Laura’s Journal: Capitol Reef National Park

Posted on by snukes
Rock art from a thousand years ago, give or take a couple hundred.
Starting up to the Rim Overlook.
Natural bridge! See the little tiny people?
Dustin used his camera’s level to make sure this picture was straight. The picture is the ONLY thing in this park that is level.
Celebratory strawberry rhubarb pie at the Rim Overlook! The pie nearly blew away.
Celebratory “summit” shot. We could have kept going to that pointy rock in the background (another four miles distant), but we really were going to blow away, and other corners of the park beckoned.
The Tanks (waterpockets) were rather empty when we stopped by.
These colors!
Not really a building.

Transcription:


Friday, May 7, 2021
CAPITOL REEF NATIONAL MONUMENT

After the madness of Zion, Capitol Reef felt nearly deserted. We didn’t have to fight anyone for parking and sometimes spent entire minutes on the trails without seeing anyone else. I saw someone call this park Utah’s red-headed step child, but I don’t know why it should be. It’s smaller, yes, but it’s gorgeous (literally! see: Capital Gorge) and offers quite a lot of wonderful hikes. Maybe it’s a question of marketing? Before this trip, I knew Utah had five big, wonderful national parks, but I’d’ve been hard-pressed to name more than Zion and Arches.

We started with a visit to the petroglyph panels near the main road. My friends the maybe-deer make frequent appearances on the walls here, but there are also many human (or deity) depictions here, too. They look like crazy space men. I love them. Attempts at interpretation don’t seem to gо much further than suggesting ritual or mythological events in the lives of the Fremont people – the group (or maybe many groups) of indigenous people who made the art from about 300-1300 CE.

Hoping to see more rock art on the slightly-less beaten path, we headed to Capitol Gorge later in the day. I was able to get more up-close and personal with another panel of the indigenous art, but the real draw of this canyon seems to be the hundred+ years of white-people graffiti lining the walls of the canyon for miles. I am not judging – presented with such lovely flat walls, and especially given that other people had had the idea first, I would also have been tempted to leave my mark. I am judging the utter lack of creativity and style. A few managed nice handwriting, but most not even that.

In the middle of the day, we stopped by Gifford House, one of the few remaining structures from the historic town of Fruita that was establish by Mormon settlers. They sell delicious mini pies. The guy in line in front of me got the last mixed berry pie, so I got a peach and a strawberry berry rhubarb. We took one of the pies up the Rim Overlook Trail and ate it at the top while we took in the view and tried not to get blown over said rim and took in the awesome views. It was a great trail for getting a solid eyeful of the uplift that created the reef – which was apparently a local term for any kind of major barrier. The whole landscape looked tipped up, with striking differences in color between the rock layers. We also got a nice view of the rock that gave the park the “Capitol” part of its name. From this vantage, at least, it looked a good deal more like a giant boob than a stately dome.

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