Day 28...Capitol Reef National Park, UT/Moab, UT

We set off for Moab this morning for a two night stay.  We decided to stop at Capitol Reef National Park today, since it is almost halfway between Kanab and Moab and it wouldn't make sense to backtrack later on.  Capitol Reef is a unique place, designated a National Park in order to protect the Waterpocket Fold, a 100-mile long wrinkle in the earth's crust known as a monocline, as well as all the canyons, ridges, buttes and plant life.  It's amazing to see the wide variety of plants that can grow in a desert environment.  We started off at the Visitor's Center around 1:00 PM and decided to stick to driving today, as opposed to more hiking after our semi-traumatic experience at Bryce Canyon yesterday :)

There are two paved roads through the park, one is the present-day Route 24, which stretches from one end to the other and out, and the other is the old Route 24, which veers off into two dirt roads that eventually end at hiking trails.  We headed out to old Route 24 first, stopping at the Gifford House, which once belonged to a Morman family that settled in the area.  It was passed through the family until the 1960's, when it's owner sold the home and land to the National Park Services.  The home is now a small museum and gift shop with tons of homemade delicious-looking fruity things - we picked up a mixed berry pie and some jalepeno honey mustard and continued on. 

Speaking of the fruity things, I should mention that one of the draws of this park is the large number of orchards that go throughout the area.  Families that used to occupy the land planted orchards that the park has continued to keep up, including apples, pears, cherries, apricots, peaches, walnuts and more...yum.  Visitors are allowed to enter any of the unlocked orchards, indicating that there is ripe fruit available to harvest.  You can eat all you want for free while in the orchard, and pay to take out anything additional.  Unfortunately, we happened to visit during flowering season, not fruit growing season...so, lots of small trees with little flowers, but no fruit.  Still pretty cool, though.

We continued down the road, amazed at the rock cliffs that seemed to rise up from out of nowhere...the road became so narrow and windy that you could hardly see what was around each turn...luckily, there weren't many other people on the road and this lead to the views being even more incredible.  After we got a little ways out on one of the dirt roads, we turned around to head back out to the other road, this time stopping at the pull-offs for photos.  We even saw some of the areas on the rock walls where early wagon travelers would write their names - dating back to the 1880's.   We stopped back at Gifford House to eat lunch in the picnic area there and then moved on.

On the new Route 24, we were able to walk two different boardwalk areas featuring petroglyphs left by Native Americans that lived there as early as the 9th century.  While on the boardwalks, we saw a few mule deer laying in the grass to the side, as well as a lizard on the railing.  Who knew after learning about mule deer just a week ago, we'd be seeing them almost every day since?  They're like our little travel guides.

We finally exited the park and realized some of the landscape continued beyond...some cliffs just popping up in the middle of open fields and other areas of ongoing ridges.  We even saw two buffalo at one point.  We made it to our Ramada around 5:45 PM and, after checking in, found the Moab Microbrewery, which was within walking distance.  We each ordered a beer while we waited for our table and considered purchasing a growler, so we went for a sampler with dinner.  Unfortunately, the beer was decent, but not worthy of a growler, so we left it at that.  After we walked back to our room, we tried out the mixed berry pie...good stuff.  Tomorrow, we head to Arches to do some more hiking and burn off that pie.