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NOTE: most of the "pictures" in this blog post will actually be short slideshows. Click on the picture to start the slideshow.
Summertime is here!!! Let the adventures begin! As long as gas stays down at a reasonable rate (say under $3), we will be doing lots of camping this year, since that's all the entertainment that this summer's budget will allow.
We spent most of Memorial Day Weekend in Capitol Reef National Park! In the rain! On the constant lookout for flash floods!
Before we get to sharing our adventure, perhaps we should start with what we DIDN'T do. The weather was very wet for at least several hours each day. Because of the flash flood warnings, all of the slot canyons, several of the washes, and several hikes were simply not safe. However, all the rain was worth it for this series of pictures of Lacey and Chloee right from the back of our campsite, about 20 yards from the tent.
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Being Memorial Day Weekend... And since the Capitol Reef campground is a "no-reservations" campground... And since Stan, Rae, Mark, Susan, Andee, Alex, Kaylee, Chloee, and Owen all decided to join our adventure at the last minute...We were under extreme pressure to deliver on the promise that at least two campsites would open up on Saturday morning and that we would be there early enough to get them before anybody else did. So we headed out at 3:00am on Saturday morning, got there at 6:30am and found about 20 sites schedule to open that morning!! Our two favorite available sites happened to be next to each other and happened to be vacated within 20 minutes of our arrival! Perfect!
Our hike along the Fremont River Nature trail (1 mile round trip, very muddy, cold, and wet, but nice to get out and enjoy nature nonetheless)
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Our hike to Hickman Bridge (2 miles round trip, included SUN!)
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Our stroll to the Fremont Waterfall (with all the rain over the past week, the swimming hole beneath the waterfall was was too cold for swimming, but was very scenic)
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Our hike to the Goosenecks Overlook (.25 miles round trip, Lacey and Lori slept in the car during this one, so Riley and Ron were unsupverised with a nice mud puddle)
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The kids spent an hour or so at the Ripple Creek Nature Activity Center (nice to get dry for awhile)
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Riley LOVES the tent, but hates TO SLEEP in the tent - He crawls back and forth, in circles, under, over, and through anything in the tent, lifting up the blankets regularly to see who else is still awake - The video below is during Lacey and Ron's naptime, but is an excellent example of the kind of high energy wandering he did most of the night on night 1 - Night 2 he was stapped in his car seat to sleep, that worked much better for the rest of us, and apparently for him too, he slept 11 hours on night 2
2009-05-27 Memorial Day Weekend Vids
The campground was excellent! It is one of our favorites in the entire National Park System! Despite the (normally) hot, dry desert landscape of most of Capitol Reef National Park, the campground is the perfect respite from the summer heat and is located at the site of the ghost town of Fruita, UT in the middle of 200 acres of fruit orchards (now maintained by the NPS), with a river and 2 creeks running through it - We had a really nice pair of campsites (lots of room to play, an orchard on one side, and an excellent view of the red rocks on another side) - Besides regular campground activities: we were able to enjoy Native American Folktales Story Hour with a 3rd grade teacher from Illinois who was volunteering at the campground, a slideshow about stars and the hubble telescope from a resident astronomer, and a fun ranger program about maps)
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On Monday, we got on the road by 9:30am, early enough to be home by 1:00pm - BUT, those of you who know Ron know that he just can't leave well enough alone and head straight home when there is still daylight left - So we went the LONG way home (got home at 8:00pm) and ended up having lunch at Goblin Valley State Park
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After Goblin Valley, we took an hour detour on a scenic jeep trail to Temple Mountain in the San Rafael Swell (on the drive we came across a knoll with a single, lone tree on top - we drove up to it and enjoyed a 365 degree view of several storms that were moving through the area - it was breathtaking, but one of the distant storms had lightning in it and since that little tree was the highest point for at least a mile in any direction - we didn't stay long)
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Then we headed West along I-70, then North up through Castle Dale, Huntington, and Price; stopping at the US-6 rest area to let the kids play for an hour (Riley was being exceptionally cute - Lacey helped him to pick some flowers to give to mommy)
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Despite our good intentions, we didn't make it to church on Sunday (we had planned to go to the Torrey Ward about 12 miles away, but their building was closed for remodeling, so they were meeting another 10 miles further in Bicknell). However, before we left we found out that the new online "Mormon Channel" has podcast you can download to the ipod. We downloaded a few of the Scripture Stories for Children before we left, Lacey was absolutely enthralled listening. I highly recommend you check it out for your children.
In all, we had a very nice weekend adventure. Fairly inexpensive, the campground was $5 per family, our food came from our regular monthly grocery budget, most of the National Park was fee-free (although we have an annual pass so it wouldn't have mattered), the State Park was $7, fuel was our only real expense. We logged 564 vehicle miles; 164 more than if we took the "regular" way home, including 29 miles of dirt road, the dirt roads and the hills on the drive in really shot down our gas mileage to an average of 17.9 mpg for the whole trip (yikes! somebody hasn't been practicing their hypermiling!). We logged 3.33 hiking miles. Perhaps we should start keeping track and posting our total adventure statistics in the sidebar. Hmmmm.
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