Capitol Reef NP & Arches
One of the best things about last minute vacations (like this one) is that you don’t have the time beforehand to plan out every part of your trip. Both my wife and I are very much planners and schedulers but with this being a vacation we only had decided to venture out on a few weeks before leaving, we were not able to plan out every minute and mile of our trip. Which, sometimes, is a good thing. Sometimes you need a vacation from your routine, so it was very nice to be able to spend this day of our trip however we decided when we woke up that morning. After days of traveling and packing/unpacking our suitcases, getting up early, hiking, driving, and more driving, we chose to spend this day by….driving some more. But it was cool, because it wasn’t planned! We knew the hotel we had chosen in Torrey, UT was only 3 hours from Arches NP but we weren’t sure if we would have the energy to make it there. So that morning we got up, had an excellent breakfast at the Capitol Reef Inn & Cafe (best veggie omelet I’ve ever had, and I typically don’t eat things with “veggie” in the description), moseyed about town for a bit trying to find Liz a souvenir t-shirt, and then decided to head out towards Arches NP.
To get to Arches from Torrey, you have to go through the Capitol Reef NP. Taking State Route 24 east from Torrey, you wind yourself through a canyon that was etched out by the Fremont River long ago. There are plenty of places to stop and take pictures and even some petroglyphs to check out (etchings in the stone walls made by the people who lived there over 2,000 years ago). By far, our favorite place to stop on the drive to Arches was a little place called Fruita. They have a historic schoolhouse you can check out, hiking trails, and a massive orchard that has about 2,000 trees including cherry, apricot, peach, pear, apple, plum, mulberry, almond, and walnut. The best part of Fruita was all of the marmots though! We have never seen a marmot and when we did, we both freaked out a bit. I think we spent about twenty minutes or so just watching them hop around in the tall grass.
After Fruita, the scenery got a bit more bland which afforded Liz the opportunity to nap until we got to Arches. When we got there, we were thankful once again for our annual national park pass we got so that we didn’t get hit with the admission fee! The feeling you get while driving around Arches is like that of being on a different planet. Large red rock formations jut out of the ground into the sky taking on abstract forms that leave you wondering, “how did it get like that?”. Of course, there is an answer, and they are all given to you at the various overlooks you can stop at. We knew we didn’t have time to take a hike and explore some of the arches (like Delicate Arch, the most famous arch of all), but we were able to see most of what we wanted just by driving the road that goes in to the park. Overall, we spent a little over 2 1/2 hours in the park and that was enough to see what we wanted and get headed back to Torrey, UT to get some rest before we set out on a long drive to Idaho Falls, ID the next day. If we could go back and spend a few days at some of the parks we were only able to see for a short duration, Arches would definitely be on that list.
This is a marmot…just in case you were wondering!
