Day 635: Capitol Reef National Park, Day 2

Posted on May 4, 2015 by Ben

Another great dispersed camping site, this time just outside of Capitol Reef National Park:

B took a moment to clean her bathroom sink this morning:

We drove north on a BLM road for about 20 miles to reach Cathedral Valley, the northernmost section of Capitol Gorge National Park. The Valley contains the Temple of the Sun (TotS) monolith, as well as the smaller Temple of the Moon (TotM) monolith, seen here to the left of TotS:

Our first stop was Glass Mountain, a selenite plug exposed by the weathering of surrounding softer material:

Selenite is soft and can be peeled into thin sheets:

‘

TotM in the distance:

We parked next to TotS and walked around it:

The back side of TotS:

Next we drove over to TotM and hiked around it as well:

Leaving TotS behind:

On the way back we passed these painted hills:

This outcropping is called Queen of the Wash:

Back near the main road, the Waterpocket Fold can be seen here coming right into the photo:

We stopped at the RV for lunch, then drove back into the park. We stopped to peek into a preserved Mormon settler’s cabin:

We also saw the one room school, which was in operation until the late 1940s:

At the visitor center, the kids received their Junior Ranger badges:

M captured this photograph near the visitor center:

We visited the Gifford House in the Fruita complex, now operated as a museum and gift shop:

We visited the horses again:

The orchards of Fruita:

On our way out of the park, we stopped at the Hickman Bridge trailhead:

The weather made us nervous, but we kept going:

We found a set of small natural bridges in the creek bed:

The bridge blends in with the stone behind it, but it’s there:

After the hike, we drove back to the RV and hitched up. We drove east to Hanksville, stopping for groceries and WiFi. We then drove north, west, and south to a dispersed camping location just outside Goblin Valley State Park. See the trip map for today’s drive and our current location.

Day 634: Capitol Reef National Park, Day 1

Posted on May 3, 2015 by Ben

We had a nice Shabbos at Forsyth Reservoir. We walked over to the other RV at the lake, a retired couple that lives a few miles away in the town of Fairview, but they come up for the weekend in their RV a couple times a month to get away from the phone.

After a chilly night, we awoke to another beautiful day:

We drove back to Loa to use the Laundromat:

They had three washers and three dryers, one of which only worked intermittently, so we only did half our laundry:

We drove east from Loa, back through Torrey and on to Capitol Reef National Park. The first thing we did was drive the scenic drive in the park:

We headed down the dirt road through Capitol Gorge:

The park also preserves the Mormon settlement of Fruita, which was a private inholding when the monument was established in the 1920s. The last resident left in the late 1960s. The Park Service staff maintain the orchards and fields to give visitors a feeling for what life was like in the ten family settlement:

Not a bad view:

We drove east just outside the park boundary to disperse camp on BLM land. See the trip map for today’s drive and our current location.

Day 632: Boulder, UT to Forsyth Reservoir

Posted on May 1, 2015 by Ben

We woke up to a sunny day at our dispersed camping location on Burr Trail Road in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument:

We drove back to Boulder, then north to Torrey where there’s a great information center. We took advantage of their displays and free WiFi:

We continued west to the town of Loa solely to shop at their grocery store. The town, large for this area with a population of about 500, has the largest store we’ve encountered since leaving St. George almost two weeks ago. We were also able to fill up our water tank at the USFS office in town (thanks!), and dump at a concrete company on the way out of town on our way north to Forsyth Reservoir. This part of the US is so sparsely populated that dispersed camping on a lake shore is not a problem. With our cell booster, we get no AT&T coverage but do have one intermittent bar of Verizon:

I went out for a bike ride, heading north into the mountains:

Looking back down towards Forsyth Reservoir:

At last, the summit:

Good Shabbos from Forsyth Reservoir:

See the trip map for today’s drive and our current location.

Day 631: The Waterpocket Fold and Wingate Sandstone

Posted on April 30, 2015 by Ben

This morning M and I drove a couple miles to the Escalante Airport where I flew post-training flight #49. At 5,700 above sea level, the paramotor provided quite a bit less thrust than at sea level:

B photographed me flying over the RV:

Cleaning up after the landing:

There were plenty of interesting planes at the airport:

I had spotted this pond under an overhang near the RV from the air, so the kids and I hiked out to find it:

We hitched up the RV and drove north to the village of Boulder, then south and east on the Burr Trail. We dropped off the RV in a dispersed camping area along the road, then drove to the end of the pavement, leaving Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument and entering Capitol Reef National Park. We turned north on Upper Muley Twist Canyon Road to drive through a wash towards a trailhead:

Careful aim was necessary in a couple places:

We passed Cheerios Double Arch:

Hiking on the trail, we spotted this interesting lizard:

After a half mile or so we reached the Strike Valley Overlook, where we could see the Waterpocket Fold, the largest monocline in North America

The Waterpocket Fold extends for over 100 miles, and we could see it stretch to the horizon to the left and right:

A panorama of the Waterpocket Fold:

M caught me working my inner park ranger:

On the way back to the RV, we stopped at the trailhead for Little Death Hollow Canyon:

The canyon doesn’t get narrow until four miles from the trailhead, but we figured it would make a nice hike anyway:

The sign at the trailhead warned against scaring grazing cows deep into the canyon:

We found some pictographs along the way:

Deeper into the canyon, we found quite a bit of petrified wood:

B found cow remains:

Little Death Hollow is one of a handful of slot canyons in Wingate Sandstone, which is usually too hard to form slot canyons, as opposed to the softer Navajo Sandstone where slot canyons are common. The stones have interesting patterns up close:

Heading back out:

We saw other interesting formations as we drove back to the RV:

We got back to the RV just a bit after sunset. Even with the cellular booster, we have neither Verizon nor AT&T signal here:

See the trip map for today’s drive and our current location.

Day 630: Riding the Escalante Plateau

Posted on April 29, 2015 by Ben

This morning we decided to have a rest day after the days of hiking we’ve been doing. I had a bit left, so I went out for a short morning ride up and down a couple good climbs north of Escalante. At a scenic pullout, I could look down on the road ahead: