On Monday morning, we packed as soon as we got up, so that we’d be ready to leave when we finished breakfast. We stopped briefly to fill up the car, and were headed east to Capitol Reef National park by 10:00 am, driving along UT 12, often called “the most scenic road in the US.”
I should have learned my lesson earlier. The hike was marked easy-moderate, but I was huffing and puffing as we reached the Escalante overlook.
There wasn’t as much petrified wood as in the Petrified Forest National Monument in Arizona. But the pieces we saw were striking.
There were also some unique rounded black rocks from the Boulder Mountain volcano just to the north. I liked this one which looks like a dinosaur head eating a wedge of cheese. After our hike we finished up the last of our sandwiches at the picnic area.
Heading north to the town of Torrey, we crossed over Boulder Mountain, where the snow piled at the side of the road was often higher than our car. We pulled out at the summit and I took this picture, looking east towards Colorado.
We arrived in Torrey at our hotel, the Rim Rock Inn, about 5:30. This is a classic road-trip motel, right under the red-rock-cliff mesa which borders Capitol Reef. The late-afternoon sun on the rim-rock was awesome. We had dinner at the motel restaurant, because we were too tired to get in the car and drive into town. It turned out to be a great decision.
When the sun went down at 7:45 we closed our drapes on the view and fell, exhausted, to sleep.
Capital Reef to Arches
On Tuesday, we walked across the highway for breakfast at the Pioneer Inn, where we had an inexpensive meal, and Kathy took a video of a family embarking on a hike with a group of llamas. Leaving the motel we stopped to gas up our car, and then headed east to Capitol Reef National Park.
Capitol Reef is a long, narrow park, starting at Cathedral Valley in the north, and traveling south following a geological ridge called the Waterpocket Fold, where it ends in the Hall’s Creek Narrows in Glen Canyon (north Lake Powell).
The most accessible region of the park is centered around the Mormon Pioneer town of Fruita. From there, you can drive south along a 20-mile scenic drive that ends in a dirt road at Capitol Gorge.
We drove four or five miles down the road, took some pictures, and then turned around.
The views at the bottom of the canyons were really awe inspiring.
On the way out of the park, we stopped at the Gifford House. This is the original homestead in Fruita (where they didn’t have electricity until the 1940s). Now, it has been restored by the Park Service, and it sells traditional homemade pies and ice cream.
We left Capitol Reef and headed northeast to Moab, Utah, where we arrived at 3pm. Since it was sunny, and still early, we decided to visit Arches National park, since it was right outside of town. We’re glad we did. There was no line, the light was beautiful, and the park was uncrowded. That’s Balanced Rock behind Kathy and I.
We drove to the Windows area and hiked up to the three arches, North Window, South Window and Turret Arch. It’s hard to appreciate how immense these arches are. Notice Kathy in the picture above, and then…
…look how small she appears when she’s right under the arch.
At the top, we met a fellow from New Jersey, who took our picture with both the North and South Window arches.
Besides the arches there were so many fantastical shapes. Kathy would say “that looks just like a Greek temple,” and I’d see a different formation, and say, “that looks just like a dwarf pushing a shopping cart.”
We left the park after sunset, both of us bone-weary, but really pleased with our late-afternoon adventure.
Wednesday in Canyonlands
Wednesday dawned gray and overcast, so we were doubly glad that we had visited Arches last night. We took our time getting up, and stopped at Canyon Steak and Waffle for breakfast.
Both of us had the Southwest Breakfast Bowl. It was inexpensive and delicious.
After breakfast we drove northeast to Canyonlands National Park. Canyonlands and Arches are on either side of the highway leading into Moab.
Like Capitol Reef, Canyonlands consists of several different areas, and most of the park is inaccessible to passenger-car traffic. The northern section, Island in the Sky, is on top of the 20-mile-long mesa overlooking the confluence of the Colorado and Green rivers.
The two sides of the plateau have very different geologies. The Green River side is not as steep and eroded, while the Colorado side is extremely rugged.
At the end of the scenic drive, you can look out and see where both rivers join. There is a southern part of the park, called the Needles region, that is immediately adjacent to the confluence, but it is quite a ways off of the highway, so we’ll probably skip it.
The park was pretty crowded (for March), and at a couple of the vista points, we couldn’t get a parking spot. We drove out to Whale Rock at one branch of the scenic drive, and found the parking lot for the Upheaval Dome trail completely full, with people parking on the highway. So, we didn’t stop.
On the way out of the park, at the Mesa Arch parking lot, one of my “must-see” sights, we saw an empty space and pulled in.
There is an easy, one-mile (round trip) trail out to the arch, which can’t be seen from the road.
The arch itself is much smaller than those in Arches National Park, but, being right on the edge of the cliff, it is very picturesque, and quite photographed (often with the moon rising through the arch).
We left the park listening to a Preston and Childs book about the Donner Party, which I checked out from the library. Early on the trip, we listened to Thunderhead, a book about the discovery of a lost Anasazi city called Quivira. It was especially cool, since the book was talking about the canyons and cities that we were driving through.
We got back to Moab around 2:30 pm and decided to have a big lunch and skip dinner. We went to Arches Thai and had Pad Thai, Tom Kha soup, tempura vegetables and so Thai pork fried rice. We only ate half of it and saved the rest for dinner.
I’m sure you noticed, I haven’t kept up with a blog entry every day. One reason is because we didn’t have a chair or desk in our motel room. So after lunch we went looking for a Starbucks, where I could catch up. The only Starbucks was in a grocery store (with no seating), so, instead, we walked two blocks to MacDonalds, and spent the rest of the afternoon typing.
It’s 6:00 pm now, and in the morning, we’ll leave the five National Parks of Utah and head south into the Navaho Nation Monument Valley park.
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