The road less traveled

We broke camp and left Moab around 8:30 and it was already over 85 degrees. We decided to take the road that leads through Capitol Reef National Park. After an hour or so on i70 we headed south on HWY 24.

Capitol Reef Park is a really cool, surprising little park that we had never really heard of before this trip. They call it Capitol Reef because the rock looks like coral reef, with spongy looking rock cliffs and crazy formations. The neatest part was the little community of Fruita. It is a small or hard community that was found by a Morman family. Evidently the native Indians had planted and harvested from these orchards over 700 years ago. The homesteaders found evidence of granaries, farming techniques and many petroglyphs depicting farming lifestyle. Nobody noes what happened to these native communities but the orchards still exist and you can actually pick your own fruit if you want. A couple jars of jam for papa sufficed for us today.

After leaving Fruita, we drove to a town called Torrey. As we drove by, I noticed the map indicated we should take HWY 12 but the nav system had us going through Torrey. We stopped to double check directions and decided to trust the nav. Mistake. Big. Mistake.

The nav had us turn left on a local road named Bicknel road. For a while it was just a little country road with surrounding farmland. Ok, not so bad. However, shortly the pavement ended and we were on a forest service road that was in poor gravel condition. Steve jumped out to converse with dad but there really wasn't an option, we couldn't turn the rigs around on that road. When I finally figured out where we were I realized the nav was taking us another 89 miles on that road and over a place called Hells Backbone. After a few miles we actually merged with another forest service road and made the decision to turn around. It meant backtracking abut 15 miles but it was a much better option than continuing on that road. Now I know that of all the preferences you can set for nav (avoid tolls, ferries, etc) you cannot set a preference for paved roads only!

Back on the correct road, we ended up cresting a stunning backbone of road with steep canyons and drop offs on each side and a 14% grades. Eventually we rolled into the Cannonville KOA and set up camp. Like most of the other KOAs, this one has somewhat cramped sites but offered lots of amenities. Our plan is to buzz into Bryce this evening to see the park.

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