Capitol Reef National Park

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Friday October 14 - Today we left Kanab and had to drive a little more than four hours to get to Capitol Reef National Park. This park is much less busy than the others in Utah, which was a nice change. It's near a small community, or part of a small community, called Fruita where they have orchards that you can still pick fruit in. Apples were still on the trees when we were there, and we got a couple to eat towards the end of the day. The orchard was also full of mule deer, and they were eating all the fallen fruit.

The first thing we did was hike to Hickman's bridge, our first stone arch of the trip. It was a good hike. On the way back, we looked at the petroglyphs on the rocks nearby as well as the old one-roomed school house that closed in the 40s. Nearby we stopped at the shop and bought a small homemade berry pie and chocolate ice cream and had them for a snack and then did the scenic drive in the park.

We slept nearby in Bicknell, and it is a small town with not much of anything. Actually, this was true for most places we stayed. Utah is full of tiny places with no big restaurants, no big stores, etc. But there was an amazing pizza place that I had seen online, so we walked over and it really was good. It's called the Badger's Den and was decorated with high school stuff from the school across the street. The pizza was great and we chatted with some guys we had seen in the park earlier in the day, as well as with the owner later on. He was great and treated us very well. Luckily we ordered the largest pizza, ate too much, but still had some to bring back for lunch the next day. A win.

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