Capitol Reef National Park - Torrey, Utah

After leaving Natural Bridges National Monument, we continued northward toward Capitol Reef National Park. We were delighted to find that the route we were taking took us through some beautiful scenery as we came down to the canyons cut by the Colorado River in this area. Gosh what beautiful red rock!!!! And to think that this was just a public highway rather than another national park. The only downside to this beautiful scenery around the Colorado River Basin was that it made our initial exposure to Capitol Reef National Park seemingly disappointing. To get to our campsite in Torrey, Utah, at the western side of Capitol Reef NP, we took the highway that cut across the mid section of the park. Whether because of the beautiful scenery we had seen in the Colorado River Basin, or because of the long day’s drive, we were not significantly impressed by the initial exposure to Capitol Reef NP. It just seems to be another batch of nice looking rocks!!!!!!!!

That afternoon, we linked up with our friends Rick and Ann at the campground in Torrey where they had been staying for the last several days. They spoke excitedly about how beautiful they had found the area during the off-road treks they had undertaken in their jeep during the last several days. Encouraged by their enthusiasm we looked forward to giving Capitol Reef a chance to impress us.

The following morning, we started our tour of Capitol Reef by visiting some of the overlooks on the western side of the park. We enjoyed both nice views from the overlooks and a feeling of delight at the fact that the overlooks were not as crowded as things had been at Arches and Canyonlands NPs. After the overlooks, we visited the remnants of the farming community of Fruita, where some bold Mormon settlers had planted and maintained orchards before the park service took over their property 70 years ago. At the encouragement of a ranger at one of the historical settler cabins we visited, we went by a nearby orchard to try our hand at picking some ripening apples. Boy did Jo take to this adventure. Was she ever enthusiastic about using that 10 foot pole to pick several pounds of local apples. At the same time, she was anxious to capture on film several deer close by who were enjoying the eating of the apples which tourists like us inadvertently knocked to the ground in our efforts to act as fruit pickers. No doubt any farmer would have fired the two of us as fruit pickers since we managed to knock to the ground as many apples as we managed to snare in our ten foot fruit picker. Fortunately we only had to pay for the apples we put in our bag and not for those we ate or left lying on the ground because the fall had bruised them irreparably.

That afternoon, we drove down to the trailhead for the “Grand Wash Trail.” This was a dry wash, which is a streambed which in times of flood waters carves its way through the rock canyon walls. In this case, the dry streambed passed through a beautiful canyon area which it had carved over centuries, including “the narrows”, a slot canyon area with sheer rock walls rising hundreds of feet above us. It was interesting to imagine what it would be like when heavy rains turned this dry wash into raging flash floods. The bad news was that there were threatening storm clouds during the early portions of our hike which had us fearful that we might be caught in one of those flash floods. The good news, which is obviously from the fact that we are writing up this description of the day’s activities, is that the rain storms never struck, so our fears of a flash flood were not realized. So Jo was no able to tell David “I told you so”. LOL!!!!!!!

Our hike through the Grand Wash Trail, coupled with our fruit picking experience in Fruita, wonderfully transformed our attitude toward Capitol Reef NP into a very positive mindset. One consequence of this transformation was that the rock formations that we were driving through now looked even more attractive to us. Oh let’s hear it for the power of positive thinking! All in all, we finished our visit to Capitol Reef National Park with a much more positive impressive than we had had 24 hours earlier.