Vaca 2021, Day 12 - Capitol Reef Natl Park & Resort

An odd thing happened in my journal on this day...  I wrote just over one page about waking up multiple times through the night, feeling like crap, non-working sinuses (and both bottles of nasal spray out in the van!), ankles and knees that were screaming at me and so on.  Yet I only wrote a single paragraph on Capital Reef National Park which was our focus of the day.  

I'll attempt to fill in some detail as I go...

With the boys still either sleeping or wishing they were, Lesley and I set off for a hike around the resort.  The following pics are a bit of what it looked like.

It was about this point when I started sneezing... and sneezing a LOT!  Shortly after that started, my eyedrums started watering and itching profusely!

Once we were all packed and in the van ready for whatever today held, we first made a trip to Dark Sky Coffee for some seriously good coffee.  NOW we're ready for a National Park!  So off we go.

These first several pics are just during the drive in, not that we really knew what we were doing as there wasn't a lot of planning that went into this day (Lesley may have something different to say about that last statement!  She plans ALL of this stuff...".

I believe this is on our first stop, which was a short hike up to Goosenecks Overlook.  My soul-brother was up there with his fams as well!  Dude had shaggy hair, a 1/2 ZZ Top beard, a light colored t-shirt and camo shorts!  Yes'sir!  We nodded at each other politely.

  

Squint hard and you can kind of see the water down there.

The fams!!!

Guess who took this pic??

And this one, frankly.  I was venturing pretty close to the edge as there was no railing for silly-arse people who wished to get closer than I did.  There's some very loose rock where I'm standing so I was pretty happy with my old weak-kneed self getting this close!!

Back on the road...

This was in a parking lot just outside of the Gifford Homestead, where we had stopped.  Rob had elected to stay in the van while the other 3 decided to get out and explore what the Gifford's had to offer us.

On the short walk to Gifford's...

Same...

First shot Gifford's.

That's Mama Chaos and Calebber waiting to go inside of the shop at Gifford's.  They are doing the whole distancing thing even tho they are still handling the same money/change and other b.s. that happens everywhere else... but, whatever floats yer boat!  I have no time for that crap so I go walking around the grounds.

Once back into our vessel, we see this deer/elk/whatever, near one of the parking lots with lots of people walking up to take pictures near/with it.  I'm good taking a shot from a moving vessel.

We were starting to pay attention to the thunderstorm that was rolling thru.  It was starting to make some noise at this point and we could smell the rain too.

We're down close to where we wanted to hike, but were thinking better of it with the storm this close.  We had watched enough vids on the fancy youtube's about people getting caught in these storms and didn't want to be the next family to film a new one!

We decided to not hike the narrows in the park due to the weather and to just head back to the CR Resort as Rob was super interested in the NBA Championship games.  We decided to stop at the 

La Cueva Restaurante Mexicano restaurant just several yards down the road from our room.

Big mistake, for Ted, anyway...

It took a long time for the single worker (I do have much respect for the restaurants who are staying open during the covid b.s. with a skeleton crew, but...)  to bring the basics to our table.  Once we had decided on what we wanted,  we waited.  And waited. And waited until he finally came back to take our drink and appetizer order.  Whew...

It took a long time to get our Nacho's appetizer out too us. We only had plates/utensils for two people and apparently that was lost on him.  We also did not have all of our drinks, most of which were water.

I waited and waited...  I will admit that I've been working out of my basement for more than a year at this point and my tolerance for my fellow human has been reduced to...  uh, not much.  

My family will tell you that my patience has been reduced to embers, at best, and they may be right.  I simply don't have two hours to be served a mexican meal that is likely 95% prepared in the back room, only to be assembled at notice of the waiter/waitress.  

After a long time of being ignored by the one guy running the floor with us and one other family, I chose to get the hell out of there as opposed to storming the kitchen and taking matters into my own hands...  I chose to go sit in the van and watch the storm cross thru the desert!  MUCH better choice!

The only problem with that was that I was the one who wanted the Nacho's appetizer, and my fams ate that crap down during the 3.5 hours they spent waiting for the rest of their friggin food.  

Oh sure, it wasn't 3.5 hours but it was WAY too long for food.  Long story short. I didn't get to taste the Nachos that I thought looked awesome and my fams thought that it served me right for leaving the sh!thOle restaurant.  

Maybe they're right...  but I hate rewarding such b.s. anywhere I go as everyone in these times are struggling with the same things.  This dude had 2, TWO, TTTTTWWWOOOOOOO, tables to deal with and couldn't come close to dealing with it.  Nope.  You should NOT get any of my money if not for...

I had much more fun outside in the van watching a thunderstorm roll thru a desert than I ever would have waiting for ineptness for average food.

From the door of our room, looking over the the parking lot and the storm rolling out.

Same vantage point of the previous photo.  This is where Rob, Caleb and I played some serious football catch, and where my favorite pair of cargo shorts split-out completely up the back.  I went into our room (about a 20 ft walk), changed my shorts, came back out to play more catch!  The dude right above our room asked to throw a pass, so I tossed the ball up to him.  He threw a DIME to Rob and also said, "I noticed your Iowa plates from Polk County.  I'm from Ottumwa originally, but I live in Las Vegas now.".   Crazy cool.  He was also into craft beer as I noticed his bottle, of which, I did NOT recognize the label.  He was also spotted the following morning wearing a Hawkeyes sweatshirt.

Evidence of some football catch before we got into the pool!

Man, look at my athletic self moving to catch the deep ball from Calebber!

We were hoping the pool was open, but with lightning still in the area, we had to wait, and wait.  Eventually it did reopen and we were on it!!  We got about 10 minutes alone before a few other kids showed up.  Then another family with even more kids showed up and once it became a bit dangerous to be throwing our football with all of the young'ins around, we got out and sat in the sun for a bit.  That was good too!


Mama and I went out and claimed the swing once the storms had moved on.  It was beautiful as the sun was setting behind the mountains and there was some seriously cool broken clouds for the fading sunlight to peek thru.  We also had a lovely little planet show up in the sky for our enjoyment!

Watching the sun go down!

I went for another walk after dark as I was a bit short on steps for the day.  I was rewarded with a very pretty moon!

I thought this was cool!  One of the teepee's that you could rent with the setting moon in the background.

That pretty much wrapped up Day 12 of vaca.  We spent the night in the room watching the Suns/Clippers NBA game and winding down for the night.  It's off to Moab, UT for the final wing of our vaca!!!