Capitol Reef National Park

• Antoine de Saint-Exupery

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One of the most spectacular places we visited during our trip to southern Utah was the Capitol Reef National Park. I have been reading up about the parks in Utah and this one seems to be the park with least mentions by visitors. So naturally, we only planned a pass through as we wanted to venture into the more famous parks. So we decided to start early from Bryce and do a drive through of Capitol Reef en route to Moab, UT.

My thinking was that since I know least about the park it will be worth a quick visit and if it’s worth a stopover we will make a trip later next year. I didn’t have high hopes but the place completely blew us away. We only did a quick drive around of the scenic drive but the sheer number of stunning vistas were overwhelmingly high. To add to that we later learned from our friendly park rangers about the much more stunning back roads that are a must see. After browsing through some of the images displayed at the visitor center, I was tempted to stay and explore the park instead of heading out to Moab. But thankfully saner thoughts prevailed and we decided to keep our itinerary. But soon I will be back.

Today’s post is a photo of the barn at Gifford farm which lies in the heart of the Fruita valley, a desert oasis. Its appearance is quite sudden and it’s stunning to see the lush green patch among the vibrant red desert landscape. The farm is located at the beginning of the scenic drive and is one of the distinct landmarks of the Capitol reef National Park.

Capitol Reef National Park

Fruita is the best-known settlement in Capitol Reef National Park.

• Robert Byrne.

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I was recently going over some of my shots from our Utah trip and came across a random snapshot that I made. It was taken from an overlook near the sunset point. The cliffs looked like the remains of a massive Mesa formation that has been eroded over the years. The location was near the Panorama point location before you enter the Capitol Reef National Park. This is where the sulfur creek twists and turns and forms some very cool gooseneck turns. It had to be one of the most spectacular scenes we have ever seen. But there was a problem, it is not a place that can be easily photographed.

In our haste to get from the cold front at Bryce to the relative warmth of Moab, we overlooked how pretty the Capitol Reef NP was gonna be. Unfortunately, we only earmarked a day at the park and didn’t have much time to explore. I still remember how pretty this area was and how much I wanted to stick around. One day I will be back again.

It may be one of the least known national parks in Utah, but the scenery and dark skies in Capitol Reef National Park is nothing but amazing. Having...

• Norman Cousins.

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When we planned a road trip to southern Utah couple of year ago we were confident that in the week and a half we had we would be able to hit all the five national parks in the elevated state. In fact, we even included some short trips to northern parts of the state. Unfortunately, as routinely happens with pans of mice and men, mother nature decided to throw a curve ball by sending a winter storm our way as we arrived at Bryce Canyon.

While the winter storm delayed us a lot, it did indeed provide us with some stunning desert scenery. We also had to drop much of our planned itinerary to northern Utah and reduce the planned trip to Capitol Reef National Park to just a drive around the scenic road. This shot was taken just after sunset as we turned back from our short venture into the stunning National Park. One of my biggest surprises was Capitol Reef National Park. The scenery here is just stunning, and most of it needs some level of backcountry driving. I hope to come here again soon.