Today’s weather forecast predicted not that high temperatures and some rain, so we decided to move the visit to the Bryce Canyon by one day and to go to the Capitol Reef National Park today. Driving took about 2 hours, where we had rain and even a graupel shower, temperatures fell down to 3°C. But we also saw funny things on the road – a dog on a pickup’s loading area (what’s a popular way to transport dogs here) that looked at the cars in the opposing traffic and barked at them if he didn’t like the cars.
Finally we reached Capitol Reef, and were excited at the first go. Of course we had seen a lot of rocks during the last days, but that they are looking that different every time… Halfway we took a walk into the Grand Wash what really brought impressive views to us. Seeing some rocks laying there atop the cliffs could make one feeling a little queasy – because they looked like if they would fall down every moment. All in all another park visit which was worth doing it.
For the way back we took Highway 12, a road with very beautiful and varying scenery. It was leading us up to 2900 meters and brought us at some viewpoints very impressive looks of the landscape. Then the road became small and winding and led over a ridge – it went steep down to the left and to the right. A partly very sweaty road! But the vista did compensate all drops of sweat, and so we were back in Panguitch after a little more than 2 hours.
For dinner we went to the Flying M again where we could enjoy another delicious meal. Back into the motel we did another photo show and went to bed after some minutes to be fit for the next day.
