Master Plan Adventures: October 2025

Saturday, October 4, 2025

Capitol Reef National Park - Beautiful and Homemade PIE!

Greetings!

Here is the final post of our stay in the Moab area and the 5th of the "Mighty 5" national parks in Utah - all so spectacular! We spent the day at Capitol Reef National Park, which was about a 90-minute drive from our campground. It was a beautiful drive and once again, we were blessed with perfect weather.

Entering the park - such dramatic scenery

Capitol Reef encompasses the Waterpocket Fold, a warp in the Earth's crust that is 65 million years old, the oldest in North America. In this fold, newer and older layers of earth folded over each other in an S-shape. The park is filled with brilliantly colored sandstone cliffs, gleaming white domes, and contrasting layers of stone and earth. Capitol Reef was named for a line of white domes and cliffs of Navajo Sandstone, each of which look somewhat like the US Capitol building that run from the Fremont River to Pleasant Creek.

There are different sections of this park, and we visited the most popular area - the historic Fruita district that was settled by Mormon homesteaders in 1880. They planted orchards of fruit trees that are still maintained by the park service today. The district includes the Visitor Center, a 7.5 mile beautiful scenic drive, and the Gifford House, a former homestead and now a popular museum and homemade pie shop. YES - Pie! It was delicious - we bought 3 (Peach, Mixed berry and Apple)- we ate one for a late breakfast snack upon arrival and saved two for later. It is so popular that they have a reputation of running out. Therefore, we went to the pie store before we did anything else - including the visitor center! It's all about strategy.

After our pie snack and a trip to the visitor center for our maps and info, it was off to drive through the park on the scenic drive and check it all out. We went to the end of the paved drive, and continued on for 2-3 miles on a dirt road. The end was a trail head for a really cool 2-mile hike - The Petroglyphs Narrows Pioneer Register and Tanks. It was stunning.

The Pioneer Petroglyphs - these were inscribed about 20 feet high on the rock

This is one of the "tanks" - we called it the splash pool!

The rock formations were incredible

Paul is standing right next to what was photographed above

After our hike, we enjoyed a picnic lunch and then drove back out the scenic road to our next hike. The lighting was even better going out and the scenery was awe inspiring!

A very popular hike is called the Hickman Bridge - a total of 2+ miles. It was pretty much uphill to get there and downhill to return, but it was worth every bit of the effort - and after all, we had to work off the pie!

All in all, it was a spectacular day and we thoroughly enjoyed the beautiful unique scenery in this park, as well as the homemade pie! It's a very unique offering when it comes to national parks and we were delighted!

We left Utah and spent 4 days in beautiful Colorado - we are now in New Mexico having just arrived at the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta - more on that in posts to come soon!

Thanks so much again for following along and for your love and support - XO, Jen & Paul

Canyonlands National Park and Dead Horse Point State Park

Greetings again!

As a follow up to my previous post, here I will detail our multiple visits to Canyonlands National Park as well as our visit to Dead Horse Point State Park, which is right next to Canyonlands National Park.

Canyonlands National Park is known for its dramatic desert landscape carved by the Colorado River. The area we visited is its most popular - called the Island in the Sky - it is a huge, flat-topped mesa with beautiful panoramic overlooks.

I am going to go a bit out of sequence as I want to start with our early morning Monday venture for sunrise at Mesa Arch. Paul captured a beautiful time lapse:

This is a very popular thing to do! First light was at 6:40am with sunrise at 7:05am and we arrived to the Arch around 6:15am after a 5-10 minute hike in the dark (with flashlights!) and there were already about 10 people there. Most were legit photographers with thousands of dollars worth of equipment and in we came and Paul set up his GoPro right nearby - it was perfect! As time went on, more and more arrived and it was fun people-watching while witnessing the magic unfold with the sunrise.

The day before (Sunday), we visited the park and checked out the visitor center and went on a beautiful 3.5 mile hike - the Murphy Trail. It was a pretty flat trail along a mesa top, and as you went further, the scenery got more and more magical.

This view was steps from the Visitor Center

After our Murphy Trail trek, we headed to the end of the scenic drive to the Grand View Overlook.

On Wednesday, we returned to the area and explored Dead Horse Point State Park, which is right next to Canyonlands. This state park is magnificent and the facilities are top-notch. We had a picnic lunch and then hiked along the rim of the canyon. Dead Horse Point is named for a local legend where cowboys corralled wild mustangs on the plateau with a narrow exit, then left them trapped without water, leading to their deaths from thirst on the high, dry point while the Colorado River flowed 2,000 below. Yikes. It is also famous as the filming location for the final scene of Thelma and Louise.

A beautiful blue bird visited while we were having lunch.

The Colorado River below

You can see our truck in this photo - where we had lunch before the hike.

After Dead Horse Point, we took the short ride back to Canyonlands National park and this time, we drove the Shafer Trail. While hiking in Dead Horse Point, we noticed a road below and realized that we could go there! This historic off-road is known for its exhilarating, switchback descent (over 1000 feet) into the canyon, dramatic scenery and past use for ranching. 4-wheel drive definitely required!