Add Capitol Reef National Park to the list of others I had never heard of before visiting. Another park that I enjoyed visiting immensely. Another Utah park with impressive rock formations.
After the visitor center on the scenic drive, there are fruit orchards, remnants of the Mormon Pioneer Community of Fruita. Visitors can pay to pick heirloom varieties of apples, apricots, peaches, and pears in season. The orchards were planted in the 1880s for food and income.
I’m beginning to think I didn’t take any color photos here. I guess we’ll see as the blog progresses.
The park’s scenic road was lined with grand sights.
There were also two dirt roads leading into canyons: Grand Wash and Capitol Gorge.
Apparently, my camera had decided to only take black-and-white photos of the beautiful rocks. There were some beautiful colors. Must have been channeling Ansel Adams that day.
I normally don’t share a picture of the information sign at a site. But I wanted to let you read this one instead of me condensing and paraphrasing it.
The park inherited this old mine when it expanded. There is a sign that no camping is allowed there. In the bottom right-hand corner, you may be able to see two mine entrances with gates over them.
There was a third dirt road called Pleasant Creek Rd. that we decided to take with no idea what we’d see or where it would end up. We love to explore the path less taken because we came upon this wonderful surprise.
A ghost ranch!
And a creek!
We could have continued across the creek, but I was done with driving on dirt roads for a while, and we had no idea how long it was. I was more than satisfied with what we had already seen.
I found some color photos from our day at Capitol Reef NP!
And a cool tree photo
And finally, the petroglyph part of this post. The largest petroglyph panels in the park can be seen from a hiking trail that we couldn’t take with Poppy. However, some smaller ones were located on the way out of the park.
Once again, the camera only took the pictures in monochrome. They were hard enough to see in person. I hope you can make them out here.
These petroglyphs were all small and high up on the wall. I can’t imagine how they were created before the invention of ladders or scaffolding.
And one more historic site on the way out of the park. Elijah Behunin and his family of 15 lived in this small sandstone cabin in 1883. From what I read, the older children slept outside. Flash flooding washed away their apple trees, so they moved.
We very much enjoyed visiting Capitol Reef National Park, in color and monochrome.
WanderLyd 