Friday, September 24, 2010

 

Today we weren’t sure if we were going to take the time to drive to Capitol Reef NP or skip it.  It is one of the 58 NP’s, and we are both a little crazy about getting stamps in our National Parks Passport Book, so we drove the ‘toad’ and visited the park.  Once we were in the park, we couldn’t understand why we even thought about skipping it.   Capitol Reef compares to Arches and Canyonlands in its beauty.

Here’s a little history about the park.  It was created 50-65 million years ago when the area warped and created a ‘fold.’  This shift created a barrier, or reef of rocks.  The rocks looked something like the US Capitol and hence we get the name Capitol Reef.  Everybody’s favorite president, Richard M. Nixon, signed legislation that made Capitol Reef a National Park in 1971.  The park is about 250,000 acres.

Every park we have visited has been a great experience and this didn’t disappoint us at all.  The park is rugged, the roads sometimes turn to gravel and are rough.  Most of the park would be unfriendly to 38’ motor homes, so we were glad we left the RV in Moab and drove the toad.  This park also had some interesting history of the people that lived there and how they survived.  Surprisingly, they had large orchards and grew apples, pears, and peaches.  As a Mormon community, they had their own school until 1941.  These few things made Capitol Reef NP different from Arches and Canyonlands.

Here’s the ‘where we are’ shot  and one of the layers of rock in the mountains.

Rain is infrequent, but when it comes, the run-off causes many wash-outs.  We also visited the farmhouse and were able to find pie and ice cream.  Both were delicious.

The school house that they built in the 19th century, still stands and is staffed with a NPS ranger.  Connie really enjoyed this stop.

Here’s a progression of shots. After the hard surfaced roads stopped, the road turned to gravel.  Then the sign at the start of the Capitol Gorge trail, a shot of the trail, and a picture of the rock wall where some pioneers registered their names in the 1800’s.  The last is a shot of Connie examining some of the holes in the walls.

Driving the 2 hours back home (back to the motor home), we both agreed that visiting Capitol Reef NP was time well spent.