Capitol Reef - near the end of the day

We headed down Hwy 12 on our way to Capitol Reef. I had read this was a scenic highway, but the weather was not being our friend yesterday, we did not know what to expect. The forecast was for thunderstorms all day. We actually ended up having a beautiful trip through the Grand Stairway (the most recently named a National Park, by Pres. Obama). The highway reaches an elevation over 9,000 feet. It was narrow with steep drop offs at times. It said to be careful when there was ice but the weather was still in the low 50’s so seemed safe. There were signs throughout the trip to be careful of cattle on the road. We had two encounters on this road. One when visibility was extremely restricted due to heavy fog and the cows were black! It was a good thing the road was windy and we had to go very slowly due to the weather and road conditions. The scenery was beautiful, when the clouds lifted, which was fortunately most of the trip. There were many different shapes, colors and intensity in the landscape. There were red cliffs, white huge domes, waterfalls magically coming from out of the cliffs, through the rock.

We got through Capitol Reef without incident. There were roads closed all around us due to the heavy rains and flooding, but we had taken the high road and did not have a problem. After a relaxing glass of wine at the fire pit, we left for an observation point and Sunset view. The observation point was atop a lookout over the river as the river carved its way down through many layers of sedimentary rock laid down over the last sixty billion years. It was very deep, windy and colorful. The sun was out and the colors changed as the light was shaded in some areas and became more intense in others. The white rock became golden, the gray became a dark red, green rock became more visible. The shadows deepened the canyons and outlined the cliffs.

The Sun Rise Point was also nice, but while awaiting the sunset, clouds came in and dulled the lighting spectacular…a dud. What was spectacular was the thunder and lightning and rain that occurred during the night! In the morning, the hills we had just travelled were spotted with snow! More phone alerts of flash floods.

We started the day at the Visitors Center at Capitol Reef. There was a Ranger talk just beginning. We learned that overnight we had experienced 1/8 th of the state’s annual rainfall! We found out the scenic road we had planned to travel was closed past the historic town. The road had been washed out, a not uncommon occurrence apparently. We drove through the town and saw a big herd of deer, several buck, just lying in the orchard. As I was trying to position myself, to get a picture of the bucks, I almost walked right through a family, three fawns, a doe and buck right next to the cars! What a life those deer have, protected in a National Park and an orchard to graze in!

We continued the drive and viewed some petroglyphs near the highway. The petroglyphs were drawn by the Native Americans who had lived in the area many centuries ago. No one knows why they moved on. Many different land formation of windows, bridges, arches…they mean different things to some people but it is all the same to me. It depends on if they are formed by water, wind or just erosion. A hike up to see Hickman Bridge, a 2-mile roundtrip up the canyon wall was next on our agenda. The weather was cool when we started out but by the time we had returned to the car, it had heated up by 15 degrees. The clouds were gone and the day was perfect. We saw the dome for which Capitol Reef got its name. It is a big white rounded mound which reminded the people who named it of the dome of the Capitol buildings. It was actually petrified sand dunes!

 
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