Weekend to Torrey

Marie-Laure and I took off to Capitol Reef National Park for conference weekend. My father always says "you can either schedule your car maintenance, or the cosmos will schedule it for you". This was a weekend for scheduled mental maintenance in a busy semester.
We stayed in a little cottage at the Torrey Pines Inn, run by a German from Cologne and her husband. It was very cute, though we had to move quite a bit of furniture around in order to get enough room to practice yoga in the morning.

After yoga, we set off to explore the park. We hiked and hiked and took dozens of pictures of blue sky and red rock. I won't post them all here, but this is the Hickman Bridge which we did in the afternoon.

A sun petroglyph in the red rock. There were not only those carved by the ancient Fremont people, there was also a "pioneer register". Now if you carve your name in the rock, you are fined $250 -- amazing that 150 years can turn graffiti into a historical marker.

Here was sunset, after a very filling meal from a waitress named Lorraine. Absolutely perfect weather both days, and very cold and windy at night. One of my favorite parts of Capitol Reef is Fruita, the old Mormon colony along the Fremont river where they had fruit orchards right up against the red rock cliffs. The trees grew well because of the microclimate in the canyon. They were in bloom while we were there, and I hear that sometimes you can actually harvest your own fruit.

Then we went back to the cabin and watched the re-do shows on HGTV. First there were two episodes of Decorating on a Dime which was typical plywood and spray paint sort of smoke and mirrors, and then two episodes of Divine Design which impressed us a lot more. After two hours of that we fell asleep to dreams of having Candace come to our homes and re-vamping everything.

It was a great getaway, and I did manage to keep my calm and perspective for almost twenty four hours after our return. But I'm ready to go again.