It’s 2022! We somehow missed posting in 2021, but we did go back to Arches to host that spring. We also planned a long vacation to the Northwest but cancelled due to wildfires and the lingering pandemic. Now, we’re delighted to be campground hosts once again, this time in Capitol Reef National Park. We first visited the park two years ago and decided that this was a place we wanted to host and explore. We arrived this year in mid-August and will be here until mid-November. Packing for the trip was interesting for a couple of reasons. First, we had just moved back into our completely renovated house after living elsewhere for almost four months. Moving into and out of the house simultaneously was…challenging. Second, it was 95° in Denver, and we needed to think ahead to November when temperatures might be in the teens in Capitol Reef. So far, temperatures have been above average ever since we arrived, but surely we’ll pay for that before we leave.

Capitol Reef is a long, skinny park divided into three districts – the Fruita Historic District along State Highway 24, the Waterpocket District to the south and the Cathedral Valley District to the north. In Fruita the park maintains about 10 orchards originally planted in the late 1880s by Mormon settlers. The orchards, along with the campground, picnic area and the Gifford House lawn, are irrigated by the Fremont River. It’s quite a surprise to see so much green in the middle of the desert.

Unfortunately, this was not a great year for fruit although we picked enough apples to make apple crisp. Peach and apricot blossoms froze in the spring, and there were very few pears. Water, grass, fruit and no doubt food scraps left behind by campers attract many deer and one wild turkey named Henrietta. The park would like to see her relocated to a more appropriate place.

A horse named Parrot lives in the pasture behind our camper. We anticipate the other park horses Mud and Big Ern joining him as winter approaches.

Accessing the Waterpocket District requires driving east on Highway 24 to just outside the park boundary and then heading south. Between flash floods (more on that later), the road was in great condition so when friends came to visit, we ‘looped the fold’. In other words we drove down the east side of the Waterpocket Fold, up the switchbacks on the Burr trail, through the Circle Cliffs on the way to Boulder, UT, and then north over Boulder Mountain and back to Capitol Reef. Along the way we looked for fossilized oyster shells and hiked into Headquarters Canyon. (You can read about our previous drive through this area in our Pandemic Adventure post.)

Monsoon season continued well into September this year, and with it came flash floods. The county and the park spring into action to remove mud, gravel and rocks and rebuild roads after flooding. Occasionally the damage is so severe that it takes several weeks to complete repairs giving us time to explore. We took the photos below on what was left of the gravel road in Capitol Gorge. In some cases, everything down to bedrock had been removed by the rushing water. Fortunately, no one was in the gorge or on the road at the time of the flooding.

With the exception of Headquarters Canyon, most of our hiking has been in the Fruita district. Grand Wash and Capitol Gorge don’t have much elevation gain or loss, but many of the other trails head straight up.

Our schedule here is 4 days on, 4 days off which gives us time to wander outside the park. Alan has gone fishing on Boulder Mountain a couple of times.

We caught aspen at their peak fall color on Thousand Lakes Mountain in Fishlake National Forest, home of the Pando Aspen Grove, the largest aspen clone and the world’s largest living organism.

We also stumbled across one of the cutoffs for the Old Spanish Trail between Santa Fe and Los Angeles. Below is photo taken at one of the interpretive sites created by the Forest Service.

And lest you think it’s all play and no work, here’s a shot of our work vehicle at the most challenging part of our route through the campground. It’s especially fun to drive this path in the dark!

But enough about work. We have plans to check out Cathedral Valley and a couple of state parks near Escalante before we head home to Colorado.