The Savage Traveler: Out West Adventure: Part 2--Bryce and Capital Reef National Parks, Days 5 & 6

Mon. May 13: Monday dawned sunny and bright and it quickly warmed, eventually to the low eighties. We broke camp and drove over to Sunset View to take a hike down into the rock formations. By combining parts of Rim Trail, Navaho Trail, and Queen’s Garden trail we could have a nice nearly 3 mile hike before we left Bryce. The Navaho Trail descended steeply with many switchbacks but we stopped often for pictures and taking in the beauty. 350 feet down the trail levels off some and we wandered among the formations and large butterscotch-smelling Ponderosa Pines. It was wonderful to be at the base and look up at the hoodoos and beyond to the rim far over our heads. There were lots of people on the trail speaking all the languages, some doing the trails clockwise, which would have been harder. We exchanged taking pictures with a man from Calais, France with very little English but he was very pleasant and I managed to understand his mixture of French and English. When we joined Queens’ Garden Trail (named for the hoodoo which looks very much like the picture they had on a sign of a statue of Queen Victoria that is in England) the trail gradually ascended back up to Sunset View. It is nearly as high as where we joined Navaho Trail but, while still very strenuous, not as steep as our descent had been. It felt very good to have completed the 2½ hour hike and then set off for Capitol Reef.

Down, down, down......

Taken by our French buddy

Queen Victoria riding (backwards) on a camel

Yep, that's where we came from!

Finished before lunch!!

With a stop for lunch in Escalante for lunch at the Circle D café, where they smoke their own meats, it took us about 4 hours to drive to Torrey, Utah. Scenic Routes 12 and then 24 follow the route taken by Major Powell who surveyed and mapped this last uncharted part of the 48 continental states. The road took us up 9600 feet over Boulder Mountain, where there were many large patches of snow remaining. And then we descended into the Fremont Valley and the towering Capitol Reef.

“A giant buckle in Earth’s crust stretches across south-central Utah. This vast warping of rock, created 65 million years ago by the same great forces later uplifting the Colorado Plateau, is called the Waterpocket Fold. Capitol Reef National Park preserves the Fold and its eroded jumble of colorful cliffs, massive domes, soaring spires, stark monoliths, twisting canyons, and graceful arches.” (from the National Park brochure) It is the longest monocline on the Colorado Plateau. We found a campsite in a nearby RV Park and just dropped off the camper to have some time at the park. After stamping our passport and watching the video we purchased a CD to guide us on the three scenic drives at the Park. We took the longest first through the park to the end. The narrator guided us through the historic district along the Fremont River where pioneering Mormons established an orchard in conditions that allowed them to grow both northern fruits like apples, cherries and pears, and southern fruits like peaches and apricots. They also grew pecans and walnuts. The town was later named Fruita and though it had no more than 12 families at a time, they had a school and many orchards. We stopped at the original homestead that now serves as a small museum and store where I had a homemade strawberry sorbet and Marv had a personal size blackberry pie. Then the CD took us through the park to marvel at the formations along the reef. At the end of the drive we hiked about a mile up Capitol Gorge, far enough to see ancient petroglyphs and the Pioneer’s Registry, where passing pioneers as early as 1871 scratched their name and the date in the rock cliff of the gorge. The sun was setting by the time we returned to the camper, which we still had to set up. I managed to piece together a dinner from our dwindling staples and we both showered and got all ready to dry camp for a few days in the Moab Desert.

near Point Powell

Point Powell

Capitol Reef

Scenic Road

Ancient Petroglyph

Capitol Gorge

The Capitol, for which the area is named

Sun. May 12: Happy Mothers Day! We had Cheerios for breakfast and made a pretty quick getaway from Zion. We had been told by two Rangers that we would need a special “one way” permit for $15 to go through the narrow 1.25 mile tunnel to the east entrance of Zion. Built in the 1930s, it isn't big enough for today’s campers and RVs. But the Ranger at the gate assured us that he had been here for a long time and we were undersized—he didn't even measure us. So we were on our way. One climbs up, up, up (our mileage dropped to 6.9mpg) to leave Zion through the east entrance and it is amazing how different the scenery is after passing through the tunnel, which we fit through without a problem. On the other side we made a couple of stops for pictures, and we even got some of a small herd of desert bighorn sheep browsing on the side of a mountain. We took a few pictures to compare to our 1976 pictures of the famous “Checkerboard” hillside. After climbing our way out of the park, we descended for many miles and our mileage improved dramatically. We drove in and out of the Dixie National Forest and passed amazing and awe-inspiring scenery.

About lunchtime we arrived at Bryce Canyon National Park. We had made a last minute decision to camp at Bryce if we could instead of going to Capital Reef. Luckily there were plenty of sites available and we even found a site in a loop that doesn’t allow generators. (Or vehicles over 20 ft. We found out from a volunteer that we probably didn’t qualify but because we could set-up and park the truck without hanging in the road, he said he didn’t care if we stayed.) Our site, #100, was really beautiful; up on the crest of a hill, we overlooked forest on two sides. Like Zion, very few people are in the campground during the day. But Bryce is very different from Zion in many ways. At Zion one looks up from the river level at the canyon. At Bryce one is looking down from the rim at the fairyland of formations that are in a natural amphitheater, not technically a canyon. Zion is at about 3000ft. elevation and, at its highest point, Bryce is 9116ft. elevation. It is cooler (it got down to 38° that night) and it is not as busy as Zion. There was plenty of room in the campgrounds and not as many people in general at the lookouts and stops. Bryce has a shuttle service but it only started running in early May (their radio information said the shuttles weren’t running yet) and it is voluntary. Like every place out here we felt like our speaking English made us a minority. There is a huge mix of languages including Italian, French, German, various Asian dialects, and only a little Spanish. As usual most people seem to be our age; that may change when we get into June and schools are out.

We set up quickly and then drove to the Visitors Center to watch the film, stamp our passport, and get brochures and trail guides. Only two shuttles a day go all the way to Rainbow View at the end of the scenic drive. We could have made the afternoon shuttle but chose to drive ourselves so we could stop as long as we wanted. Since all the views are to the left (east) as you go south on the drive we followed the recommendation and drove to the end without stopping. We passed a Utah Prairie Dog village and several groups of antelope grazing along the roadside. After admiring the amazing view at Rainbow we started hiking the short Bristle Cone Pine trail, but then joined the trail to Yovimpa Point for another spectacular view that had hardly any people. We slowly made the return drive, stopping at pretty much every view point to marvel at the arches, bridges, windows, and hoodoos carved in the varied colored sandstone. Several seemed to have resident ravens looking for a handout and one was very cheeky, walking right up to me as I leaned on the wall. There was a Ranger led hike along the Rim Trail that started at 5:00 that we hoped to join but we couldn't remember if it started at Sunrise or Sunset Points. We went to Sunrise and didn't find them, then went to Sunset and still didn't find them. So we walked along the Rim Trail on our own reading interpretive signs until we came upon the group and finished the walk with a tiny, young, enthusiastic and very informative Volunteer Ranger. Along the way we saw a beautiful Stellar Jay that seemed to be preening and posing for the many people who gathered to take pictures. Since it was quite late when we finished we bought a pint of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream at the general store and took it back to the campsite to enjoy as an appetizer as we read and relaxed back before we ate leftovers for dinner. We talked to Sarah for Mother’s Day, went through pictures and went to bed as the temperature slipped down to 38°.