As we start a little tour of National Parks, hopefully someday meeting a lofty goal of seeing them all, even the most remote ones! I thought it would be good to really give reviews of the places we've visited and share some of our opinions of the places and if we would return. I'm no fancy blogger or anything so we are going to keep this pretty simple!
Capitol Reef is a park pretty much in the middle of nowhere! At some point (hopefully soon!) we want to visit the parks near Moab, but this trip we were heading towards Saint George. Capitol Reef is kind of in between both so we were really debating which trip might be better to visit this park. In the end, we just determined that we should hit it while it was on our mind, so we made our travel day quite a bit longer but it also gave us something to do while we waited for check in.
We did not spend an extensive amount of time here so maybe there was more to see and do. I know it is known for the unique fact that it has orchards of fruit trees in different seasons. Since Capitol Reef is pretty remote, I would recommend packing in food with you. We stopped at a teeny tiny gas station/Subway right before we got off the freeway and had also packed lots of snacks and water.
The visitor center was under construction and we didn't go into the tiny trailer housing the visitor center, fortunately the main restrooms at the visitor center were still open. We do have a 4th Grader so we have a pass that gets us into the National Parks for free so that makes the deal even sweeter! It is pretty fun to roll up to the pay stations, show them our pass and have us wave us on through :)
The weather was pretty cool for picnicking but there was a nice little area to do so if it wasn't. There is a nice, long, narrow scenic drive that you can do to see lots of the hills. We eventually found a turn off to park for a little bit to get out and look around and take pictures. This was not a busy park at all, so that was really nice and it was completely silent and felt very remote!
Even though we didn't spend a lot of time here, we did park for a little bit to do a short hike. That paid off as we were able to find two new license plates at the trail head :) In general it all felt like a pretty safe area to let the kids run and play. The scenery was beautiful and I do believe it would have been all the more impressive if we hadn't just visited Sedona which felt very similar. What I can appreciate about Capitol Reef is that it is protected because I truly believe Sedona should have been protected but has grown into a pretty busy town with lots and lots of tourists.
So to summarize, I liked that the park wasn't busy and it felt like we could really enjoy the serenity. I liked that there was a scenic drive to let you see a lot of the mountains. I think there are lots of options for hiking and I am sure the views of the night skies are amazing! It is pretty remote though and not really much to do or eat anywhere near this place. I don't think we would go out of our way to visit this park again, but if for some reason we are driving through that scenic area and are very nearby we would give it another go. We spent a couple hours here and for where our family is at this point in time that is probably just about all we would need. But I am glad we made the drive to at least see these beautiful rock formations once :)
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