Capitol Reef National Park

Capitol Reef National Park is all about rock. Red rock, white rock, brown rock, gray rock, striped rock, cratered rock. The rock comes in all sizes. From sand (crushed rock) and tiny pebbles to sweeping, monumental rock cathedrals to every degree of boulder in between, Capitol Reef is nature's rock museum. (Arches National Park, which will be recounted in a future dispatch, might then be nature's sculpture gallery.)

I stayed Wednesday night at the rustic Capitol Reef Inn & Cafe in Torrey. It was one of the better hotels I've stayed at on my journey. I particularly liked the poster on the wall of my room identifying "Indian Heroes, Leaders, and Patriots." Thursday morning I made the short fifteen minute drive to the park. It's named "Capitol" for its slickrock domes and "Reef" for being a difficult barrier for travelers to cross.

Welcoming visitors to the park is Chimney Rock, a dusky red rock that somewhat resembles a chimney. My next stop was the visitor center. It was here that I inquired with a park ranger as to whether or not my plan for the afternoon were feasible. Namely, to traverse Cathedral Valley, the off-road northern part of the park.

I had read in a guidebook that the road to Cathedral Valley was unpaved and that explorers must ford a shallow river to gain access to the area. Nevertheless, I was drawn to what it featured: a Gypsum Sinkhole, views of Black Mountain, massive formations named Temple of the Sun and Temple of the Moon, all of it beneath the watchful eyes of golden eagles.

After I had explained to the park ranger, a friendly girl about my age, that I was driving a Camry. She smiled gently and said that I probably didn't want my memory of Capitol Reef National Park to be getting towed out of the river. The clearance on the Camry is only about ten inches and the river is ten inches deep. Even assuming I successfully forded the river, the rocky, uneven terrain is best navigated with a high clearance, four-wheel drive vehicle. So that plan was a no go.

With Cathedral Valley crossed off my list, I turned south along the Scenic Drive, a narrow but paved road taking visitors eight miles into the Waterpocket Fold. The Fold is a 300-hundred mile spine of cliffs knifing up from the earth. It was formed 65 million years ago. Since then, some of the mesas and spires have eroded, leaving slickrock domes and hallowed out basins (hence the name "waterpocket") etched into the Navajo Sandstone mass.

The Scenic Drive first passes through Fruita, once a small Mormon settlement and orchard. A few miles up, I pulled off at the Grand Wash Trail, a dry creek bed through a rock canyon. I happened to be getting out of my car at about the same time as someone else by himself and perhaps just a few years older than me on a similar road trip adventure from Kentucky. We hiked for about a mile together until he turned back and I continued on. He had been to national parks in the Pacific Northwest, then cut down through Yellowstone, done Zion and Bryce (like me), and planned to do Arches National Park the next day (also like me). It was reassuring to see I'm not the only person who does this sort of thing.

I continued to the end of the Scenic Drive to the Capitol Gorge, then turned back and continued east on Highway 24 stopping to see the Fruita schoolhouse, the ancient petroglyphs, and a few pull-offs with views of the landscape's prominent cliffs and domes.