Cross Country Trip – Day 45

3 May 2018

Breakfast at Hidden Canyon was at 8 am.  The cook made my breakfast to order and then sat down and had a long conversation with me about the park, the retreat, people in the park service, and every other topic we could think of.  What a nice person! I was the only person at the retreat last night.  Even so, the cook prepared me a full breakfast – eggs, beef sausage, toast, home made banana bread with chocolate chips.

Kudos to my jeep.  I was a little leery about a 7 hour drive today and wondered if I would have some kind of engine trouble.  Nary a peep.  The jeep performed like a champ so Sahara Motors did their job well.

I pulled into Torrey, Utah around 2:30 pm.  My GPS led me past my motel for the next three nights, Capitol Reef Resort.  It does that sometime even though I typed in a street address.   The resort is a pretty large place where they even have tepees in which you may stay.  The photos of the insides of the tepees show a luxurious interior.  Glorified tent camping.  My room is a little more mundane – typical motel room but the view out the window is worth the price of the motel.

Instead of checking in immediately, I decided to head to the visitor center of Capitol Reef  National Park, some 6 miles from the motel.  The scenery leading into Torrey was pretty nice but when you enter the park, you are blown away.

Have you ever thought what it would be like to be able to drive through the Grand Canyon?  The drive to the visitor center is pretty much like that.  Sheer cliff walls rising hundreds of feet over you with amazingly vivid colors of reds, oranges, whites, and purple.  

The stop at the visitor center allowed you to view two beautiful formations.  One is named The Castle and I suppose it could look something like one.  

The other is a massive rock wall hundreds of feet high.

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Also, across the road from Panorama Point is an area known as Fluted Wall.  I assume the parts at the base of the cliffs is where it gets its name.

From Panorama Point, you can take a side road to Gooseneck – a deep canyon overlook where a creek has eroded 800 feet down into the canyon.

Next up was The Chimney.  There is a loop trail I may try while here, but it is 7.6 miles.  I’ll have to think about that.

Another striking feature was Twin Rocks.  They are much larger than they seem in the photo and you wonder how long they’ll be balanced there.  

There are a couple of scenic drives I would like to take tomorrow and maybe do a few short hikes.  The following day I may attempt The Chimney loop or some other longer trail.  The section of the park I am in is called Fruita (there was a settlement here at one time with lots of fruit trees).  They have a campground and several areas of interest.  The northern section of the park is called the Cathedral Section and the southern section is called Muley Twist.  

The lower section of the park abuts The Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.  I hope that I might get down for a drive through to that area, maybe tomorrow.

In 2014, Nancy, Michel and I flew over Capitol Reef with a Tauck Tour.  Flying over the park certainly gives you an interesting perspective but driving through the park is spectacular.  Every where you look is another beautiful rock formation.