Day 15: Arches Part 2 / Capitol Reef

Scenic Byway on route to Capitol Reef National Park

Tuesday, August 17

Had a lot of trouble sleeping last night because there was an insane amount of wind, so all night the sides of the tent were flapping back and forth and making a lot of noise.  I wanted to get some quality hiking in during the morning because I had planned stops at Goblin Valley State Park and Capitol Reef National Park later in the day before getting to my hotel near Bryce Canyon, and there would be a decent amount of driving in between.  Because of this, I forced myself up at a reasonable hour, cleaned up the camp, snacked for breakfast, and got to the first trail by around 8:45 am.

Double O Arch at Arches National Park

My plan was to hit a bunch of the shorter hikes that the park labeled as easy and then drive through the park stopping at viewpoints for some picture opps to make sure I covered as much as possible before leaving around noon.  I started with the trailhead right by the campground and was only originally planning on hiking up to the Landscape Arch in this area, which would have been a little bit over 1.5 miles round trip.  There were a couple of short spurs on the trail to go to other arches so I decided to check those out as well.  When I got to the Landscape Arch, instead of turning around, I was feeling pretty good and the weather was still comfortable so I decided to continue down the trail toward the Double O Arch.  The park labeled this part of the hike as strenuous, and it definitely was a lot tougher than the first part, with a lot of rock climbing and elevation changes involved, but that made it more fun.  There were also a couple additional trail spurs to other arches in this portion too which I followed.  By the time I returned to my car from what was supposed to be a quick hike, it was 3 hours later and I had gone almost 7 miles.  I did a few other really short hikes, and stopped at a couple viewpoints in the drive back to the entrance, but I was feeling pretty drained and was behind my original schedule so I didn't want to do too much more than that.  If I had more time I would have loved to explore more.  The park was pretty huge, and the landscape really was fascinating and fun to look at.

Arches National Park

Wendy's was the choice lunch (#6 combo, of course) and then I headed toward Gobin Valley.  To get there, the GPS wanted to take me down some obscure road which was closed, and to find a detour after the fact would have taken me far out of the way, so I skipped it.  Probably for the best since I left Arches later than I had planned, and the State Parks aren't covered by the Annual Pass I bought, so it would have been extra expense to rush through it.

I got to Capitol Reef National Park around 3 hours after I left Arches.  To get there, the route takes you through a Scenic Byway for around 30 miles, which featured some impressive rocky landscape.  The grey/brown colors in the early part of the route seemed a little mundane compared to Arches' bright red rock structures, but the scene did get more colorful the closer to the park I got.  I wasn't planning on spending much time here because of the time, but I decided to do one hike to stretch out the legs after driving for awhile.  I ended up doing the 2 mile Hickmans Bridge hike, which was listed as moderate.  It took about an hour to complete, and felt tougher than some of the earlier ones because it had gotten pretty hot out.  I also got my first use out of the first aid kid in my hiking bag on this trail when a little girl (maybe 8 years old?) came up to me asking for a tissue.  She was holding her nose and actually bleeding really heavily from it.  I got her some bandages and then she scampered back to her group as if it was nothing.  And that was my good deed for the day.

Hickmans Bridge at Capitol Reef National Park

I got to the Bryceway Inn in the tiny town of Panguitch at around 7:45 pm, and was definitely feeling nervous about a repeat of the Dakota Inn incident.  Luckily there were no such issues.  The past two campgrounds didn't have any showers, so I was at extreme levels of smelliness and showered as soon as I got to the room.  It felt so good I was thinking about immediately taking a second one.  Instead I went to the Cowboy Smokehouse Cafe, which I think is the only restaurant in town, for dinner and then headed back to lie in a bed for the first time in a couple days.

Miles traveled today: 297
Miles traveled total: 3,818
States traveled through: 12