Another Summer, Another Epic road trip in the books.
After a great vacation last year, we decided we could do another 10 day, drive across the country cramming in a as much as we could. Spend all day doing stuff, then load into the truck and drive another 4-6 hours... why not!!! I think I spent the entire vacation on almost no sleep and all coffee. I was dehydrated the whole trip since bathrooms were sparse while driving and hiking. Almost no water just coffee!!
After losing track of time it's time to get back and finish posting about this vacation. This will be day 5 of the 10-day trip so there's not that much left to post about in the long run given that we have to drive back home.
- Pre Drive Friday Night to Altoona IA
- Day 1 Drive to Denver Co - Red Rocks Amphitheatre
- Day 3 Part 1 Drive to MOAB, Hike Corona Arch!!
- Day 3 Continued - Jet Boat Tour and Sunset at Dead Horse State Park
- Day 4 - Sunrise at Delicate Arch in Arches National Park, Part 1
- [Day 5 - Star Gazing at Arches National Park then an afternoon at Capital Reef National Park)
Star Gazing at Arches National Park
Captain amazing day watching a sunrise it arches National Park on day 4, my youngest had commented that he would like to get to arches even earlier in the morning to do some stargazing. If you're not familiar with the area stargazing is a tremendous popular activity given the sparse population, and almost no light pollution once you travel out into the country. Spending nights out there opens your eyes to the stars above, unless you realize how much time our ancestors probably spent staring at the stars. I can clearly understand spending long nights is looking up at this guy and contemplating life, purpose, and a cosmos.
So we want the kids up even earlier than the day before and headed off to the park. The good news is we only had to go to the first overlook to do some stargazing. Bad news is that my phone takes absolutely awful star photos. These are the best I could do and most of these came once we actually started to see some daylight come towards the horizon and we got a little bit of color. I just don't have the camera setup to do night time photography.
Sunrise @ La Sal Mountains Viewpoint
The pull off that we did the stargazing and sunrise view from was the la sal mountain viewpoint. It's a perfect viewpoint that faces directly east when you park your car in the spots. I'm pretty sure they added his viewpoint just for people who wanted to watch the sunrise over the park in the red stones. We got some great views of both the stars, the sun, and some of the shadows drop this sunrise came up.
Sun Rise Shadows
Timing was everything for these photos. Those returned around and looked into the surrounding rocks we noticed that the sunrise was casting some Long shadows and really added some depth of the color in the rocks. We looked a lot different in the morning than they did in full daylight with the sun scorching overhead.
Capital Reef
After eating our breakfast while watching the sunrise we decided to head off to our next destination which was the capital reef National park. We've done a little bit of capital brief a few years ago when you drove through but not much. In fact we missed most of what we wanted to see due to time and we weren't able to get out and see the trails we wanted to hike.
Driving to Capital Reef
It was just a shy of a 3-hour drive from arches National Park to Capitol reef. It was a pretty drive especially once we got closer to the capital reef. But I will say that once again it is shocking and how little there was out in the landscape. There are no trees there's no houses, there's no nothing it's just vast dry Rock.
As we pulled into the main road through Capitol reef it appeared that there was some road construction going on. They were tarring and repaving the road causing massive backups in Long delays. They were also trapping cars in the side of the road behind smoldering hot black top that you couldn't drive on or long stretches of road that had to run them that you would have to drive over, neither of which sounds like a good idea to me. Because of this we had to skip our first trail which ran through the drive riverbed up to the top which looked really cool but had to be a pass do the reconstruction.
Hickman Land Bridge Trail
The main attraction in capital reef was the Hickman land bridge. Well very similar to an arch, this is called a land bridge I'm honestly not sure what makes it hard and what makes a land bridge or the difference between them.
Since we pulled up to the trailhead the land bridge we got really lucky and actually found a parking spot for the truck. Considering how small the parking lot is and how busy the parking lot was there were a lot of cars that were sitting around and waiting for 30 to 45 minutes for parking spot for someone to leave so they could pull in and get out. We got really really lucky and managed to sneak one off on the side find a construction Cruise truck.
Trail Head
Trail Along the River
The trail starts off hiking along the River on the bottom and then starts the switchbacks up the top of the ridge line. It's pretty hot and dry with some decent elevation games but overall it was a pretty nice hike.
On top of the bluff - Decent climb
Which is the top you get some decent views of the local geography. Things look different than Moab but yet similar. The trail to the land bridge goes off quite a ways from here to a little bit more the backcountry but it is still a very well marked trail it's easy to follow. It also helps if there's a lot of other people hiking which gives you a general idea that you're going right direction.
Crazy Erosion in the dry river bed
You could tell where the water collected and ran off during the little rainfall had. This created some crazy erosion patterns that we were able to take a photo off from above and then climb down and walk underneath the bottom. I didn't get any photos from the bottom to do struggling with lighting conditions and not being able to see anything plus I was crouched over pretty heavily and it was a really awkward shot.
Land Bridge!!
That last we made it to theland bridge. We are lucky to have only a couple other hikers there when we got there. We're able to sit in the shade, take some photos, and eat some snacks. We also walked underneath the bridge and on the back side we also got some more photos. Overall it was a pretty impressive land bridge from its size and scale.
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Petroglyphs Panels
Another big attraction in Capitol reef is the petroglyphs. This is the first time I have seen petroglyphs in person. It was really interesting to see what was carved into rocks by the indigenous people. Honestly some of the shapes that they drew really thank you wonder what facing their images off. A lot of the drawings look other what we think is extraterrestrial.
It's crazy to think that they were carved in the Rock so long ago and yet have been able to sustain all the elements and be visible still today.
Driving to Bryce Canyon
Since we had extra time to do the road closures we drove through Dixie National Forest on our way to our next destination of Bryce canyon initially we were going to be driving much later in the day to Bryce but given that are hiking was cut short with the road construction we decided to drive through the national forest and look for Oklahoma. The drive to Bryce was going to take another 2 hours so we took her time driving through open range looking for cattle in the road and enjoying the green after spending so much time and just read and rocks.
Dixie National Forecast
It was some really pretty driving and I enjoyed the change in Pace and scenery. It was nice to take our time driving on a less travel road with little traffic. Not to mention this drive took us on the absolute ridge tops of a narrow road with spectacular views. Sure never steep drop offs on both sides but as long as we stayed on the road everything was perfect.
Total Day Driving
In total for the day we drove just under 5 hours assuming we didn't take any pit stops which I know we took at least one gas station in restroom break.
Vacation Stats
Pre Drive Friday Night
Day 1 -Drive to Altoona
- 271 Miles
- 4 Hrs
Day 2 - Drive to Red Rocks & Hike - Drive to Look out Mountain and Eldorado Springs
- 694 Miles Red Rocks
- 10 Hours to Red Rocks
- 65 Miles Round Trip
- 2 Hours Round Trip
Day 3 Drive to MOAB - Hike, Jet Boat Tour and Dead Horse State Park
- 342 Miles
- 5.5 Hours
- Corona Arch, Pinto and Bow Tie Arch
- Jet Boat Tour
- Dead Horse State Park
Arches National Park
- Sunrise at Delicate Arch
- Sand Dune and Broken Arch Trail, Balanced Rock, Windows Trials, Double Arch
- Mesa Arch
- Sunset at Whale Rock
- Driving 80 Miles, 1H 50M
Day 5 Sunrise at Arches, Drive to Capital Reef and Bryce Canyon
- Drive to Capital Reef 156 Miles 2hrs 45m
- Hickman Land Bridge
- Petroglyphs Panels
- Dixie National Forest
- Drive to Bryce Canyon 107 Miles - 2 Hrs
Vacation Running Stats
Are running stats or getting up there, with a drive time of at least 28 hours and at least is 1700 miles excluding all the day driving to trailheads and activities and back and forth to be a pretty massive trip so far. It's a good thing my Chevy Silverado is so good on gas at an average of 17.2 miles to the gallon.
Here is the overall view of the drive excluding many of the small excusions
Tracked Totals including excursions
Total Miles - 1715
Total Time Driving - 28 hrs
Summary
So far I've been loving this trip that day five I'm getting a little anxious as I know we're halfway through but I'm looking forward to the next day in Bryce canyon and then on to a few more really cool places. I wish I would have tracked how many gallons I put in the truck, but I forgot on the first day of driving to track that. I did run a total trip odometer to give me a rough idea of how many miles I had even though I started it late on the first day. I'll work on getting the next post out on the next cool location that we visited in utah.