’25 May: National Parks UT and CO

There seems to be an internet consensus, Capitol Reef National Park is a Fabulous and under-appreciated National Park. The landscape is breathtaking and the crowds are light and tame. Of the five National Parks in Utah we will also visit Canonlands and Arches but we’re skipping Zion and Bryce because, wonderful as they are, I’ve already seen them a few times.

Notice the shape of Capitol Reef. The reason is because it follows the approximately 100 mile long Waterpocket Fold. From NASA Earth Observatory: “Between 75 million and 35 million years ago, the tectonic forces that uplifted the Rocky Mountains also buckled older rocks below Capitol Reef. The rock layers above did not break, but bent, like a tablecloth draped over a table edge. The bend in this drape forms the Waterpocket Fold.”

After stopping at the Visitor’s Center we went to find the boardwalk that took us along the river and to the scene of a Petroglyph Panel.

from Visit Utah: “Fremont and Ancestral Puebloan people lived here between 600-1300 A.D., and their markings tell what appears to be their stories, hunting patterns, crop cycles, and mythologies of their lives.”

It’s all about that Waterpocket Fold, and the other natural forces at play including water and wind.

From the Ranger talk we learned many things, many more things than we will remember. She told us about several of the 19 layers that make up the geologic history here and how only in Capitol Reef can geologists easily study all of them because of the Fold.

I have no pictures from yesterday when we flew to Salt Lake City, rented a car, and drove out to where we’re staying at the Capitol Reef Resort. We ate lunch on the road and dinner at the Resort restaurant which was quite ok. Today we ate snacks for breakfast, lunch at a down-home Mexican place, and leftovers for dinner. I have no pictures of food.

How did Capitol Reef National Park get its name? From the National Park Service website (oh sad/mad face, we are so going to miss the N.P.S., what with all this winning. N.P.S. FAQ for Capitol Reef.): “Early settlers noted that the white domes of Navajo Sandstone resemble the dome of the Capitol building in Washington, DC. Prospectors visiting the area (many with nautical backgrounds) referred to the Waterpocket Fold, an 87-mile long ridge in the earth’s crust, as a reef, since it was a formidable barrier to transportation.”

Chimney Rock (it was late and too dark..maybe Windy has a better one?)

The Castle

The Old Schoolhouse

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From the Visitors Center, the map shows the stretch of the Waterpocket Fold and beside it is a representation of the 19 layers of material deposited over the millennia.

Here are many of the layers described.

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Where we are staying. They have motel-style rooms, various sizes of cabins, tepees, and Calistoga Wagons.

We had a 2 bedroom cabin looking out onto the cliff face.

Here are the tepees and the wagons. The staff was busy getting them fitted out for the season as they’re closed from late Fall until early Summer.

Our chariot awaits. And we’re off to Moab to visit Arches and Canyonlands National Parks.

The drive from Capitol Reef to our accommodation, 25 minutes into the mountains outside Moab, was full of delights.

We drove Utah 25, to I-70, to US 191.

We had lunch at Duke’s Slickrock Grill in Hanksville, Utah. It was as cool as it sounds. Slow-roast bbq was their specialty and YUM it was.

Yes, I made them do it.

These formations looked like drip castles at the beach. There were gigantic ranges of them.

We rolled into a Rest Stop, maybe the only one we’d seen through the whole trip. It was an excellent Rest Stop.

At the Red Cliffs Lodge, our accommodation for the next three nights, standing on the patio of our cabin. That’s the Colorado River flowing by.

Facing in another direction.

Hi cutie, probably the American Robin.

We decided to walk to the restaurant for dinner. Yikes, it was far, so the property shuttle gave us a ride back to our cabin.

Sundown at the cabin.

Above and below, a view of the Green River from Island in the Sky in Canyonlands National Park.

From the website: “The Island in the Sky mesa rests on sheer sandstone cliffs over 1,000 feet above the surrounding terrain. Every overlook offers a different perspective on Canyonlands’ spectacular landscape. Island in the Sky is the easiest area of Canyonlands to visit in a short period of time, offering many pullouts with spectacular views along the paved scenic drive.”

Some desert flora.

We took the “hike” to Mesa Arch and No Falling being the Prime Directive, we stopped when we decided it was a little too steep and slippery for going down and then coming back up. Of course small children, and parents with babies on their backs, and other grandmas were doing just fine… You can see people there in the middle, standing under the arch.

We enjoyed a lively Ranger Talk on the topic of water in the desert.

And enjoyed the always welcome potty-stops of which there seemed to be a goodly number in good condition.

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We had a Big Date for tonight with Brandon of Moab Dark Sky Tours, our new best friend. So next we went to the market for some food – late lunch/early dinner, and then came home to attempt a nap before our 10pm (you read that right, 10PM) start time to meet Brandon at the Double Arch deep into Arches National Park, about an hour’s drive from our cabin.

We knew there was going to be a nearly full moon but every indication was that we should have a cloudless sky, which was not to be, but we had a fabulous time anyway!

I put the Milky Way into the arch to annoy Brandon.

I might have some more later but for the sake of moving on…

Our meet-up place.

Notice the people in the white circle.

A wider angle of the double arch that didn’t turn out so well for detail but that I like for composition.

We see the hand sign for OK. We saw things in everything!

From Windy, the most stars of the night.

Artsy-fartsy, right up my alley.

The plan was to visit Arches today during the day but .. you might remember the story of my uti .. and I was not significantly better. My oncologist and the PA have been telling me over and over, let us know if there is anything wrong, anything at all, especially potential infections. So I reached out to the PA and the advice was to go to an Urgent Care and get another test. We went to an Urgent Care at the Moab Regional Hospital in Moab.

I’ll skip the details except to say that the whole experience was MAGIC. It was Saturday, I was in Moab Utah, population 5,000-ish, and within two hours they had done the test, the Urgent Care doctor had talked to my on-call oncologist, reviewed my whole history, and together they decided what to do. It was AWESOME. And my sister the nurse was a great encouragement. Now let’s see how it turns out.

As everyone who knows me knows, I’ve become obsessed with finding out the cause of whatever is wrong with me, for every little thing because, you know, cancer!

Outside the Urgent Care. What a view.

Out with Windy = gently used clothing for sale! We both bought a pair of shorts.

We had lunch at the Moab Diner. We liked our food. Guess which one is mine…

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Heading out to the park, but wait! Roadside Attraction!

And then on to the Arches National Park Visitors Center followed by a few pictures Windy took, popping out of the car. I was pretty beat.

We left Utah late-morning on the 11th to drive to the Rathbone Hotel and Parlor Bar in Montrose, Colorado, near Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. It took most of the day because we stopped to eat, stopped for gas, and got distracted by a Roadside Attraction.

We’d been having hit and miss luck with food but we both thought these fried green tomatoes were fantastic.

Arriving in Montrose for the first of two nights. Photo below and text from the Rathbone website: “On October 19, 1909 the Montrose Free Press proudly reported that the fraternal organization and secret society Knights of Pythias (Cascade Lodge #33) had successfully completed their magnificent new KP Building” and after a long list of occupants and near runination, the Rathbone Hotel and Parlor Bar opened in 2024.

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On the morning of the 12th we visited Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. The Gunnison is the name of the river that is mostly responsible for this deep, steep canyon. So deep and steep that the walls often appear black, and hence the name.

Follow the fenced path out to the overlook…

…and looking up is the Visitors Center…

…and looking down in the canyon.

From earth.com, a nice aerial of the canyon.

I took a picture of a park potty in Utah and it seemed they were the same in all the Utah parks. Here’s our first Colorado park potty and I wonder if they are all the same?

His friends were gathered at the overlook.

It was very nice, a place to relax in the shade.

Late lunch on the way back to Montrose. Or was this breakfast on the way out? Windy liked the colors.

Did we pass this by? I’ll bet you can guess (we did not).

We had a very tasty dinner at Himalayan Pun Hill Kitchen Nepalese and Indian Food. That’s a mango lassi and the picture is for Lilly, a connoisseur of the mango lassi!

We left Montrose and the Black Canyon of the Gunnison on the 13th. Here’s breakfast on the way:

Crossing the Continental Divide.

And finding our way to Del Norte (population 1,413 in 2023) and another historic accommodation, the Windsor Hotel, opened in the 1870s, faced the wrecking ball in the 1990s, and saved by local benefactors who sponsored the renovation.

The manager of the hotel took us on an extended tour of all the upgrades, the artists represented, and many of the fittings that were restored to their original standing. Here are a couple pictures of pictures.

There is also a delightful riverfront walk along the Rio Grande del Norte. This area is called a high-altitude desert making the rivers and the vegetation that flourishes there stand out. We drove through a few hundred miles of the high-altitude desert landscape, flat flat and the roads were straight straight. The first picture and the following are from the river walk.

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The morning of the 14th we headed out to Great Sand Dunes National Park early because the winds were due and sand and wind are not a particularly comfortable combination. Here’s the first glimpse of the dune field.

The best of the explanation boards trying to answer everyone’s first question – how did this happen?

Notice the altitude. Windy was feeling it hard and since altitude sickness is bad for you, we decided to head down to some lower elevation activities.

So we went to this Nature Reserve and saw and heard a great many birds. It was lovely! I’ve been using my phone (pixel 8) for all my pictures now since 2024 but I do rue not having a decent camera when it comes to wildlife. One of the reasons I gave up on my camera was because, although it’s a very decent camera, it doesn’t do so well with wildlife either.

We spent many hours on the 15th and 16th enjoying a winter wonderland.

The drive from Del Norte was the longest leg of our trip, 4 1/2 hours if we went straight through so it took more like 6 hours.

We knew we were driving into some weather.

We got to watch it snow.

The lauded view from our balcony when we arrived.

How it looked FIVE MINUTES later.

And how it looked it the morning.

Yes! Moose! Dad is centered, behind the trees but you can make him out. The one in the foreground is either Mom or a juvenal.

Here’s Dad a little closer. This was exciting!

In 2020 there was a massive wildfire here called the East Troublesome Fire, the second-largest in the history of Colorado. The fire burned through large stands of lodgepole pine affected by bark beetles. Estimates of the proportion of trees killed by bark beetles in the area the fire made its unprecedented run through were as high as 70 to 90 percent.

Many of the buildings in the town were destroyed too and have been rebuilt in a Western Movie style.

These burned trees were crazy, how they bent.

This part of the Rocky Mountain National Park was mostly closed. There was one 10 mile road from the Visitors Center and then we had to turn around. Some hikes were open but were too rugged for us so we took it easy, wandered around the town a little, and enjoyed breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and an early night.

Our first stop was to check in at the historic Stanley Hotel.

We could choose between the History Tour and The Shining Tour. We picked History, but there was plenty of talk about The Shining too, and the guild told about many other movies and celebrity tales that featured The Stanley Hotel.

A lot of the tour was talking about the various ghosts that inhabit the building. Look, behind us, a vision (compliments of the guide).

The Whiskey Bar.

A recreation of the hedge-maze from The Shining.

SO many mirrors.

Our perfect trail!

The fast-running stream, half-way up the trail and as far as we went.

Nice, it even looks like running water.

Ahhh, the kindness of strangers.

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Back at our cabin, standing on the deck, listening to the run of the creek, beside our private and rather glorious hot tub, walked…

…this guy!

And living under the cabin, a sweet family of yellow-bellied marmots.

From Windy, she was faithful and persistent getting these pictures of the marmot family.

Tomorrow we’re going home after an amazing two weeks. Thank you sister for joining in and for all you did to make it beautiful❤️ Here’s to next time!