Capitol Reef National Park

After a quiet Shabbat on the lake, we left Sunday morning for our third Utah national park, Capitol Reef: a 3-hour or so drive, mostly along empty highways, with the scenery changing from green mountains, to desert, to mountains again.  Capitol Reef is in the desert but – as in Zion and Bryce Canyon – its rugged cliffs are the result of water and time.

Again, we were lucky; even though all the signs read that the Capitol Reef campground was full, we went around the signs and stopped at the campground host’s trailer.  It turned out he did have an open spot for the night and a different one for the next day, so we stayed two nights.  We loved the campground.

Capitol Reef’s defining geologic feature is the Waterpocket Fold, extending more than 100 miles – a protuberance (sometimes called a wrinkle) in the earth’s crust that has eroded into a maze of winding canyons, towering monoliths, and massive domes.  This area, which bisects south-central Utah and which was extremely difficult for early travelers to traverse, was the last area to be charted in the contiguous United States.

People (ancestors of the Hopi, Zuni, and Paiute tribes) lived in the Capitol Reef area from 300-1300 CE, as attested to by petroglyphs and pictographs, carvings and paintings on rock walls.  No evidence of Indian culture has been found since 1300.

In the 1880s, Mormons established the small settlement of Fruita (our campground was in the Fruita historic district).  They built irrigation systems, planted orchards (which are still around, and where – in season – you can pick peaches and apples and other fruit) and led a self-sustaining life.  No more than ten families ever lived in Fruita at a time, and it is now maintained for the benefit of visitors and as a testimony to the self-reliance of a small community of people.

We took a couple of hikes in our two days at Capitol Reef.  Not long after arriving, we walked 1.2 miles to the Visitors Center (and back), along a dirt, marked path.  We watched an 18-minute movie on the park, bought a book on the circle of Utah parks (Zion, Bryce, Capitol Reef, Arches, and Canyonlands), and an American Indian-style flute (made by a Mormon), which Bill will have fun learning to play.

That evening, on an after-dinner stroll through the park we saw a family of deer: buck, doe, and three fawns.

We started the second day with a ride into town to make phone calls, as we had no reception in the park, and do some errands.  We then drove through the park on the 10-mile (each way) scenic drive; it was slow going, the fastest speed was 25mph and the slowest was 10mph – and they meant it.  You couldn’t go faster or you would go off the road around hairpin turns.

The drive was worth it; the scenery was beautiful, and when we got to the end, we were surrounded by towering canyon walls on all sides.  Among the rock formations we saw on the road were Capitol Dome, named because it reminded early travelers of the U.S. Capitol and which later inspired the name of the park; Chimney Rock, a 400-foot sandstone pillar; and the Castle, a huge rock formation in which you can clearly see the various strata: Wingate sandstone on top of grey Chinle and a red Moenkopi bottom.  We confess that we do not understand that much about the geology of the formations, but the strata are clearly visible – and they are impressive.

In the afternoon we took a 2.6-mile round trip hike labeled “moderate,” which we found challenging.  (Trails are rated by length and amount of elevation from start point to end point.)  The Fremont River Trail was a very narrow path, first along the side of the Fremont River, and then straight up, a 480-foot elevation change, finishing with an amazing 360-degree panoramic view of canyons, river, trees, and cliffs – with a long snake guarding the entrance to the trail.

The third day, just before leaving Capitol Reef, we stopped off to see some petroglyphs and then went on another “moderate” hike, similar in length and elevation to the Fremont River Trail.  The hike was to Hickman Bridge (named after Joseph Hickman, an early advocate of Capitol Reef), a huge natural arch spanning 133 feet wide and 125 feet tall. The trail went up and down and up and down, sometimes over natural “steps,” sometimes over rocks, and ended at the arch through which we could see beautiful blue sky.

We have learned that using hiking sticks are most beneficial in the walking/climbing of unpaved, uneven trails.

Capitol Reef was declared a national monument in 1937 and became a national park in 1971.

Arches National Park

We left Capitol Reef for the 2-hour ride to Arches National Park, the fourth of Utah’s Circle of Parks.  The ride went through a vast expanse of hardly travelled desert for over 50 miles.  We stopped off at the Visitors Center in the park, and the ranger there suggested that we find a campground first, as they tend to fill up by early afternoon in the area.  We drove a bit down the road, found one, and they had a campsite available.  Because of the proximity of Arches to Canyonlands National Park (our next stop and post), we took the campsite for five nights, including Shabbat.  We spent the rest of the day in the nearby town of Moab, Utah doing the everyday tasks of shopping and laundry.

We started out early for Arches, which was about a 5-minute drive from our campground – but a 40-minute wait to get in as the entrance lines were very long.  Arches is not that large, and there is one road running through most of the park.  Off of this road are several viewpoints and short walks – usually between several hundred feet to 1/2mile – to the various arches.

The viewpoints are beautiful.  One, especially caught our imagination – Park Avenue, named because the cliffs on both sides of the “road” look like tall buildings (as mentioned in an earlier post, we have often thought that someone in the National Parks Service has a sense of humor when they name things).

Among the arches we saw (and Arches has over 2,000 documented arches, the densest concentration of natural sandstone arches in the world) were Double Arch, North and South Windows, Turret Arch, Delicate Arch, Sand Dune Arch, Skyline Arch, Tunnel Arch, and Pine Tree Arch.  Tunnel Arch was Bill’s favorite; Sima liked Sand Dune Arch – but they all were fabulous.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The arches we see today are different from those of years ago, and they will not be the same in the future.  Wind and water do their work: rocks fall away, arches form, weather takes its toll again, and arches crack and fall.  We saw one example of such an arch – the explanation board near the arch showed photos of it before and after a large rock dislodged from the arch-opening, enlarging its size by about one-third.

Returning to our campground, we hooked up to water and electricity, turned on the air conditioning (did we say it was about 110 degrees F during the day?) and made dinner.  As it turned out, the neighbors on one side of us were vacationing music teachers and the neighbors on the other side of us have a son who is a music major at Ohio University.

Arches was declared a national park in 1971.