Day 5 (August 11, 2023): Capitol Reef - A Gravy Day!

I entitled this day a “gravy day” because we were only supposed to see four of the five Utah national parks.  But we decided to rework our plan and spend a bit less time in Zion and Bryce so that we could add Capitol Reef National Park.  Our hotel was willing to let us drop the second night’s stay, and we were able to find a hotel near Capitol Reef at the last minute, so off we left at 8:15AM for the drive to Capitol Reef, arriving there at 11AM.

The drive from Bryce to Capitol Reef was out of this world pristine and beautiful.  The Utah countryside has to be among America’s prettiest.  Beautiful roads, hardly any traffic, not a speck of trash to be seen, and the most stunning pastoral land imagineable.

We hadn’t researched Capitol Reef, so we had no idea what to expect.  Honestly, after Zion and Bryce, our expectations were on the low end.  Which was good in a way, because we were utterly blown away by what was in store for us!

Like Zion and Bryce, Capitol has a scenic drive (10 miles long), so that drive was our main focus this afternoon.  As is commonplace at Capitol, a torrential rain and lightning storm started brewing early afternoon.  It only hit us after we had seen what we had planned to see, but we did feel like we were just one step ahead of it for much of the afternoon.  When it finally did catch up with us, the power of the rains was amazing.  And it helped us appreciate all the “washes” that we had seen all over the park — washes are dry stream beds that, as soon as it starts to rain, collect the water and suddenly turn into raging torrents.

US State Route 24 runs west to east through Capitol, with the 10-mile scenic drive beaching off it, running south.  Route 24 also contains some jaw-dropping scenery, so we drove Route 24 to the park’s eastern boundary to take all that scenery in.  We also started out to do a small mountain climb just off Route 24, but one third into it, the advancing dark clouds and distant thunder led us to turn back.  Judging from the lightning and torrential rains that did eventually arrive, we were glad we made that call.

Capitol Reef is another gem of the US National Parks System.  It’s much less visited than its cousins, Zion and Bryce, but it certainly left us feeling just as overwhelmed.  We are so glad we made the itinerary modification we did!

The drive from Panguitch to Capitol Reef National Park:

The Circleville boyhood home of the legendary and infamous Butch Cassidy, who became an outlaw and for whom a bounty was placed on his head - wanted dead or alive in 1904.  Despite being raised by Mormon parents, he somehow went off the straight and narrow in a big way.

The reward notice for Butch Cassidy.

A typical farmland scene on the route from Panguitch to Torrey today.

Some hoodoos enroute.

Sage brush is everywhere in Utah!  That’s the Otter Creek Reservoir in the background.

The Bicknell Veterans Memorial, typical of such memorials in Utah’s small towns.

Buffalo enroute to Capitol Reef.

As we neared Torrey (the town closest to Capitol Reef), the topography started to change in a remarkable way.  Red soil and amazing formations and plateaux started to appear out of nowhere.

Sights between the Capitol Reef park entrance to the Visitor Center in Fruita:

The entrance to Capitol Reef National Park.

The Chimneys at Capitol Reef are among its most famous landmarks.

The Twins (boulders) sit precariously on a ledge, near the entrance to Capitol Reef

This formation is known as the Castle. And you can see why!

This formation was actually chosen to grace the cover of our Frommers travel guide for Utah. 

The Capitol Reef Visitor Center.

Fruita:

The Visitor Center is in a small village called Fruita, an orchard-centric village settled by a dozen Mormon families in the late 1800s.  The park has taken over the few historical buildings of Fruita, but no one actually lives there year-round anymore.  This picnic park in the middle of Fruita was a perfect spot for lunch.  There are no cafes or restaurants in the park, just a small historical store that sells amazing pies and ice cream.  We bought a pie and some ice cream and had a nice picnic lunch in the park.  The weather was perfect again today!  It reached a high of 89F, but fell as low as 53F during the afternoon rainstorm.

This barn is one of a handful of historic Mormon structures in Fruita.

This is the Fruita schoolhouse, which also served as the church.

Long before the Mormons arrived, the indigenous peoples lived here and left some interesting petroglyphs.

The sights along the Capitol Reef 10-mile Scenic Drive:

The peak at the end of the Scenic Drive.  The thunder was rolling in the distance as we arrived here.

The sights along Route 24 from the Visitor Center to the park’s eastern gateway:

The hiking trail we started in the area of the Capitol Dome, a white mountain named in the last 1800s, as it resembled the Capitol Building in Washington, DC.  Note the black clouds in the left of the photo - that’s the storm that eventually overtook us.  We called off the trek one-third of the way along, out of concern for the storm’s potential impact.

Truly colourful mountains near the Park’s eastern gateway.

After reaching the eastern gateway, we turned around to head back.  That’s when the torrential rains started.  Waterfalls quickly started flowing down off the mountains.  Above and below are two examples.

After this afternoon’s torrential rain, we clearly understood the risk of flash flooding in Capitol Reef National Park.


The original schoolhouse and church combination for the original Mormon settlers of Torrey.

Most of the small towns we have seen in Utah have just one church, similar to this one.  And they all have the familiar Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormon) title.



As we were heading for supper at a Mexican restaurant, the sun was getting low in the sky, creating the most beautiful effects on the mountains and plateau near Torrey.