April 2 -- Highway 12

When we got up this morning, it had cleared off, but hadn't really warmed up very much.  We didn't hurry getting out the door and it was about 10:30 when we finally checked out and got on the road.  We drove back into Capitol Reef Park and stopped at the restored Mormon homestead there which has a small store selling all kinds of homemade canned goods (jam, pickles, etc), as well as individual fruit pies.  We got an apple pie and shared it right there in the park.  I'm not sure it was as good as my Grandma Summers' pies, but it was really delicious!

We continued down scenic Highway 12 on our way to Bryce Canyon National Park.  The highway goes about 150 miles through the Escalante-Grand Staircase National Monument.  The highway goes through some truly beautiful forests and over a couple of big mountain passes.  There was still quite a bit of snow up in the mountains and all of the campgrounds there were still closed for the season.  We stopped at a lot of scenic viewpoints and took several pictures along the way.  We made it to the Visitor's Center for the Monument about 30 minutes before it closed and checked on the weather and camping for that night.
The ranger was very helpful and said that there was a beautiful state park about 8 miles down the road that had camping.  He even called them to see if they had any sites left and they did, so off we went.  The state park was called Kodachrome Basin (yes, named after the camera film because a National Geographic expedition that was working there used that film to capture the bright colors in the park area).
It was really so windy that the hiking we did after we got there was not very enjoyable at all, which makes my impression of the park a bit negative, probably unfairly so.  However, we hiked a trail named "Panorama Point," so you would think it would be extremely lovely.  Not so...it was also a horse trail and was covered in horse poop and didn't do anything very interesting, because it had to accommodate horses on it.  The actual Panorama Point was nice (no horses allowed up that steep, winding part of the trail), but the wind almost knocked us off the point!  We took some pictures and headed back to set up the van and get some sleep.

Again...hoping the weather settles down and gets better tomorrow.  We are headed for Bryce Canyon National Park and I really want some good hiking weather!