4 States in One Day

Back on August 12th, I set out on a journey to Capitol Reef National Park.  This was a Cleveland Museum of Natural History trip, and the main purpose was to see the Perseid Meteor Shower.  I took a 9AM direct flight out of Cleveland and landed in Las Vegas around 11AM.  I was on the first 737-800 that Southwest flew out of Cleveland.  The plane was only 2 months old.  Once I landed, I grabbed some lunch in the concourse.  I collected my luggage and after a bit, figured out that some of the people just hanging out in baggage claim were also on the trip.  It was fun to go up to someone and ask them if they were from Cleveland and if they were from the museum trip.  While we were waiting for everyone to gather, I put $5 in the slot machine.  I cashed out at $7.  That was short and fun!

Once we had our crew, we loaded up the vans and headed on our way.  Turns out, Capitol Reef National Park is in Utah, about 7 hours from Las Vegas.  You also have a brief stint in Arizona on the way.  The ride was fun and hot and beautiful.  During the trip I saw clouds, rain, a rainbow and Great White Pelican.

We made a few stops along the way.  We arrived at the visitor center and met up with the last of our group and headed deep into the park to the field station.  It was dark by the time we arrived around 8:30PM or later, we found our rooms and got settled.

Nathan cooked us dinner.  It was a simple, but fabulous pasta with salad and bread.  We also had a brief introduction from Jane, the field station manager.

After dinner, we saw lots of clouds.  I took a nap for a few hours and got up for sky viewing around 2AM.  Unfortunately, the stars were enjoying their time behind the clouds.  I managed to see a couple meteors, but the highlight was seeing Jupiter through the telescope with 3 of its moons.  Even without great sky viewing, we were in a great national park and the next couple of days were going to be great!  Exhausted, I slept well when I retired the second time.