Capitol Reef National Park in May

I was so excited and did so well at posting on this blog until I got pregnant and sick and winter hit, so it's been almost a year. Sorry, but life goes on and the Hansens get out camping again eventually! This weekend was our new baby's first camping adventure. He's 2 1/2 months old and the perfect age for camping. Ideally he'd be sleeping through the night by now, but we survived. He's not the hard one, the hard one is the two year old, and he's not hard during the actual camping, he's hard on the drive to and from.  So we just try to stay a little closer to home.

We sure live in an outdoor lover's paradise here in Utah. This weekend we decided to try out Capitol Reef National Park.  It's a little over 2 hours off the main highway, so it was not nearly as crowded as some of the others like Zion's or the Grand Canyon, but I think it was equally as stunning.  With river hikes, dry river bed slot canyons, desert landscapes, petroglyphs, historic sites, and beautiful picnic areas, we will definitely go back.

We left early Friday morning and got to the park by lunch time. The campground was full, but we had a tip on a little dirt road called Sulfur Creek Road just east of the town of Torrey where we just threw down for the night.  I would advise taking a good tent as the wind is usually ripping through these desert areas.  We had a hard time getting our stakes into the sandstone, though a pop up tent would do fine.

These are the bigger kids hiking Hickman Bridge, poor B was a little outnumbered by the ladies, but he stole a pink hat to feel more a part of the clan.

After a quick lunch we hiked to Hickman Bridge.  It's about a mile from the parking lot to the natural bridge. It was beautiful and you actually hike through the middle of it and around a little loop.  My four year old did great and walked the whole way.

After the hike we crashed at the picnic area in the park. It's beautiful and grassy with shade trees and access to a little stream where the kids threw rocks and played in the mud. My two year old went for a little swim on accident, but it was warm enough we just dressed him down to his diaper and he continued romping around.  After playing in the water we ate dinner and watched as the deer and turkeys came grazing through the grassy areas. I won't admit to it, but maybe the kids had fun chasing the wildlife around. The poor tourists who had never seen a deer before, they were out of luck after our visit.

The nice part about camping on Sulfur Creek Road was that we had the place to ourselves and had no one driving past in the middle of the night and it was quiet. My kids could cry or be loud all night long and only keep us up.

Saturday morning we cooked our eggs in boiling water in ziplock sandwich baggies, loaded up everything and went back into the park. This time we explored the Grand Wash.  We just parked on the highway and hiked up the canyon for as long as we wanted.  Then we turned around and came back down.  The canyon never narrowed down like in Escalante, but still fun to zigzag around and see everything.

Petroglyphs in Grand Wash

Grand Wash

We liked the picnic area so much we went back for lunch for a repeat of playing in the river.  After we ate we stopped by the Freemont Petroglyphs.  They were pretty neat to see, but mostly the kids enjoyed petting the thousands of little caterpillars that were crawling along the boardwalks.  They were pretty cool.

Some nice parts of this park are 1) There's no fee to enter  2) Not so crowded 3) There are lots of little side activities that require almost little or no hiking 4) There are fun activities spring/summer/and fall

Family Photo at Chimney Rock

We could spend a week in this national Park and not even scratch the surface of what's down there.  I definitely want to go back in the summer.

Our bucket list for future Capitol Reef visits:
Bum sliding in Sulfur Creek
Leaping into Deep Creek Pool
Hiking the slots in Burro Wash
Hiking Sulfur Creek just across from Chimney Rock down to the Visitor Center
Driving Capitol Gorge Road exploring the canyons and slots
Hiking the Halls Creek Narrows