Capitol Reef National Park

We woke up and instead of our usual coffee and cookie breakfast, decided to eat some burrito food to give us some energy for a day of hiking.  We packed up camp and found a campsite inside the park at the Fruita Campground.  We got the best spot!  We backed up to a beautiful orchard.  The whole place was an old Mormon colony, so there were historical remnants of that time, including the orchards I believe.

Our first hike after setting up camp was to climb into Cohab Canyon, walk down the canyon and then hop onto the next trail across from the canyon bottom called the Hickman Bridge trail for 5.5 total miles round trip.  

Cohab Canyon starts in the upper right.  To get into it from the campgrounds, we had to switchback up the wash of volcanic boulders out front. 

Looking back down into the campgrounds and up Sulfur Canyon. 

Almost to the start of the canyon.

Finally, the top of Cohab Canyon.

Off to the sides of Cohab Canyon were all of these slot canyons.  Legend has it that the polygamous wives of the Mormons would hide in these from the authorities.

Me pretending to hide from the authorities!  I swear, officer, I didn't know that my husband was cheating on me with 6 other women and that they were also bearing his children! 

Unfortunately, the top of the walls got washed out by the sun in this picture, but it was super deep!

Cohab Canyon

We went up quite a bit of elevation to reach this beauty, the Hickman Bridge.

Hickman Bridge

Using Dave for scale under the Hickman Bridge

The hike out had some great views of the park.

The sun was starting to get pretty hot!

A lizard!  One of many!

I don't have any pictures from the way back.  That's probably because it was 2:00 in the afternoon without a cloud in the sky with a forecasted high of 87 degrees.  We were crumbling from the heat and the lack of shade in the canyon on the way back.  We both ran to the water spigot after the hike and drenched ourselves with cold water.  It felt great to get out of our hiking shoes, into our Chacos, and have some lunch.