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Bittersweetness is coming, I can feel it.

We woke up this morning at the hokey Cowboy Country Inn in Escalante, hoping for better luck with breakfast than the dinner we had to skip last night becuase everything closed. Evan again ran to patch his tire, successfully this time. We packed up, hit the Circle D Inn and Eatery for breakfast, and then a truck stop with an inn behind it for gas. Yes, every business in this town either is also a motel or sits in front of a motel. And the town is only about a half-mile stretch of UT-12.

Then we headed out on our last major drive day. We took backroads through a few small towns trough more of the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument and a few noteworthy canyons as we headed further east. The Jeep has added yet another new instrument to its jalopy symphony. The tailpipe now wiggles against the muffler.

(Editor’s note: I asked our music expert George if I meant “symphony” or “orchestra” there. His response, “Well, ‘orchestra’ is more general for a group of instruments, but if you’re referring to the new noises the Jeep is making, then you’d use ‘symphony’ to refer to the piece of music being made.”)

An hour or so later, we reached the last National Park on our tour: Capitol Reef. We entered through a south dirt road and drove through the high canyons, then down an insane set of switchbacks with a spectacular view. Rocks of every color, piled high on top of each other, spinning around us on the aggressive descent, making a bold Fauvist landscape. That led to a sandy dirt road that runs up the side of the cliffs for about twenty or so miles before exiting the park and rejoining pavement.

Another twenty minutes north, the road turns back into the park for a paved section that crosses the northern collection of trailheads and pull-outs. We stopped and hiked to the Hickman Natural Bridge, a massive rock arch, and then strolled back down and drove along to catch a few more turn-outs before it was suddenly dinner time. Capitol Reef has definitely become a favorite park.

The snack shop in the Rover is mostly out of stock by this point, and it was about 5:30, so we decided to make for an early dinner for once. We drove out of the park to a small town caled Torrey for a burger joint before driving up toward our last overnight stop in Ferron.

The road up to Ferron yet again made us feel like we’d traveled to a new planet. It became increasingly agricultural, farms and ranches lining the roadway. Also rain and a cold-front blew through, bringing temperatures back down and filling valleys with fog. It reminded me a little of Scotland actually. The rocks and hills and cliffs became grown-over with intense greenery as we drove furher into the Fishlake National Forest. Then, surprise: cattle on the roadway. There are apparently lots of open range grazing areas in Fishlake and the cows have no misgivings about darting into traffic. So our brakes work, if little else.

We arrived into Ferron unusually early for us. The house we’re staying in is very strange. Ferron is tiny, we’re on Main and 100 West (because roads in Utah are coordinates), making this the middle of the town, but you can see both ends of Main from the porch. This is the most well-maintained property and nicest house in view, and it is empty like no one has ever lived here. Sure there are furniture staples, but no books on the shelves, no decorations of any kind, and it’s all just “off” enough to be spooky.

(Also, it’s worth adding that the owner refers to himself as Merlin.)

And it’s a good thing we ate and early dinner-lunch, because there’s only one restaurant in town and it closed moments after we arrived. And the three restaurants 40 miles down the road would all be closed before we got there. Evan, Charlie, and I are going to have beers on the veranda in the rocking chairs because that seems proper, while watching George, splayed out under his Jeep on Main Street try, again, to replace his steering dampener.

Tomorrow’s it. We leave Ferron late morning for Salt Lake City. It’ll be a beatiful and leisurely drive, but all paved, returning once more into crowded city streets. If the Grand Canyon was the highlight, Capitol Reef was the finish line, and tomorrow is the drive back to the garage. By nightfall, with a heavy heart, the 4Runner will be back on Craigslist. Not sure what George is going to do with the Jeep, but the last price he estimated for me was for its weight in steel. Evan is leaning toward an adjustment to his project car hobby: if he goes to exciting destinations to locate the next project car, put it through its paces over a great adventure, then bring it back to repair it thereby fetching a higher resale price and fulfilling the desire to do serious work on it, that sounds better than “he fell in love with that Rover, just like the Alfa before it, and is going to drive it home.”