Reading · Buona Pasta Club

Hi Pasta Fam 💛

Capitol Reef: The seventh stop of our cross country road trip & third on our list of the “Big 5” National Parks in Southern Utah. If you missed my last newsletter of our stay in Bryce Canyon, you can find all my previous newsletters here!

The YouTube video showing everything we did in Capitol Reef including all the food I cooked up is also live if you want to watch it HERE!

This was our first time visiting Capitol Reef and we couldn’t believe how huge the park was, and how underrated it is. It also felt so long driving from one end to the other, which makes sense since its over 200,000 acres!

Capitol Reef is the 2nd largest of the Big 5 National Parks, right under Canyonlands, which is actually the next stop - so stay tuned since it was pretty epic.

We stayed at the Capitol Reef RV Resort & Glamping, which is a semi-new family owned RV park, so they’re still adding upgrades to the resort.

It was an awesome spot, with lots of open space, and included a mix of RV sites and mini cabins aka the “glamping”, which had incredible views of Capitol Reef.

Also, they have a whole fridge/freezer with meat from the local farms, which we thought was so awesome and such a good perk!

Capitol Reef also has very little light pollution, so you could see SO many stars!

This was one of our favorite things about the road trip and being out in the middle of nowhere, the stargazing was next level.

The campground was right outside the park, and unlike the last two parks, there is no shuttle service around Capital Reef, so we did have to unhook and drive the RV into the park which isn’t ideal, but was totally worth it!

The day we drove into the park, we had a jam packed day in Capitol Reef which included a hike, pasta making, ancient rock carvings and best of all, fresh pie with homemade ice cream!

Here’s one of the two pies we got - Mixed Berry :) it was incredible, as you can imagine.

The hike we went on was called Hickman Bridge Trail, and was just about 2 miles, so would be the perfect hike for just about anyone, of any age!

Since we drove the RV into the park, we weren’t able to keep the RV hooked up which meant we couldn’t put the AC on for Moose, and therefore had to opt for a shorter hike. Luckily it was in the 60s so it was plenty cool for him and he slept the whole time as he usually does when we’re away from the RV.

The trail was awesome, with lots of naturally formed caves and arches, like this little cave below.

The hike ended at the Hickman Bridge which was a naturally formed bridge made out of rock - if you see in the photo below, it’s in the top right quarter of the photo.

PS you cannot actually walk on the bridge you just look at it from afar - it’s honestly very similar to the arches in Arches National Park, which again was the following stop, right after Canyonlands (both are in Moab so it was the same RV campground, just two different parks!)

After our hike, we headed to get pie and ice cream at Gifford House & Museum which is the cutest little homestead with a store that has lots of jams, pickles, and freshly made baked good!

We didn’t get there until 1pm so we did miss the cinnamon rolls, but they still had a ton of pies, so we got an Apple and Mixed Berry - so good, my fave was the mixed berry.

After pie and ice cream, we headed to see the petroglyphs, or ancient carvings, which are all around the park, but there is a specific area right down the road from the Gifford House that has a lot of them that are easy to spot, with lots of historical facts about them around the area.

Here’s just one section of the Petroglyphs - so so cool!

From there, we drove up the road to find a more secluded spot where I made some fresh cavatelli in front of the beautiful red rocks of Capitol Reef!

Now for the food that I made in Capitol Reef…

If you watch my YouTube video, you’ll see that I made the most delicious breakfast while in Capitol Reef - Banana Bread Waffles.

This recipe was a total shot in the dark, since I had very over ripe bananas, no oven, and a husband that doesn’t like banana bread - cue the little waffle maker that we brought on the trip finally coming in handy.

And as you can probably tell, these waffles came out sooo good and were a huge hit.

You can find the full video and recipe on my Capitol Reef YouTube or on my recipe website, provecho.co/buonapastaclub

For our pasta dinner, I made my Lemon Ricotta sauce, which is one of my favorites to make, since it is SO easy and so good.

It’s so creamy, but doesn’t have cream, just ricotta cheese, parm and pasta water to get that perfectly creamy sauce!

Full recipe is below :)

Ingredients:

1/3 cup butter

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 Zest of lemon (save some for topping)

1/3 cup pasta water, plus more as needed for sauciness

1/4 cup ricotta

1/3 cup parmigiano reggiano

sprinkle of sea salt & pepper

Crushed red pepper, for topping

Instructions:

Melt butter over medium low heat

Add garlic and lemon zest and simmer on low until fragrant or ready to add your pasta water

While your butter mixture is simmering, cook your pasta

Once your pasta water is starchy, whisk into butter mixture a little at a time until thickened

Let simmer on low until pasta is ready to add to your sauce

Add your pasta and let simmer in sauce for 30 seconds to get nice and thick

Remove from heat and add both cheeses followed by a sprinkle of sea salt & pepper to taste

Mix all together until creamy

Top with more parmigiano, crushed red pepper and sea salt flakes!

You can find the full video and recipe on my Capitol Reef YouTube or on my recipe website, provecho.co/buonapastaclub

We had such a great stay at Capitol Reef - it was super unexpected, and we felt like we could have stayed a whole week just to explore more around the park, since it’s so dang big!

As a reminder - you can watch the full video of our stay on my YouTube, here!

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Looking forward to sharing the rest of our travels with you all!!

And if you want to book your own RV trip, here are my links!

RENT AN ROAD BEAR RV: https://shorturl.at/YNDYU
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Just a reminder…

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