Where the Earth's Crust Folds and Orchards Hide in the Canyons
This small National Park is 2 hours west of Arches and two hours east of Zion, and often overlooked. I was so excited when I was able to snag just one single night in the actual national park campground (Fruita), I’d take what I could get (most national park campgrounds book a whole year out, so there must have been a random cancellation).
Rolling into this area was mind-bending. It was a foreign landscape none of us had witnessed before, gray hills and canyons, all changing until we entered the orchards of Capitol Reef. There is a rich history here, starting with Native Americans then Mormons using the fertile land in the middle of vast swaths of unfarmable lands. We saw petroglyphs that told the stories from the people who used to farm the lands. Deer welcomed us to our site and Amelia was beside herself at how close she could get to these majestic bucks. The space was abundant, and the only people in the park seemed to be those camping there.
Capital Reef is a dark sky park, and what I’ve learned is that to completely enjoy a dark sky park you really need to stay in the actual park. I didn’t get to take milky way photos because it was a full moon, but one of my favorite family moments this trip was watching the full moon rise over the mountain with the family 0 oohing and awwing like they were watching fireworks.
The geology here was interesting as well, it is an actual fold in the earth’s crust. We spent our extremely limited time here enjoying what we could. We drove through slot canyons, hiked where the car wouldn’t go any longer. We watched excitedly as the full moon rose over the cliffs, the photographer played with the night skies, and we spent the morning hiking along the river that fed the still active orchard (at the right time of year you can pick and eat the fruit if staying in the campground). If given the chance we would return here for a longer stay, it remains one of our favorites of the entire trip. It was perfect.
