Capital Reef

It is good to be outside. A week and a half ago, Brant, the kids and I hit the road for a fall camping adventure. It was pretty memorable :) We decided on the lesser known national park of Utah - Capital Reef. It's kind of like a mini Zion, with beautiful rocks, canyons and lots of hiking. It also has a small oasis of trees and fruit orchards from when it was settled by Mormon pioneers.

Capital Gorge Trail

There is one campground in the park, called Fruita campground, where we had planned to stay. Unfortunately the sign read CAMPGROUND FULL when we pulled in at 11am Thursday morning. I was a little heart broken.

Fruita Campground is nestled in a grove of trees to the right of the photo.

Luckily we headed to a nearby town called Torrey and found a quaint RV Camp that had a few camp sites. We were sold when we saw the swing set and grassy field :) It was called Thousand Lakes RV Park. It turned out to be a great place to stay! Who knew there were such nice RV parks for campers?

Thousand Lakes RV Park

Some highlights of our two day excursion included putting our new tent to use. It was fun both nights to bundle up the kids in the tent and then watch them play around on the sleeping bags with pure joy before going to bed. The kids didn't sleep like sleeping baby's unfortunately. But we survived the freezing weather!

Another highlight was hiking! We only brought one carrier, so Lily got some good exercise. We usually walked about a half mile into the hike, and then turned around. A slower way to go, but still fun :) Lily would frequently plop down in the middle of the trail and start playing with the sand. Lily and William love anything sand or dirt.

There were so many cool rock formations. I was constantly oohing and awing over the rocks... so different from the northwest nature I grew up in, but still beautiful. It was also fun to see the amazing contrast between the autumn colored leaves and the red rock.

It took about a week to finish unpacking from the two day excursion once we were home, but we are so glad we went. It's good to get away, freeze your highnies off, eat smores and enjoy living in nature once in a while :) Yay for Fall Break and the beautiful outdoors.