Leaving Moab to continue our National Park Journey...

The morning of June 11th, we woke up at our BLM camp spot on Yellow Circle Road, which we camped at (I think) 3 times during our stay in and around Moab (15 days). Yellow Circle Road is a few miles outside of Moab, off of Highway 191, and is a great go-to if you're passing through or if you want to be closer to town. We wouldn't use it as a long-term (2 week) spot, we used it kind of like how we use Wal-marts, it's nice and convenient. Here are the coordinates:
GPS: 38.435474, -109.427631

We hit the road around 9-9:30 a.m., heading to the next park...Capitol Reef. The rain danced around us all night with major lightning and thunder storms, it was the first time we had had a rain storm like that, while we slept, since Georgia. I'm so glad Joon doesn't leak!
The rain clouds were still circling around Moab as we drove through town to get on the highway out of town, it looked like hell was about to drop in on Moab! 

 This was the moment that we were both so happy that we busted ass to get out of the Canyonlands spot, for as we looked up the mountain where we were parked, you couldn't even see the mountain tops! All of the mountains were covered in heavy rain mist or blackish grey/blue clouds, we were glad to be leaving!
We had rain the entire drive to Capitol Reef. It was a nice cool drive, but wet and rainy the whole way.  

We drove into the park without even knowing we were actually in the park. This park doesn't have an entrance gate that you pay at, it's just a road that goes through the park...we were wondering if you pay at the Visitor's Center, but since we bought a (N.P annual) pass we weren't too worried about it. I did learn later that you were charged a fee for traveling the park's Scenic Drive beyond the Fruita Campground: $5 for bicyclists/pedestrians & $10 for vehicles, the pass is good for 7 days.

 

  We drove straight through the entire park in about 10 minutes, maybe less, until we hit the small town of Torrey. Surprised that we just drove through the park and didn't even know it, we saw a visitor's information building and decided to stop in to get some maps and all the touristy stuff. We grabbed some great booklets and maps as we talked to the woman running the place, she told us about some roads (Scenic Drive) in the park that were closed due to the rain flooding the roads! 
 We got back in the van and drove another 10 miles or so down the road to see what the town had to offer in ways of groceries and fuel, then headed back toward the park to find a spot to camp for the night.

We had found a place on www.Freecampsites.net but as we drove to it, found it was right off of the main highway, so that was a no-go for us due to wanting privacy and not worrying about the dogs. We drove a couple more miles and found another road that went back into the rocks a little bit, so decided to take it and found about 8 "campsites" or so it seemed with all of the firepits. 

There was absolutely noone else there and was a perfect place for us to stop for the night. I'm not sure what the road name was called but it's easy to find, right off of the main road that leads into the park, from Torrey side. There was no wifi and we didn't check to see if there was any TV since it was going to be dark soon and we were just going to leave in the morning anyway. We pulled out our chairs, had a cocktail and looked over our maps and booklets until it started getting a little dark. It was a beautiful spot!

 More about this part of our N.P. journey in the next post
Until then...
PEACE