience here. Although all of the National Parks in Utah were unique and beautiful, Capitol Reef felt special to us and is one of our favorites. I think that we will be back some day during harvest time.
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