The Big 5’s Hidden Gem

So maybe you’ve heard about the crowds at Utah’s big parks — the entrance lines, the packed parking lots, the trails where you’re basically walking in a conga line. We get it. But just down the road from us is Capitol Reef National Park, and it doesn’t work like that. Same towering cliffs, same winding canyons, same jaw-dropping red-rock scenery as anything else in Utah’s “Mighty Five.” Just, you know, without the mob scene.

Photo by Kelly vanDellen via Shutterstock.com

You can slow down here. Explore at your own pace. And still make it back in time for a glass of wine before the sun goes down.

1. Capitol Reef’s Scenic Beauty Without the Crowds

The honest answer to “when’s the best time to visit Capitol Reef?” is basically always. Even at peak season, this park feels open. Capitol Reef welcomed 1.42 million visitors in 2024 — its highest number ever, according to KUER News. And that’s still just a fraction of the nearly five million who showed up at Zion. What that means for you: easier parking, quieter mornings, and trails where you can actually stop and look around.

The Capitol Reef Scenic Drive, Cathedral Valley, Hickman Bridge — all of them are world-class. But you’re sharing them with a quarter of the crowd you’d find in other parks. Whether you’re catching sunrise over the Navajo Knobs or hiking through Grand Wash in the afternoon, you’ll feel the difference. More space, less noise, more time to actually be there.

Photo by Kelly vanDellen via Shutterstock.com

From the Lodge, you can be at the park’s visitor center in under 15 minutes. Which means you can be on trail before most people in other towns have finished breakfast.

2. Capitol Reef’s Fruita Orchards, Gifford Homestead, and the Best Pie in Utah

The Fruita Historic District gets mentioned a lot, and for good reason. Settled in the late 1800s, this little desert oasis has pioneer-era orchards still producing apples, peaches, and pears when the season’s right.

Photo by Nick Fox via Shutterstock.com

Right at the heart of Fruita is the Gifford Homestead, which is famous for small-batch fruit pies (trust us on this). They bake 32 dozen pies a day, and they’re usually sold out by early afternoon. So plan accordingly. A lot of our guests start the morning with a stroll through the orchards, grab a pie at Gifford’s, and then head deeper into the park — and honestly, that’s a pretty solid morning. More about the Gifford Homestead from NPS here.

During harvest season you can pick your own fruit right off the trees. It’s a piece of living history you won’t find anywhere else in Utah’s national parks.

3. Hiking, Backcountry Drives, and Rugged Adventure in Capitol Reef

If you’re the kind of person who searches “Utah backcountry hikes,” Capitol Reef is going to make you very happy. The park is dominated by the Waterpocket Fold, a 100-mile-long wrinkle in the Earth’s crust (Utah.com). Hikers, photographers, anyone who wants to feel genuinely off the beaten path — this is the place.

Our favorites: Cassidy Arch (named after Butch Cassidy, which tells you something about the history here), and Sulphur Creek, where you wade through shallow water and work your way through slot canyons. Up north, Cathedral Valley has monoliths that look like they landed from somewhere else entirely — and if you want to take that comparison literally, there’s even a place nearby called Mars on Earth.

Photo by piksik via Shutterstock.com

Staying at the Lodge makes it easy to mix it up — get your steps in one day, cruise the Scenic Drive the next. And the photos you’ll take out here tend to confuse your friends back home. That’s sort of the point.

4. Best Lodging Near Capitol Reef for Day Trips and Adventures

One more thing worth mentioning: the location. The Lodge is just a few minutes from the park entrance in Torrey, Utah, far enough off Highway 24 that the nights are actually quiet. And it puts you within easy day-trip range of just about everything: Bryce Canyon, Goblin Valley State Park, Grand Staircase-Escalante, and even Moab’s Arches and Canyonlands. Whether you’re working through Utah’s Mighty Five or just focusing on Capitol Reef, this is a pretty good spot to operate from.

5. Plan Your Visit

People call Capitol Reef “underrated,” but once you’ve been here you’ll understand why so many visitors come back. It rewards slowing down. Eat a pie in the shade of the orchards. Watch the cliffs at sunset. Look up at night. And if you’d like a comfortable place to land between all of it, we’d love to have you — check availability at the Lodge.