We drove 45 minutes back along Highway 12 to Capitol Reef National Park, which we’d driven through yesterday. We went straight to the Visitor Center, talked to a ranger, got a trail map, & read the information about the park in the center. We took the Scenic Drive through the park to Grand Wash Road to the Cassidy Arch Trail. We got to drive through a dry riverbed to the trailhead. At the trailhead we hiked a ways along the riverbed & climbed into some of the small caves. From there, the trail went up & snaked around the mountains until we reached the top of Cassidy Arch. We enjoyed our usual trail picnic & got to watch some people repelling down into the arch.
Once we finished the hike, we were beat. We’d only hiked 3 miles, but it felt like 10. TJ & I looked more closely at the trail map & realized this was listed as a strenuous hike – with a gain 670 feet of elevation in a little over one mile!
We drove back to the main road to visit the tiny 1-room schoolhouse that was built in the 1800’s by the small group of Mormon families who lived in the area called Fruita. There was a speaker beside the informational board, and it played a recording of a woman recalling her first year teaching at that schoolhouse in 1933.
Beside the school & fruit orchards are the Fremont Petroglyphs dating back to 600-1300 C.E. We even spotted a thousand-year-old Charlie Brown!
Trying to cram in as much as possible, we headed to the Grand Wash Trail to experience some of the deep canyons and narrows. We decided to hike in for 30 minutes & see what we could see. We didn’t make it to the narrows, but we had the place to ourselves & it was spectacular to walk in the dry riverbed & imagine the river rushing through these immense canyons.
Our final destination was the Sunset Point Trail to watch the sunset. We hiked up to the spot, ate the cold hot dogs we’d packed that morning, and waited as the sun fell. Like Bryce, the sunset was behind us. We hiked back to the parking lot & headed up the Panorama Point trail to catch the sunset from that side.
We drove home that night feeling like we’d squeezed every drop out of the day & saw some of the coolest spots in the park. We’d hiked to the top of a mountain, hiked through the bottom of a canyon riverbed, saw thousand-year-old petroglyphs, learned about the indigenous peoples & Mormon settlers in the area, and watched the sunset.
TJ took a time lapse of our drive home that night. We laughed like crazy when he used his hiking pole to steady his phone against the windshield. Here’s 30 minutes of driving in 20 seconds.
Go Big and Go Roam 
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