Utah, Part Two

Utah is coming fast and furious. I can't keep up! Aside from the fact that there seems to be a national park about every 75 miles, we haven't had a decent cell or internet signal since we left Moab.  Since we left there, we have been to four national parks or monuments, unless I've lost count, and somehow I need to say something about each extraordinary place! I need a rainy day. If I don't get one, I guess I'll just write in installments. (Utah, Part Twelve?)

When we left Moab we visited another, more remote part of Canyonlands called The Needles. It was quite beautiful, but because it is more remote it is hard to see a lot of it without hiking into the canyons. (We are figuring out that some of this national park business is meant for the young and hearty.)

At  The Needles

From there we drove to a place called Natural Bridges National Monument. It was quite beautiful, and if it weren't for the fact that Utah is in the national park business and there weren't so many other places to go, people would come from all over to see it.

At Natural Bridges National Monument

Also at Natural Bridges

We got to Natural Bridges too late to get a space in their campground, so we had our first experience of true dry camping. When we arrived at the campground and saw that it was full, we saw a note describing where to go for overflow camping. It was an unmarked area a few miles away, where there was a road that led to an area where you could park tucked away from the road and just sleep out in the nowhere of the country. We could see a few other trailers or vans tucked in here and there, between the juniper trees. We found a spot and just slept on federal land. Your tax dollars at work. It was pretty cool.

Here we are, tucked away from the road.

Our camping spot

We spent a few days at the rather extraordinary Capitol Reef National  Park. After spending a lot of time in the red rock environment of this part of the country, you would think it would all start to look alike. But the thing that makes Capitol Reef quite different is the sheer variety of rock configurations. It's as if someone piled up a lot of different kinds of rock just to see if you can tell them apart. I seem to keep taking essentially the same kinds of pictures,  again and again, while on a hike, because the rocks are just ridiculously interesting to look at. It is easy to see why many of the young park rangers we have encountered were geology majors. If you were interested in rocks, this part of the country would definitely be your place.  It is hard not to point and exclaim, "look at that!" continually. And if you had asked me before if I was interested in rock I would have said, only when it is combined with roll.

Capitol Reef is primarily known for what is called the Waterpocket Fold. This is a kind of wrinkle in the land that goes for almost a hundred miles. The fold occurred because when the land here lifted up (quite a LONG time ago, during the time the mountains were being formed), it shifted along a fault line, and one side lifted up about 7,000 feet higher than the other. And in this fold there are many places where water collects and continues the erosion that is the biggest part of what you see. It's all about the water. It's a dry place, but the power of water is visible everywhere. There is a lovely river flowing through, called the Fremont River, and the area is prone to the same cataclysmic flash floods as the areas we were in earlier, so there are beautiful washes to walk in and amazing erosion to look at. We took some lovely hikes, and did some bike riding, and marveled at rock formations everywhere we went. Capitol Reef is especially interesting because it is also a Mormon pioneer settlement, so there is history short and long all in one place.  In the area of the previous Mormon settlement, which is now part of the national park, there are some old buildings which are beautiful, and there are orchards where you can pick apples, which we did. But the main thing is rocks, rocks, rocks. Every possible kind of rock, and every possible combination of rocks.

A rock wall

Some kind of weird rock, right?

Layers and layers

Different kind of rock wall

Isn't this one amazing?

More layers

Part of the old settlement

The orchard where we picked apples

And, once more, with feeling....a rock wall:

Are you sick of them yet? Somehow I am not, as you can see.

On a completely different note, there are a lot of cool little towns around here, and they can be depended upon to have some kind of interesting small-town atmosphere. We went to a cowboy bar in one of these towns, and were quite amused by these bar stools. I'm including this so that you know it's not all rocks, all the time.

The next installment will be Grand Staircase/Escalante National Monument, which was quite an adventure. More rocks! More wilderness! If you haven't seen enough red rocks yet, there will be more!  It's too bad I don't actually know anything about geology. It's all: hey, look!