Day 16 - Sunglow to Red Canyon. Dixie National Forest - Finally feeling like vacation
While Sunglow was an AMAZING site, we sadly only had one night there. However, we hadn’t quite seen enough of Capitol Reef and so we left Dover for a bit longer and headed back into the National Park to see some of the sites down on the valley floor.
This visit was completely worthwhile. The valley of the park used to be a farm with a great number of fruit orchards and the park has maintained this look for much of it. We parked the car at the picnic area which is an incredibly lush grove of large trees and a big open lawn. There seem to always be deer here enjoying the vegetation, but what was particularly enjoyable this morning was that there were some other kids there playing a soccer game. Sebastian and Robinson joined in and got some true kid activity which they had been missing with all the camping we have been doing.
Brian took the time while the soccer game was going on to wander through the orchards. There’s an incredible variety of trees in the park - cherries, peaches, pears, apples, walnuts, pecans, and almonds! The irrigation for each of the orchards was fascinating - the farmers had set up a series of canals that re-routed some of the river to allow for easy flooding of each of the fields as needed. Very cool.
After our time in the picnic area, we wandered over by the historic buildings. We all got to pet some very friendly horses and then Amy and the boys went into the museum and came out with……National Park ice cream! Apparently the park runs the orchard but also converts some of it into sellable products that can be bought at the museum. Pretty cool. We relaxed in the shade of the big trees while the ice cream disappeared - it was one very relaxing morning and finally started to feel like vacation.
On our way back to camp, we stopped in the town to make some calls back to Grandpa and Papa to wish them a Happy Father’s Day. It was nice to talk with them, even if it was brief. It sounds like everybody back home is doing well which is great to hear.
We headed back to Sunglow, and Robinson decided to prepare lunch for all of us on the griddle. He walked around camp, talking orders and then cooked up the meals like a true short-order cook. It was great. Then we packed Dover up for another transfer. This one, while short, was a bit spooky because it was one of the few evenings we hadn’t actually reserved. Amy had identified a pair of options, but they were both first come first serve and so we had to keep our fingers crossed.
The drive itself, while only about 2-2.5 hours, took us through so many different scenes. We had a lake, tall snow capped mountains, rugged canyon cliffs, and lush green farmland. It seemed to change every 10-15 minutes which really made the drive go quickly. Before we knew it, we were at the edge of Bryce Canyon and at Red Canyon campsite was there. We drove around and found a couple of spots open, but eventually decided that site #1 was our choice - especially since it had protection from the winds that were supposed to hit over the next 48 hours.
We quickly set up camp and got the solar panels cranking (no electric hookup again) before heading into Bryce Canyon to determine what to do the next day. Really, we probably wouldn’t have gone into the park, but Red Canyon campground had a boil order on the water and we thought it would be easier to just load up at Bryce. So that’s what we did. Fair warning to anybody visiting, Bryce Canyon City is TOURIST-Y. We just drove through, but geez it was ugly.
We enjoyed a true “must-go” dinner which was a mixture of quinoa, tomatoes, gbeans, corn, and cheese. Maybe we were all just hungry, but it disappeared quickly!
Robinson started a fire and we sat there while we waited for the stars to come out. While we had the trees obscuring some of our night sky, we got a great view of the stars we could see. I could even get a good picture of the sun setting with the moon and Venus out. Beautiful.
Total miles travelled - 3,723
# States (Provinces) - 10
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