Capital Reef National Park

July 31st and August 1st

We drove west through the western desert of Utah, then headed south to Capital Reef.  We arrived early enough in the day that we decided to go to to the Visitor Center to see how we should spend our time the next day.  On route, we drove by our motel, located in the small town of Gaineville.  Turns out, I think our hotel WAS the town!  There was nothing else around so, we decided if we wanted to eat that night, we would need to drive to the other side of the park to the small- but bigger- town of Torrey, so a visit to the Visitor Center would be on our way.

 Capital Reef is a long, narrow park, oriented north to south.  It was established to protect one of the largest of geologic features known as "monoclines" in North America in  1971.  I'm not sure how many of the 750,000 visitors a year care about that, except that it creates a place of dramatic beauty.   According to the National Parks book, the nearest traffic light is 78 miles away.   Route 24 actually goes right through the middle of the park, which is only about 12 miles wide from east to west.  We were immediately impressed with the rock formations and noted the raging, red Fremont River traveling next to the road.  It was obvious it had rained recently and heavily in the park.  This time of year is Monsoon season in the southwest.  We had intermittently been sprinkled on and seen storms in the distance over the past week or so.  This was the most evidence of recent rain we had seen.

We stopped in the Visitor Center and were told we still had time to take the Scenic Drive, which started just beyond the center.  The ranger warned us, however, that they had recent flash floods, so to be careful if we went into any of the gorges on the trip.  As we traveled the beautiful road, admiring the many rock formations, we noted signs saying not to park in the washes (low spots in the road), as flash flooding could cause problems.  When we reached the end of the paved road, there was a dirt road into Capital Gorge, a two mile canyon leading down to the Fremont River.  We decided to drive in a short distance to see what it looked like.  The steep cliffs hung over us as we drove, and we noted large rocks that had obviously tumbled from the cliffs above.  It was a little concerning, but just beautiful.  We continued in about a mile and a half, and decided to turn around.  It was the best part of the scenic drive!

We continued west on Rt. 24 to Torrey, looking for something to eat.  We saw a small pizza place with outdoor seating.  The view was of the parks' red rocks.  The pizza was great, but even nicer, they had entertainment.  The young man played a combination of violin (fiddle) and piano.  He had bells on one ankle and what appeared to be shells on the other ankle that made a  "clacking" sound when he tapped his foot.  His voice wasn't great, but he was a great musician.  Turns out he graduated from the New England Conservatory of Music, and had been traveling around for several years since, living in Alaska, Washington state, and had been in Utah for about 5 years.  As he was singing, we saw a rainbow over the mountains.  On the drive back to the hotel through the park, we spotted another rainbow.  We drove to an outlook and I ended up running up a hill, camera in hand and two slices of pizza and a beer jogging in my stomach, to get to the top before the rainbow disappeared.  Almost made it, caught the end of the rainbow!  A great evening!

The next morning, we again drove in from the east, stopping at the orchards to pick peaches.  Many years ago, the Mormons settled this valley, and planted numerous fruit orchards, including apple, peach and pear.  Many of the trees still remain, and visitors are allowed to "u-pick" the fruit for a small fee when it is ripe.  The peaches were delicious!  Our next stop was Hickman's Bridge, which is actually an arch.  We hiked in the 3 miles round trip to the bridge, which was nice, but certainly not as impressive as some of the arches we had recently seen.  However, we did see a lot on the hike in, including a "waterpocket".  These are simply hollows in the rock that collect water when it rains.  Frogs will lay eggs in the "pocket", and the eggs must hatch to form tadpoles, the tadpoles must develop into frogs, all before the water dries up!  This is usually about 2 weeks.  When it rains, the process starts again.  We also saw a few areas of rock obviously shaped by water, with smooth grains and beautiful apricot color.

View on Scenic Drive

Capitol Dome

View of wall in Capitol Gorge

Rainbow over Capital Reef

Driving in from east entrance

Road into Capitol Gorge

Water on rock...

Hickman's Bridge

Navaho Dome

Petroglyphs

The raging Fremont River

The orchards of the Mormons

Red rock

We stopped to view the petroglyphs left behind by the Fremont Indians who inhabited this area long before the Mormons.  Many of the pictures represented strange triangular people and animals that were common in the area.  After another stop at the Visitor Center to watch the movie, we went to the picnic area for lunch and realized we were very close to being rained out.  The sky was dark, and thunder was heard in the distance- the end of a great visit to a really under-valued park.  We headed west, then south, toward St. George.