Southern Utah--the second national park Capitol Reef

On Friday afternoon, October 14, after my last visit into Arches National Park, I headed off to Torrey, Utah, to visit Capitol Reef National Park.

Just as in a part of my drive from Salt Lake City, I viewed some of what I refer to as dirt mountains along the way--especially from the interstate. Except for the last two, the pictures below are not ones that I took and are actually more scenic than the dirt moutains I saw which were rising up from flatter dirt ground. There was no vegetation--nothing to divert the eye to something more attractive. The dirt mountians were broken only by gullies of water erosion running down their sides. Very rugged terrain. Very much desert terrain.

So just as in my traveling into Moab a few days ago, from this rather ugly landscape rose such beauty--beauty that we have protected by designating it a national park. I arrive at Capitol Reef National Park. The very road that I'm traveling on goes through some of the park! One of the massive domes in the park is white and reminded the earlier travelers of the US Capitol building and later inspired the name of the park.

As far as the word reef in the parks name goes, this environment was once an ocean, which by three powerful processes--deposition, unlift, and erosion gradually disappeared. Then over time a wrinkle in the Earth's crust was created, extending nearly 100 miles from Thousand Lake Mountain to Lake Powell. The result is a classic example of a monocline, or a one-sided fold, in the otherwise horizontal rock layers.  So over millions of years, geologic forces shaped, lifted, and folded the earth, creating this rugged, remote area known as the Waterpocket Fold, or as Capitol Reef National Park!

In contrast to the mono-colored desert lands that I had been traveling through, all of a sudden, a vibrant palette of color spills across the landscape. The hues are constantly changing, altered by the play of light agasinst the towering cliffs, massive domes, arches, natural bridges, and twisting canyons. Since it is October, the cottonwoods are a radiant yellow. And since the Fremont River and Sulpher Creek run through this area, the cottonwoods are lush.

In the 1880s, at the confluence of these two waterways, Mormons established a small settlement in this area that they named Fruita. They built irrigation systems to water orchards and pastures and to sustain a self-reliance agriculture lifestyle for decades. Families tended the apple, peach, pear, and apricot trees. As reminders of this pioneer time, the park still maintains these orchards, as well as the one room schoolhouse, blacksmith shop, and the Gilford homestead.

the one-room school house in the Fruita community

Carvings and paintings on rock walls are reminders of the first people who lived here from about 300-1300 CE and even earlier. These peoples are the ancestors of the modern-day Hopi, Zuni, and Paiute tribes of American Indians. They farmed the fertile land adjacent to the Fremont River and other nearby creeks and supplemented crops by hunting wildlife and harvesting nuts, berries, and seeds. No evidence of this culture is found after 1300.

Look closely and you can see the petroglyphs and pictographs on the walls made by the American Indians. 

I didn't stay in these teepees, but in a motel in Torrey--quite a nice town. It too was filled with cottonwoods. And a lovely art shop in an old house.

An ancient Carolina poplar in the backyard of the art gallery

Now here's the hardest part of Capitol Reef National Part for me to try to tell you about, and so astounded was I by this particular area that I took no pictures. Or maybe I knew the pictures wouldn't turn out. My second day in the park before I headed off to Bryce Canyon NP, I headed down a road that I had not previously been on. At first the scenery was pretty typically lots of red rock cliffs, domes, and canyons, and I almost turned around.

But then the asphalt road came to an abrupt halt, and a friend of mine from Kingston Springs who had been to Capitol Reef the year before had told me to be sure to keep going onto the dirt road. So I listened to him and kept traveling deeper into what turned out to be a gorge--a gorge that got deeper as I twisted and turned on this almost single lane dirt road. On either side of me were these towering rock walls and cliffs of various colors like nothing I had ever seen--so high and close were they that at times I could only see a ribbon of the blue sky! It was somewhat spooky and yet magnificent! It went on for several, several miles before I came to the end of the dirt road and turned around and drove slowly back to the asphalt.

That was the image that I held in my mind's eye as I made my way to the next national park that afternoon. But soon I found myself twisting and turning through a national forest, and I was at the top of this road filled on either side with already denuded white aspens.

Finally as I rose higher and higher up this mountainous road, this forest gave way to deep canyons on either side, and I was indeep on top of the world!

Except to show some of the colors and some yellow cottonwood trees all in a line further out and apparently near a river, this picture does not do justice to the deep caverns/canyons that were on either side of the road atop a narrow passageway that I was traveling.

  to be continued at Bryce Canyon National Park!