Road Trip 2025: Day 14

This morning we broke camp and headed to Capitol Reef National Park. It’s a state holiday, Pioneer Day, which commemorates Bingham Young and the Mormons reaching Salt Lake City. I have no idea where we will camp tonight considering the National and State Park campgrounds are all full. The roads between Bryce and Capitol Reef were desolate. We saw few cars, but lots of cattle grazing along the side of the road. For breakfast, we stopped at Marinia’s Cafe, a cute country kitchen in Loa, Utah. The food wasn’t anything special, but the staff was friendly.

Capitol Reef, in the words of G3, “is pretty, but not stunning.” It is another canyon; more mountains carved by wind and water. The colors—layers of rusts and creams—in the rock are beautiful, but the formations are not as majestic as they are in other parks. In the 1880s, the Mormons founded a small settlement here and named it Fruita. They built an irrigation system to water the orchards they planted. They grew peach, pear, apricot, and apple trees. Today, the historic orchards are cared for by the National Park. The Gifford House, which is in the section of the park where the Mormons settled, sells fruit pies. Once Kati heard that, she got excited. Both she and G3 wanted a pie (they are small), so after stopping at the visitors center, we went straight to the Gifford house. Kati got apple. G3 got mixed berry. The Pioneer Day special was one free tiny can of root beer for every pie bought. I don’t love pie, but I do like root beer, so I was happy to drink Kati’s soda.

From the Gifford House, G3 and I hiked the Cohab Canyon Trail. It was short, only 3.4 miles round trip, but it was scorching hot, which is why Kati opted to sit in the shade and read. The trail climbed 440 feet at the start and then leveled off, guiding us through the canyon. We walked on desert sand, the mountains rising up on both sides of us.

When we returned to the Gifford House,

we got ice cream to cool off, met back up with Kati, and then drove along the scenic drive. It was not as scenic as other scenic drives. There was a redundancy to it since the rocks all looked the same after a while.

The road ended at a parking lot and the trailhead for the Capitol Gorge Trail. It was less than a mile walk to see petroglyphs and the pioneer registry. The registry is a rock face on which the Mormon pioneers etched their names. It was interesting to see, but names carved more recently detracted from historical aspect of it. Even though it was a super short walk, the heat was intense, and by the time we returned to the car, Kati had melted. I can’t say I am enthralled with Capitol Reef. It was my least favorite park on this trip, and I definitely could have lived without seeing it, but then I would have felt like I missed something. So, I am glad we came.

It was around five o’clock when we left the park. We turned the car toward Arches National Park and figured we’d drive until we found dispersed camping that was convenient. Along the way, we came to the turn off for Goblin Valley State Park. I suggested we go. It would have been one more place for G3 to see. Kati turned, but by the time we reached the park, it was obvious she didn’t want to be there. She parked the car and when the Ranger said it was twenty dollars to enter, Kati said she didn’t want to pay, so we left. I was disappointed, but I guess at this point in my life that is something I am used to. We got back on the road and drove about forty minutes until we reached an exit off of I-70 with food. Since we were all hungry, we stopped for Subway.

Not far from where we ate, there is dispersed camping on Bureau of Land Management property. It’s off of Route 6 and 50, not far from I-70. We pulled off the road and set up our tents in the middle of the desert. We can hear the cars on the road, but otherwise it is quiet and removed. After we set up our tents, G3 got out his speaker and played some music. There was no one around for him to disturb so he played it as loudly as he wanted. There is a slight breeze that feels good after another hot day. G3 offered to share his mixed berry pie with me so we sat down and had dessert. The mixed berry was mostly blueberry and sweet. I enjoyed it, as did G3, although we only ate half of it. The other half G3 wanted to save for tomorrow.