Day 8, Thursday, June 25, 2026
Today we finished exploring Capitol Reef National Park and made an impromptu trip over to Escalante and the Grand Staircase National Monument.
Capitol Reef is a fun, cute park that you can see in a day. We had spent yesterday afternoon doing the scenic drive and picking fruit from one of the many orchards. Today we hiked and visited more of the scenery.
We started the day sightseeing at the Fruita Schoolhouse. It is a tiny schoolhouse that served the small community of Fruita up until the mid-forties. It was a cute building located at the foot of one of the many cliff faces in Capitol Reef. We then ventured further down the road to check out petroglyphs carved into the rock faces. It is always fun to try to figure out what they were drawing and what the meaning may have been. We wrapped up our morning hiking the Hickman Bridge Trail. It is a 2 mile round trip hike that takes you up into the rocky wilderness to see a natural bridge. It has been one of our favorite hikes so far. Hikes take on a different feel as our kids get older. We used to be dragging them up mountains and worried they would fall. Now they are charging ahead of us, stopping every so often to wait and worried that one of us are going to fall along the way.
We wrapped up our hike and found a shady picnic area for lunch. We love packing a lunch and relaxing in the middle of the park to enjoy the nature around us. Capitol Reef has many places you can stop to enjoy a meal while still taking in the views. Our lunch spot happened to be right next to the Gifford House. It is a neat little shop & museum that serves homemade pies daily. We tried the mixed berry pie and the apple pie. They were delicious.
Lunch wrapped up, we still had at least one more place in the park we wanted to see but it was going to be better at sunset so we had the whole afternoon to find something to do. We decided to drive the scenic Hwy 12 over to Escalante / Grand Staircase National Monument. It was a beautiful drive that took us up and over a mountain. We had everything from thick forrests to vast rock landscapes on this drive. We even saw cows grazing along the sides (and on) the road. The drive was a 4 hour round trip but it was worth the time.
We had planned on cooking our meal tonight but when we got back to camp it was raining and the forecast didn’t look great. We opted to find a local restaurant instead. We enjoyed a delicious authentic mexican meal at Chak Balam Mexican Restaurant. Bellies full and the rain subsided, it was time to go check out our last spot in the park, Panorama Point and Sunset Trail. We hiked a short ways to see the sunset against the rocks and valleys of Capitol Reef. It was the perfect ending to a perfect day.
