Capitol Reef National Park

Six years ago we went on a motorhome trip to Utah and Colorado and toured three of Utah's five national parks - Zion, Bryce Canyon, and Arches.  That trip was chronicled on this blog, but you'd have to scroll WAY back to read about it.  This time we completed the set.  Last week we traveled to Canyonlands, and we planned to visit Capitol Reef National Park before going back to our favorite from last time, Zion.

On the road from Moab, just before turning off onto the road that would take us to Capitol Reef, there was a sign: "No services for 100 miles".  That gives you an idea of how sparsely populated the area is compared with most of the nation.

This was high desert country.  And when our GPS told us we were still about 30 miles from the national park, we began seeing fascinating and majestic rock formations of various colors lining the road.  What was remarkable was the variety that random chance, through the actions of water and wind erosion and land upheavals, had yielded.  All the way to the park's entrance we were saying to each other over and over, "Look at that!"  While the landscape around our previous stop, Moab, looked like what we saw in old western movies - and in fact many were filmed there - this area made us think of a science fiction dreamscape.

We stayed in a very nicely run campground a few miles from the national park.  One drive from there took us to Gooseneck Canyon, where we looked down on a trail where at one point we saw some intrepid hikers far, far below.

Here is Nancy looking up at petroglyphs - carvings made by prehistoric Native Americans into a rock face.

Capitol Reef's "scenic drive" was a ten-mile road featuring one magnificent formation after another.

The road surface was pockmarked, with lots of exposed rocks, and the ride - at least in our pickup truck - was bone-jarring, but the scenery was amazing.

At the end of that road was a hiking trail that Nancy and I took to the end - a mile each way - along a dry river bed.

At one point there was a sheer face with six individuals' names and a 1911 date carved into it thirty feet or so from the canyon floor.  I guess as long as it's early enough - and this was long before the area because a national park - it is designated a historical feature rather than graffiti.

When, tired but happy, we returned to the trailhead Nancy made a pit stop at a little toilet building, and when she came out she said, "That's the nastiest bathroom I've ever used.  There wasn't even any toilet paper!"

And so we began our uncomfortable drive back along that primitive road.  About a mile into it, Nancy cried out, "I left my phone in that stinky toilet!"  Afraid of having her phone fall out of her back pants pocket while using the facilities, she had put it on the top of the empty metal toilet paper dispenser and forgot to retrieve it.  We turned our pickup around, made our way back, and Nancy was relieved to find her phone still there, visibly, at least, no worse for the experience.

Before this trip I hadn't heard much about Capitol Reef, and I don't think it's visited as much as the other four - partly because it's relatively isolated, partly because its charms are not as easily displayed photographically on tourist brochures.  But it turned out to be one of our favorite national parks.