We eventually came off the I-70 and onto scenic highway Route 24. Utah is called The Beehive State, a lot of the road signs including the Route signs have little beehives on them.
The whole drive to Capitol Reef took us through a bleak landscape of fields of sand dunes, petrified sand dunes, huge rock formations and canyons. We didn’t see any towns or greenery for most of the journey. It was a really pretty drive and with very few people on the road other than the odd car pulling a boat or car pulling an RV pulling a boat going the other way maybe after spending the weekend in Lake Powell.
We entered Capitol Reef and our first stop was a pull out to view the petroglyphs that were drawn on the cliff wall by ancestors of the American Indian tribes.
Capitol Reef National Park protects a 100 mile wrinkle in the Earth’s crust which has resulted in a one sided fold in the rock layers (this is called the Reef).
As we’re driving though the park, the big walls of rock still over hang the road but either side of the road is getting more and more green. We eventually reached an area call Fruita, this is where the visitors center is located. In the 1880s, Fruita was established as a small Mormon settlement. It’s the point where the Fremont and Sulphur Creek join and the Mormons built irrigation systems to grow orchards and pastures and sustain a self reliant village for decades.
Today the park still preserves the orchards, one of the oldest in the country and you can even go and pick the fruit. It’s like a little oasis in a desert.
Our campsite for the night was due to be outside the town of Boulder so that the next day we could take the scenic Burr Trail Road to Lake Powell but at the visitors center we were told that the recent rain had made this road impossible to anything other high clearance 4x4s. Fin wasn’t going to make it. So it hiked up to the top of Goose Neck trail and replanned.
We decided to try to stay at Fruita in Capital Reef and then go around the park to Lake Powell the next day. We were lucky! The campsite we had planned to stay at in Boulder was FCFS so we didn’t lose any money changing our plans and the campsite at Fruita had one last campsite available which we took, there were three other people who turned up within 10 minutes after us who were turned away!!
The campsite was lovely, so green, surrounded by fruit trees and with deer freely roaming around. Plus within a 5 minute walk there was an old farm house that had been turned into a museum and shop. We bought firewood in the evening and in the morning had fresh coffee and a warm homemade cinnamon rolls.
During the evening, we walked to the amphitheater only 5 minute away from the campground and listened to a Ranger talk on the night sky. Even though Lee is an astronomy geek, he still found the talk interesting and learnt some new facts!
Funky tunes for the vid and a superb drive, what were those white cubes stacked up in one shot though?
ReplyDeleteThe scenery/landscape looked very different to start with, lots of grey and different formations but later on it was similar to the last post.
The campsite looked great and was a lot more lush and green than I'd expected. The Deer do love a campsite don't they ;-)
Apricot picking was cool and looked like fun and a nice free treat too!
Nice looking tea on a proper fire too, yay!! Lee's bra/tanlines are really funny