Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

Today was a great day! After how terrible yesterday was, and because we didn’t have a long way to go today, we decided to treat ourselves to a lazy morning at our hotel. We didn’t set an alarm, slept in, and lounged about in bed with coffee. It was glorious.

When we left our hotel, we could see how amazing the scenery was in the area, which was completely obscured by rain and fog on our way in yesterday.

Shortly after leaving Torrey we entered Capitol Reef National Park. I had never heard of it before, but it was gorgeous. Red rocks with lush vegetation. Mike and I have both agreed we’d like to come back to Utah at some point and really take our time to explore the National Parks and go hiking.

At one point there was construction on the road we were riding on and there was someone stopping cars so cars could only go in one direction at a time. I stopped at the back of the line of cars, but the man with the sign waved me to the front and told me I could go. Since my experiences with drivers around here has made me really salty, I LOVED getting to ride past a bunch of cars who were undoubtedly going to be sitting for a long time. I found myself thinking “Look whose road it is now, suckers!” I would have liked to make a dramatic departure where I left the cars all in my dust, but actually this was at the start of a climb so I just had a bunch of cars watch me ride very slowly away. But then I had miles and miles of road to myself, with truly spectacular scenery.

A little while after leaving the National Park the scenery changed rather dramatically. It looked like we were on a different planet. It was all black and brown rocks, with no vegetation at all, and just mud everywhere. By the time we got to Hanksville, where we are spending the night at an RV park, the scenery was back to mostly red rocks with some vegetation.

Hanksville was a town Butch Cassidy used to visit to stock up on supplies. He allegedly kept a cache of stolen goods not too far from here as well. In town there’s a huge copy of a Wanted poster for Butch Cassidy, the Sundance Kid, and three other outlaws. The film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford is my favorite movie, so this was a neat place to stumble upon!

Highlights

• spectacular scenery
• never once feared for my life
• mostly downhill all day
• campfire and stargazing in the evening

Lowlights

• none!

Julie’s food

• Breakfast: oatmeal and coffee
• Lunch: hummus and crackers, peanut butter banana sandwich, Gatorade, Oreos
• First Snack: Clif bar
• Dinner: burrito bowl from a place in Hanksville called Outlaw’s Roost

Stats

• Total distance: 47.52 miles
• Elevation gain: 932 feet
• Weather: sunny and dry, high of 83 degrees Fahrenheit