Capitol Reef Trip (Day 1 & 2)

Last Wednesday we headed out for a trip to Capitol Reef with my family. It was a trip we had been planning and talking about for a couple years, but we wanted to wait until Ben was back from his mission to go. Most of our day was spent getting to the park, but we did have some time after arriving that afternoon to see some petroglyphs in the park. There was actually a boardwalk built along a canyon wall that was covered with them. Some of them were hard to spot. When someone in the family found a new one, it was sort of like a "Where's Waldo" game for the rest of us trying to find the same drawings they had discovered.

There were actually quite a few butterflies around that we saw on our trip. I was lucky to capture a photo of the one above.

Here we are on the boardwalks

After seeing the petroglyphs we stopped by the old historic schoolhouse of Fruita. It was cool to see the classroom through the windows set up as it would have been before it was abandoned.

Here we are next to the schoolhouse.

Looking inside the schoolhouse

Wednesday night we headed up to Panorama Point and looked at the stars. It is amazing how well you can see them out there away from all the lights. We picked out constellations and my dad brought his brand new telescope and found some cool stuff for us to view through it. We saw star clusters, galaxies, and Saturn. Saturn was especially cool since we could see its rings and one of its moons clearly through the telescope.

Thursday we went hiking. We first did the Hickman Bridge Trail with my whole family.

Hickman Bridge

Hickman Bridge side view

From there, Allan, Ben, Nate, and I continued on to hike the Rim Overlook/Najavo Knobs Trail. The rest of my family watched Austin for us since the trail was too long to take him with us. This was a very exposed and sunny trail without any shade, and it was longer than stated on the information we had for it. By the time we got back to the parking lot, we had gone 11 miles and were pretty tired. It was worth the effort though. Not only were there nice rock formations along the way, the views were spectacular, particularly at the end. And we had a lot of fun along the way too.

View of Fruita from the Rim Overlook

View looking out from the Rim Overlook

Here we are at the Rim Overlook

View of the Castle rock formation from the trail

Hiking up the slick rock fields on the canyon rims

View from top looking southeast

Here we are at the top!

View from top looking northwest

This rock cairn is made with a log of petrified wood at its base

Since we were so hot and tired after our hike, we returned to the hotel and went swimming. We took Austin swimming with us. It was his first time swimming. He loves taking baths, so I was thinking and hoping he would love being with us in the big pool. Unfortunately, the hotel's pool was pretty cold and Austin didn't like it much at all. We will have to take him again sometime in warmer water.

Here is Austin first getting into the water:

Austin became a little bit happier with time:

But he never really became happy with the cold water. So, it was a short swim.

That evening we went up to Sunset Point in hopes of actually watching the sunset. We got there too late to see much though, but Nate took this video showing where we hiked from across the way: