Long day: Canyonlands & Capital Reef

4:30am up with the brilliant stars.

5:30 sunrise at Mesa Arch which was beautiful and comical watching the 30 some odd landscape photographers via and swarm for the perfect angle on the same exact classic shot.

6am-11 Canyonlands National Park tour with another gypsy guide and before most of the traffic so we had quiet uninterrupted views and it was lovely.

Rachel is determined to come back and camp in the park and do the Lathrop 18mile trail some day. It was by far superior to Arches and the “Island in the Sky” set the bar pretty high for future parks.

Because it was HOT and DRY we decided it was early enough to pack up and head out and then with little traffic we made it all the way to Capital Reefs National park, and feeling a bit ambitious and perhaps cavalier we decided to drive all of Capital Reefs before heading out to find a campsite.

4:30pm exhausted and over the car we found a pretty campground called Sunglow and after some tuna salad on pear slices with a Walmart avacados that had finally ripened we were DONE!