Life’s a journey

October 16, 2021 by Amy Welborn

…or so they say.

We spent the day in Capitol Reef National Park – a very interesting place.

But this wasn’t the original plan.

The plan – up until this past Wednesday – was to leave late Wednesday, arrive in Grand Junction, Colorado at midnight, spend the night there, get the, er, rental car in the morning, do a scenic drive south, do Mesa Verde National Monument on Friday, then Monument Valley on Saturday and then the rest as we still have planned.

But late Wednesday morning, while M was taking the PSAT, that the Dallas-Grand Junction leg was cancelled (American Airlines, no surprise, considering they are right up second to Southwest this week as far as The Troubles). After much jiggering and thinking about the changed and shortened time span and talking with M about Mesa Verde – taking into consideration some closures there we’d just recently learned about – we decided to change up the first part of the trip, bring in Capitol Reef – which he said he’d wanted to see anyway, drop Mesa Verde and Monument Valley, and then just change the flights to go in and out of Salt Lake City.

(And it worked – I got a complete refund for the first flights – because they canceled – and the new flights were essentially the same price as the old ones.)

So…here we are in Capitol Reef. Beautiful, striking, fascinating. Fascinating for the geography of course, but also for the history, which is a combination of Native American presence, and beginning in the late 19the century, Mormons who took to a small valley amid the staggering rocks and created an oasis of orchards – Fruita.

Here’s a map of the park.

We stayed in the Fruita area. To go down to the other end – where the waterfold is visible – requires a good deal of driving on unpaved roads, which we did some of today for another purpose, but I wasn’t keen on doing, it seems to me, about 15 miles on such.

My photos aren’t great, because the structures really are vast. You can get better photos on the Internet.

An early start, up with the sheep, as you can see below.

Breakfast at the very good Chuckwagon Cafe. Then driving into the park, stopping at the visitor’s center, then down to the Fruita area, where the orchards still grow, and the popular destination is the Gifford House, which sells little pies, that apparently regularly sell out before noon. We grabbed a pumpkin and an apple to make sure we weren’t left out.

We first thought we’d do the Cassidy Arch Trail (yes, named after that Cassidy, who spent time outlawing and hiding out in the area. ) – but we stopped to take a look at remnants of some old uranium mines (you can see M peering into one in a photo below) – and in that time something like five cars passed us on the way to the trailhead, which, was, indeed by the time we reached it, full. So…let’s try another. What about the Capitol Gorge trail? Which takes you past the “Pioneer Register” – wall carvings by, yes, pioneers and up to see “tanks” – holes in the stones that regularly fill with water. That sounds good. Only, when we arrived, we found that the unpaved road to the trailhead was closed to vehicles (flooding damage), which would mean adding 2.5 miles back and forth to the trailhead if we walked it.

O…kay. What now? We returned to the visitor’s center where I asked a ranger for advice – where could we hike where the trailhead parking lots weren’t filled up? She made some suggestions, we talked about it, and finally decided to combine the Cohab Canyon Trail with the Hickman Bridge trail – taking one to the other and back again. Which we did! Not super easy, but not impossible either. It’s in the red square.

We took some side trails through a couple of slot canyons (the skies were cloudless!) and to one viewpoint. With “detours” – probably about 7.5 miles total. We probably started about 10 and finished by 3:30, at which point we made a couple of quick stops – to see the Petroglyph Wall then the Gooseneck viewpoint. Then back home for a quick clean-up, Mass with…what…6 other folks at the tiny St. Anthony of the Desert mission, then dinner at yet another Guy Fieri-made-us-famous joint – Curry Pizza! I don’t know if Fieri visited this one or the one in SLC – I haven’t watched it – but the fellow cooking and serving was definitely Indian, and the food was excellent: Samosas, red-chili wings and yes, Butter Chicken Pizza.

Now we have to decide what to do tomorrow on our way to…somewhere else!

View from the hotel. Sheep greeting us in the very chilly morning air.

Gifford House, uranium mines, beginning of the trail, slot canyon, view towards Fruita from above.

On the next trail – the Hickman Bridge trail. Second photo is the Capitol Dome, named for obvious reasons. The “Reef” part of the name comes from the characterization of the entire land formation as a “reef” because it, like an ocean reef, is an obstacle to human transport.