Canyonland of Capitol reef
I am going from Sedona to Vancouver BC and love hiking and scenery and have seen all the big parks but not these two...which would you choose and which route..thanks les
Forum Discussion
- Thunder Mountain is right. And we are going their in Sept for the fall colors again this year - 5th time. We stay at Thousand Lakes.
Given the choice of the two it is Capitol Reef without question.
If you visit Island In The Sky section of Canyonlands it is a paved good road to drive around and see. The south section is a long ways from anyplace.
To compare go to www.LaurenBarbara.com and the Wanderings link to Utah to National Parks to see pix.
Enjoy. - We've been to Capitol Reef 5 times in the last ten years. The last time was for 10 days. The hiking is like no other Park. Crowds just don't exist. We stayed in the NP campground in Fruita once. About as nice as they get especially in the spring with the fruit trees in bloom. In the fall you can pick fruit. The nicest FHU park in the area is Thousand Lakes in our opinion. If you have high ground clearance the drive across the river and out the NE corner of the Park is beautiful. Not technical wheeling. If you are an avid hiker do the Grand Wash, Upper Muley Twist and Spring Canyon. The slot canyons are great.
- Capitol Reef for awesome hikes!
- Hiking wise Capitol Reef. We have been to all the Utah parks and am going back to Capitol Reef this fall for another stay.
- We were thru both last fall. I think Capital Reef might have more hiking, but I preferred Canyon Land - it was better than the Grand Canyon. And the BLM there let's you drive down into the canyons on all of the old mining trails.
Bill - Depends on your vehicle. Capitol Reef has excellent hiking and some good driving trails. The scenery is excellent too and the in park CG is better than most. In Torrey there are a couple of good FHU CG. There are a couple of great back country dirt roads, the Burr Trail for one. And there are supposed to be slot canyons in the area, tho we didn't get to any of them. The rocks in Capitol Reef are different than the red rock found in most of the other national parks in southern Utah. They are darker.
To see Canyonlands you really need a vehicle that can at least drive on back country dirt roads far from any assistance. Some of the roads require a 4WD vehicle capable of rock crawling. Not a big 4WD pickup as we found out this last summer.
