Utah Road Trip Part 4

 First thing in the morning Emily and I made breakfast: and then we zipped off to Priority #1 for the day.  Go to the Gifford house first thing that morning when they opened, to load up on pie.  At this time of day they were fully stocked so Emily and I both got strawberry-rhubarb pie and I grabbed a cinnamon roll to split with Amber.

Then it was time for the second priority: Grand Wash Trail.  It is pretty similar to the Capitol Gorge Trail, except it has some sections of canyon that are narrower.

After we finished up our hike we headed back to camp to have some lunch.  Then while Amber & Addie rested, Emily and I embarked on a more difficult hike that we had been wanting to do.  We hiked the Cohab Canyon Trail, and went to both overlooks.  Cohab Canyon had a reputation for being a hiding place for the polygamists when federal agents came to the area to enforce marriage laws.  Cohab is a "Hanging Canyon", or a canyon above another canyon.  It's a steep climb to get to the mouth, but definitely worth it.

You eventually hike out of Cohab Canyon and then there are a couple spur trails to take you to different overlooks of the Fremont River/Fruita area.  The views were incredible and even made me dizzy as I peered over the edge of the sandstone cliffs.

Emily and I hiked back down to our camp and visited with Matt, Amy, and their kids as they had stopped by to say hi on their road trip.  After they took off we loaded up in the car to check out a couple more sites before we prepared to end our time at the park.  We checked out the historic Fruita school that the Park Service has preserved, as well as some petroglyphs from the Fremont people, before white settlers arrived in the area.

Our final stop was an area called The Goosenecks.  It's jaw dropping to see and the pictures don't do it justice.  Sulphur Creek is far below and the canyon seems to come out of nowhere.

When we had finished up exploring the area a bit more it was time to make dinner and then settle in for the evening.  It had been a full day of adventures and it was going to be sad to begin the trip home in the morning.  Capitol Reef gave us one more surprise, however.  Beginning in early evening we began getting some thunderstorms in the area.  The weather was very moody for a while, but at one point the sun poked out from behind the clouds and illuminated the red rocks and one of the barns.  I ran over and took what is probably one of my favorite pictures of the trip.

In the morning we were packed up and on the road before 8am.  It was sad to leave Capitol Reef- It moved into my favorite National Park that I have visited so far, barely edging out Theodore Roosevelt NP in North Dakota.  The next couple days would be mostly driving, but we had one more stop we wanted to squeeze in on our way back home.

When we finally arrived in North Utah in mid-afternoon, we only had a couple hours to explore this park.  That meant no auto tour or hiking for us on this visit, so we focused mostly on the Visitor Center and seeing one of the steam engine demonstrations.

Golden Spike National Historical Park commemorates the meeting of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific Railroads completing the nation's first transcontinental railroad on May 10, 1869.  I won't drone on about the history: You can read an excellent book by Stephen Ambrose called "Nothing Like It In The World" that gives a great in depth analysis of the railroad from pre-planning to completion.  But it is worth noting that in this desolate area of Northern Utah both railroads were continuing to build grade and had even passed each other because no official meeting point had been set.  But Congress finally determined the meeting point to be Promontory Summit.  Thus the ceremonial driving of the golden spike was planned, and the Central Pacific's locomotive named "Jupiter" and the Union Pacific's "No. 119" met in the middle.

The Park Service operates replicas of both locomotives and during the summer they do demonstrations for the public.  We were able to watch the No. 119 do a demonstration run late in the afternoon.

I would have loved to have spent more time exploring the area, but we just didn't have the time as we still needed to get checked into our lodging in Logan for the night and buy groceries.  But Golden Spike does also offer hiking and self guided interpretive auto tours along the original railroad grades.  It was a great end to a very fun and memorable trip exploring parts of Utah for the first time.  It will be exciting to come back someday and explore more of Utah, but also visit Capitol Reef again.

And.... as a bonus.... here is a photo of the famous Preston High School, in Preston, ID.  Amber and I realized the next morning that it wouldn't take any more time to leave Logan, UT, and head back a different way through Preston, ID.  Every good Idahoan knows that Preston is the location for the unofficial Idaho State movie, Napoleon Dynamite.  We had to swing by the school and see those famous steps where Napoleon, Pedro, and Deb all hung out... 😁

Utah Road Trip Part 3

 

Driving into Capitol Reef National Park was an incredible experience.  The towering red rock cliffs tower above you, and transport you into a new world.  We admired the scenery as we drove into the Park and got set up at our campsite we had for two nights in the Fruita Campground.

Capitol Reef is a place full of history, interesting geology, and stunning surprises around every rock.  The area is dominated by the 100 mile long geological feature called the Waterpocket Fold.  This incredible formation is a stretch of rock layers in the Earth's crust that was uplifted, folded, and then subjected to massive water erosion that scoured the terrain.  Evolutionary geologists (and the US Park Service) will try to tell you it took millions upon millions of years for the sediment layers to be deposited.  The Park Service even tries to tell visitors that the rock layers folded but were not broken.  When was the last time you saw a sedimentary rock bend and not be broken?  How about 100 miles of hundreds of rock layers?  It certainly takes more faith to believe that wild story than that of Genesis Flood account.  Massive sediment deposition is all across the American Southwest.  The mountains being raised out of the flood waters caused the still soft layers to bend and massive amounts of water sheeting off the continent scoured the landscape clean.

Like a lot of places in Utah, Capitol Reef was first settled by Mormon pioneers, in the 1880s.  The Fruita District, as it is called now, was the main area of settlement.  The settlers planted orchards, gardens, raised livestock, and carved a simple yet satisfying existence out of the desert oasis along the Fremont River.

We set up our camp in Fruita and then went to go check out one of the apple orchards first.  We were worried most of the apples would be picked already, but that worry was misplaced.  There were plenty to go around.  

While Emily, Amber, and I filled bags Addie had fun scrounging apples from the ground.  

After finishing up loading up on apples we still had some time before evening, so we decided to drive the scenic road through the Northern part of the park.

When we got to the end of the pavement we decided to drive down the Capitol Gorge Road and see if we could find parking.  After the seemingly long drive and the beautiful scenery we reached the trailhead and did get lucky with a parking spot.

Capitol Gorge used to be the only easily traveled path through the Waterpocket Fold, until the 1860s when UT route 24 was constructed.  Mormon pioneers used this route heavily to travel through the area, and plenty of them left lots of evidence on the canyon walls.  You can also still see metal poles hammered into the canyon walls that were used to hold telephone wires in the early 20th century.

By the time we hiked back out of Capitol Gorge, we were hungry and tired.  We headed back to camp and made a taco dinner.  But the real treat was our pie from the Gifford House.  We all ended up getting the last mixed berry pies that they were selling.  We enjoyed the treat and then settled in for the evening to prepare for the next day which would be our full day at Capitol Reef.

(Post Pie Selfie)