Capitol Reef Continued.

Early Sunday morning Jason and I took a small hike on a trail that overlooked the green area of Capitol Reef. It was a beautiful sunny day!

Jason Checking out the view from above our campground

We fed the kids breakfast before church and headed out. Its hard to want to go to church when you can shower before it starts, however the place was PACKED! It looked like stake conference there but it was just all the campers loyally attending their meetings.
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After sacrament was over we headed back to our campsite for some lunch before we hiked down Sulphur creek. We stopped a the visitor center and asked the rangers if the weather was going to be ok that day. He said it looked just fine, showed Jason the radar and what the weather pattern was doing. He said "Go for it! Lots of people have been hiking there today" so we said "Great!"

We had a BIG lunch before we left and packed up all the extra hot dogs that we cooked in some foil in case the kids got hungry along the hike. We also packed 3 camel backs full of water. The kids each had a backpack with water and snacks for the hike. In Jason's we also put a whistle, flashlight, lighter and the rain ponchos. (there was no cell service for 11 miles around us, so no phones)

 

 

This was the start of the creek, see there is no water? It was pretty dry for the first part of the hiking.

There was these really cool cuts in the rocks along the creek, we climbed and played on them as we went. Keep in mind the clothes you see are the only clothes we took with us.

 

As we walked we started to come to the water, it was not very deep, maybe to our ankles? There was however MUD! This is actually mud that Addi and the girls are standing in. It was almost like quick sand! They had fun playing in it and rubbing it on their faces.

 

Addi liked playing in the holes in the rocks!

The kids lined up for this photo and as you can see the water is not that deep

 

So we finally got to the first waterfall, and was so cool as you can see the water is a little deeper. We played here for a while. The water was not super cold but it took a second to get used to.

Jason was still up on top of the waterfall, we used a strap to help lower the kids down when it was required to climb down some rocks.

Crouching tiger hidden dragon Lexi!!!

Lizzie trying to block the water (Jason said when he came with his BYU kids there was hardly any water running, that was in June)

 

Jason jumping through the water!

 

 

Capitol Reef Adventure........not really.



Jason and I realized this summer how much we love camping, we camped on our coastal trip and thought we need to do that more often. We decided to go to Capitol Reef National Park for our labor day weekend. Jason had been the summer before with a group of BYU students and they open air painted and had lots of fun.

We headed out Saturday morning early because we knew alot of people would be going camping and we wanted to be sure to get a campsite.

Located in south-central Utah in the heart of red rock country, Capitol Reef National Park is a hidden treasure filled with cliffs, canyons, domes and bridges in the Water pocket Fold, a geologic monocline (a wrinkle on the earth) extending almost 100 miles. 

 Mormon pioneers and others arrived in the 1800s, settling in what is now the Fruita Rural Historic District. They planted and nurtured orchards of apples, pears, and peaches. (ok done with the history lesson)

This is just part of the park. See the road? It is about 11 miles to the closest town and there is no cell service whatsoever inside the park. It really is a beautiful place and we enjoyed marveling and what our Father in Heaven created. Whats really neat is that all of this used to be under the ocean!

We set up camp and then went exploring! Our camp host was fun, He was a BYU fan.



We tried to take some cool artsy photos but our kids cant seem to jump all at the same time, so this is what we got.

Jason was showing the kids where the BYU students sat a drew last summer

I tried to take a panoramic shot of the view, this really doesn't do the park justice.

They had programs for the kids and so we took them around so they could earn their Jr explorer badge and a few others
These are the petroglyphs around the park, Indians settled here before the pioneers.
Can you see the carvings in the rocks?

The pioneers planted orchards and as long as you were within the park you could eat as much of the fruit as you wanted, you could also pick some to take with you if you were just driving thru and they only charged $1 a pound. We took some to eat later in the day. They were so very good!

Here is Lizzie enjoying the fruits of her labor (the sign says U-pick fruit)

 This was taken Sunday morning, Jason and I hiked a trail to get a good panoramic of the green valley, it was a gorgeous morning.

 

 

Jason enjoying the view!

 

I will share about our Sunday adventure in my next post.

I hope you are all ready!



 

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