MJK Thrills N Spills: 2nd Anniversary Trip to Capitol Reef

Well, so far we are holding true to our new wedding anniversary tradition of going camping and hiking in southern-ish Utah. We chose to go to Capitol Reef this year for our anniversary, and we chose to invite some friends and their families to join us! So Lindsey and Rob and Jen and Tim and their kids joined us. All told we had six adults and six kids all 4 and under with us. But that wasn't the main cause of mayhem - it was the lack of cell phone service and all three families heading down at different times Friday morning!

Lindsey and Rob left their home at 7:00 am, then Mike and I left at 8:00 am, and Jen and Tim left around 9:00 am. Our goal was to get to the campground as soon as possible and see if we could score a campground for the weekend. When Mike and I got there, the park was so super busy! I thought there was no way possible that Lindsey and Rob scored a site and especially when we drove past a picnic site that had a truck just like theirs in the parking lot (thinking they were parked there in hopes of meeting up with us). So we just very quickly checked out the campground, saw that it was full, and drove around one loop just to exit despite Mike's nagging feeling of driving around the whole campground to see if any spots were open and the host just didn't know it. So we headed over to where we saw Lindsey and Rob's "truck" and then quickly discovered it wasn't their truck and they weren't waiting for us there. We checked the visitor center for alternative campgrounds and maybe any notes from Lindsey and Rob and then we headed back to Torrey to get some cell phone service. We connected with Jen and Tim and found an alternate campsite in another neighboring town. But then we had the thought that we should go back to the park's campground and see if, by some miracle, Lindsey and Rob did indeed score a camp site. Because, really that would be the only logical explanation as to why we hadn't heard from them yet - surely they would have went into cell phone service to notify us that they were looking for us and/or a different camp site. So we went back to the campground and much to our chagrin and embarrassment, there they were with a dang camp site scored!!! Oh, we felt like dorks. But oh well. We also had one more hurdle to overcome: the limit of 8 people per site. So we bribed our neighboring campers to claim us as part of their party - we really did bribe him by paying for his campsite for the night. Ha ha!

After that was all settled and all three families were gathered and set up at camp, we hit the road again to go do a family friendly "slot" canyon hike, Headquarters Canyon. The trailhead was an hour and a half down a dirt road. Woah, long drive. The hike was really quite fun! The slot section was really quite narrow and fun and not at all technical, but kind of short which is fine. The other two families had some snacks at the turn around point, except for Mike, Cora, and me. Again, I failed! I thought we'd be back to camp by 6ish so I didn't bother to bring solid food for Cora. Well, we didn't get back to camp until 8, so poor Cora was going only on breast milk that she got just before we started the hike and had to wait to have her dinner until we got back into camp. Then we attempted to put her to bed around 9:30 pm and she really struggled to fall asleep even though it was quite warm and we showed her that she had access to her thumb to suck on it. We were cringing as she cried for an hour before finally falling asleep in my arms (miracle again!).

Ha ha! Cora's feet turned black from rubbing on the aluminum frame of the backpack

Jen, Tim, Ainsely, Mike, and Cora on the Headquarters Canyon hike

Lindsey and Calvin

In the "slot" area of Headquarters Canyon

Saturday morning Jen and Lindsey took their kids to an egg hunt that the park was hosting. So while they did that, Mike and I figured out some plans we wanted to do that day. We drove down a scenic drive that quickly became a fairly intense 4WD road with a little dicey creek crossing. Thank goodness we had our truck to do that drive in! Cora took a little nap during the drive. We turned around fairly quickly and came back to hike to the Golden Throne view point. Within the first quarter-mile of the hike, I rolled my right ankle. It hurt! Bad! And I was quite mad about it because I thought the hike was ruined. But I decided to walk it off and ended up doing the whole hike on it. ha ha! When we came back to camp, Jen and her family returned pretty quickly after us, and Lindsey and her family had already headed home (as they had planned to do). So we just chilled in camp, had an early dinner, put the kids to bed, and made some dutch oven pineapple upside down cake. I should explain that "putting the kids to bed" wasn't that simple: again, Cora took a while to fall asleep. We laugh that Cora and Ainsley, Jen's 16-month-old daughter, were bating each other. ha ha!

Golden Throne, Mike, and sleeping beauty

Cora did wake up for the viewpoint

Sunday morning, Jen and her family took off immediately, but Mike, Cora, and I did a quick high to Cassidy Arch, ate lunch in Torrey and then rushed home to make Easter "dinner" (it was really breakfast for dinner) for Spencer, Morgan, Whitney, and Josh. Overall, it was a fun trip! It was fun to have some friends with us. And it felt like a little of the good old days when Jen, Lindsey and I used to go out on our weekend adventures, although now we have four times the people with us. ha ha!