Fruita in Two States

Starting Point: June 19, Fallon, NV
End Point: Park and Ride, Fruita, CO
Miles: 756

Bare with me, this is my first post done on my phone. Chad and I haven't had a stable Internet connection in almost a week and SO MUCH HAS HAPPENED! I'll attach pictures later.

Let me just start with: holy crap... today was a long day... and again it all stems from camping being a fickle beast.... oh.. that and I'm addicted to National Parks. But, let's blame camping.

Started off nice and easy, with a weird packaged, Indian influenced, continental breakfast from our equally weird hotel. Luckily, the coffee was good and we were on the road by 6:30am.

The goal was Capitol Reef National Park by 5pm. That's when visitor centers generally close and were gonna camp there. Easy peasy. Until, I realized we were a mere hop, skip and jump from Great Basin National Park! No problem! We have time!

GBNP was wonderful! We did the drive through version of visiting - going through the Wheeler Peak Scenic Drive. I really wanted to see the bristlecone trees but the hot weather and lack of shade prevented us from leaving Milli in the car for an hour... or two... so instead we saw Wheeler Peak and it's glacier from afar and enjoyed the 10,000 foot altitude.

I was excited that even after seeing the Great Basin we were still gonna make it to Capitol Reef! That was until we hit the new timezone in Utah... and I found out the stupid visitor center closed at 4:30... oh well - campground was still open!

Open but... FULL! Fine. New plan: We'll just enjoy the park this evening and stay in a hotel for the night. Wow. Capitol Reef is beautiful and a little more hands on than many other parks. See, it used to be an old Mormon homestead, a place where a man could hide the fact that he had multiple wives from the authorities.... anyway, that's a lot of mouths to feed so they planted these massive orchards of fruit trees! The area is now called Fruita (so is the campground). The best part though is that you can pick the fruit! As much as you want to eat! We found some heirloom plums that were tart and awesome. A little too early in the year for much else.

Ok, time to find a hotel. What?! EVERY HOTEL IN A 100 MILE RADIUS IS FULL?!? Crap.

Fine. We'll keep driving. And heck we might as well enjoy the rest of the park since we now won't be back in the morning.

Yes. We will be back. It's beautiful.

New plan: stay closer to Canyonlands and Arches National Parks and spend the morning there!

Ummm... no. All those hotels are full too...

How about driving all the way to Grand Junction, Colorado.

Nope. Apparently they are having a MASSIVE music festival... so... and I'm not exaggerating at all...

ALL of those hotels are full too. And it's 1am... and we're tired.

Time to sleep in the car. At the Fruita, Colorado, Park and Ride... luckily it's free, there's space and we're warm and safe. Comfort has never been ALL that important to me.... no really... Least that's what I kept telling myself.

Onwards and upwards tomorrow - the only way we can go!