Wandering Money Pig - A journey of early retirement and FIRE (financial independence retire early)

  Capitol Reef National Park, Utah In all honesty, Capitol Reef National Park was the one Utah Big 5 national parks that my wife and I least looked forward to visiting.  The reasons for this were as follows:  1) it was, after all, one of the least popular national parks among the Utah Big 5, therefore, we didn’t think it would be as beautiful or as impressive as the others, and 2) the nearest town of Torrey , where we would be based out of, didn’t have much in the way of lodging or dining options.  After visiting Capitol Reef National Park and experiencing the park first hand, we were right about the lack of lodging/dining options, but we were absolutely wrong about the park itself!   Capitol Reef National Park , although it is the second least visited Utah Big 5 national parks, has so much to offer, including unique landscape full of beautiful colors, impressive domes, wonderful hiking, and amazing scenery. On the morning of January 1st (New Year’s Day), we checked out of our hote

  Arches National Park, Utah Wallace Stegner:  “National parks are the best idea we ever had.  Absolutely American, absolutely democratic, they reflect us at our best rather than our worst.” When my wife and I were planning our cross country road trip going from North Carolina to California , visiting various national parks was our absolute number one priority.  Thanks to so many great national parks in the United States though, we really had a difficult time figuring out which ones to visit. Our trip would be in the winter months (November 28-February 9), so we eliminated national parks that are on the northern half of the country.  Those would include places like Yellowstone, Glacial, Yosemite National Parks . The reasons for skipping those parks on the northern half of the country were two:  1) we did not want to hit inclement weather like snow and freezing rain and 2) we did not want to hike/sightsee in really cold weather.  We planned on visiting those parks in our near future,