The Great Wander

Ok, I got a little ahead of myself last week.  We had one more campsite to go to before we headed to the hotel.  This was just outside of Capitol Reef National Park.  We did not have a dog kennel or daycare reservation for the pups, so it was another drive through the park, stop and get out, one person stays with the dog the two hike a bit, come back and trade. 

Most campsites we have a routine.  Once we get to camp, all three of us unload the car.  Then we identify where to set up the tents and get them set up.  In this case we only set up one tent, and while one person sets up the inside of the tent (blows up the air mattresses, lays out sleeping bags, etc.), someone else will cook and get dinner ready.  They also working on getting the rest of the campsite set up, like the grill if it’s not being used for dinner, getting our action packers out so that that’s room for the cooler in the car for the night.  It’s a ‘lot’ of set up, but we have a way that eases the set up too.

Mornings generally look the same no matter what.  Whoever is up first (usually me) gets the coffee going along with a pot of water to wash our face with.  From there, it’s get lunch together, if we are cooking in the park, get dinner together, load up and head out. Even though we are going to so many parks, getting there is about the same.  Get the park newspaper and map, find the visitor center, and plan out what we want to see based on the latest information from the park paper.  Get the dogs out and walk/water them while two of us go into the visitor center to get postcards (yes, we’ve been sending family and friends postcards along the way).

Capitol Reef is not the #1 national park, but like every park, it has some unique features.  In this case there are orchards in the park.  We didn’t camp in the park, so I don’t know if this is true, but I’ve heard that when you check in at the park, the campground host will bring you cobbler or pie made from fruit in the orchard.

Visiting the park varies from park to park. At Capitol Reef, there are only two roads in there.  One we took the night before on our way to camp, the other heads south and there’s lots of hiking off the road.  At the end of the paved road, there’s a dirt road that heads to the trailhead for trail, that canyon is incredible.  Like I said we needed to alternate walking and staying with the dogs, so for the most part we just drove the roads, took some pictures and then headed out, all told it was about three or four hours that we spent in there.

We really wanted to hike some, so we headed out of the park and town and headed south toward the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument.  We didn’t go that far but headed that way. There were quite a few forest service roads that we stopped at and got out a hiked a bit.  Lots of trail maps out there, but we couldn’t find the trailheads.  So we walked through the forest and enjoyed the mountain air.  The Dixie National Forest has some great views of mountains and of Capitol Reef, so it was nice to hike around in there.

We had only planned the one day in Capitol Reef, so we headed back to camp to get things together for dinner and then for leaving the next day.  Getting ready to leave looks a lot like ensuring that any food that isn’t being cooked is repacked in the cooler or food crates.  Check the power level on the Goal Zero power bank (this thing has been amazing for us, it lets us charge computers, phones, tablets, etc. without having to run the car) and setting up the solar panels to charge it.  Then eating, maybe playing some cards, and heading to bed.

In the morning, while one of us gets the coffee together, if we are breaking camp, the other is stuffing the sleeping bags, compressing the Thermarest and getting started on breaking camp.  Everyone has a job to do and we all get working on those jobs as quickly as possible so that we can break camp efficiently and hit the road.

We don’t really have a routine of: get up, make coffee go to work, but in some ways we do.  We get up, make coffee, head to the park and things change from there.  But there are some consistent things that we do.  But again, we try to give ourselves a bit of flexibility, because part of the reason we are doing this is to get away from some of the day-to-day grind as well.  It’s ok that there’s not a consistent daily routine, but there are still basic things that happen most every day, so we have some division of labor that works and we get things done.