Megan’s Take
Today was our first day at Capitol Reef National Park. It’s crazy how the mountains and plateaus are uplifted and tilted – like everything at an angle – and how many layers are visible. The kids are too much of a distraction to dive into the geology of the area while traveling, but I would like to learn more about how this region formed.
We didn’t hike as much today, but the big hike for this morning as Hickman Bridge – about 2 miles, 400 ft elevation gain.
The trail was fun – a lot of rocks as steps or as the trail surface, and little mini “caves” and alcoves in the sandstone that the kids could play in along the way.
Honestly, the views were beautiful, but my favorite and most memorable part of the trail was watching Emilia and Emilia play on the rocks.
Having rocks to climb on and around really fired up their creativity. They like to play pirate ship, climbing on top of small boulders, or cook me “food” with rocks,
or make their caves into homes. I don’t know how much boulders are priced from our local rock quarry at home, but I would be interested to get some large rocks for our backyard to add some playtime variety.
The rest of the day was spent exploring Capitol Reef National Park – driving the part of the scenic drive that hasn’t closed yet for upcoming construction, going to the visitor center, buying homemade fruit pies (mixed berry and peach) from the Gifford House, napping both kids in the back of the truck, eating dinner at Chak Balam Mexican restaurant (great enchiladas), and getting snow cones/frozen yogurt from Hula Hut.
(Speaking of dinner, I’m trying to get my children to have a little variety at restaurants so they aren’t eating chicken strips all the time. Emilia ordered a taco a la carte, and they put the onion/cilantro on the side with a small salad. I was very impressed that she ate all the vegetables on her plate, with the exception of raw tomato slices which are technically fruit anyways.)
Tonight was early bedtime, but before showers and pajamas, the kids spent time outside with a neighbor horse and pony who hang out in the pasture right behind our campsite.
They seem very friendly and curious, and they were happy with the attention that Emmett and Emilia were giving to them.
Phil’s Take
There’s not a whole lot of additional detail to add to what Megan posted, so I’ll be pointing out some of the vistas I was able to get panoramas of and things that stood out. The first such vista was right at the top of the first hill on our hike this morning on our way up to the natural bridge. You get a good view of the land surrounding the canyon.
Right after we went under the bridge and let the kids play for a bit on the interesting rocks there, we headed out to a ledge that offered a very different view than we had seen elsewhere. Very beautiful!
Here I thought that was great, but then we rounded the corner to the left and there was this view.
The craziest part of these two pictures is that they were taken maybe a few hundred feet from each other and only about 90 degrees different in direction. That’s just how varied and unpredictable the landscape is here. It’s actually sort of unique to this place, because of the geological features being quite different than what we’ve seen elsewhere, since this is not really a canyon, but formed via other Geologic forces. Here’s a diagram from the NPS website that illustrates the geology of this area.
We have pictures that illustrate all of the different layers in this graphic. The brown sandstone in the left is what makes up the large cliffs on our way into the park.
The Navajo Sandstone is seen in the area we were hiking to the natural bridge.
The area toward the Great Wash had a more reddish tint to it. These cliffs reminded me of Zion Canyon.
And then we saw totally different landscape in our little excursion east of the park looking for a place Megan had seen directions posted for (that turned out to be terrible). You can see some of the completely different colors that line up with the graphic above.
Here’s another example that shows the slices that are in that graphic.
Truly cool stuff. It goes to show that the geologists aren’t really just making stuff up. It actually does make sense with the land we see.
One other detail Megan left out is that we went to see the petroglyphs left by natives centuries ago. The style is different to say the least.
The last bit we saw of the park before we headed to dinner was one that we passed on the way in. I got a great panorama of the area you see as you approach the park from the west (the park is to the right).
This is a very beautiful place. I would rank it up there with Zion and Bryce, but it seems to be much less crowded. Perhaps it is because they’re about to do a lot of road construction and will be closing significant portions of the park because of it. Whatever the reason, it was definitely a pleasant experience and a beautiful place with more variety than we’ve seen in most parks.
As always, here’s a gallery of the pictures we took today.
