ANOTHER DESOLATION DESTINATION

Waterpocket Fold

When forces built the Colorado Plateau 65 million years ago, they created a geologic monocline (translation: a wrinkle on the earth’s surface.)  Now this is not just any small wrinkle but a hundred mile folded bulge in south central Utah, known as the Waterpocket Fold.  This warp in the earth’s crust is the reason for the Capitol Reef National Park.  There are three distinct areas of this park with varying degrees of difficulty to explore.

Near the visitor center, along highway 24 is the Fruita section. This is the civilized part, with paved roads and maintained trails where the average visitor stops for 1-2 hours before heading to Arches, Bryce Canyon or the Grand Canyon.  95% of Capital Reef Visitors see only this section of the park. Despite the human presence, wildlife flourishes here.  In addition to the usual collection of squirrels and chipmunks, lizards and snakes: Deer and wild turkeys regularly cruise through the orchards and the campground. Ringtail raccoons are spotted at night, stealthy black bears leave signs but are rarely seen and mountain lion’s have been filmed stalking deer in the orchards and strolling along the canyon rim.   

The Hunt

Alien Invasion?

Civilization is nothing new to this protected section of the Fremont River. Archaic hunters and gatherers began migrating through the area around some 10,0000 years ago.   About 2,000 years ago the Fremont Culture settled here for around 1,000 years and left significant petroglyphs and pictographs.  In the 1800’s Mormon pioneers gave the area its name, built homesteads and planted orchards.  The buildings of the Gifford Homestead (the last residents of Fruita) are still standing and give a glimpse into pioneer life. The Gifford House is used as an outlet to sell pioneer arts and crafts, locally baked pies, bread and cinnamon rolls and homemade ice cream.  (All very tasty BTW!) The orchards are still maintained by the park service.  Visitors can pick all the ripe fruit you can eat in the orchards or pay a dollar per pound to take some home. For us, apricots are in season – Yea! Apricot crepes for breakfast Woo Hoo!

The park campground is located in Fruita.  There are no reservations here. Its first come/first serve for dry camping with limited generator hrs. (No problem we have solar.) There are public restrooms but no showers. (Not something we need.) No cell service (a nice break) Wi FI is available 8 miles away at the visitor center in Torrey for when we need that WWW fix.  There’s a dump station and potable water and lots of shade. (Which is very important when temps are hitting upwards of 100 degrees.)  We arrive early in the day, early in the week and score a great shady spot on the end. This spot is so nice, that we decide to stay the fourteen maximum days allowed.  (Our golden geezer discount of $10 a day also weighs in on this decision LOL)

Fruita

There are a number of trailheads near the campground. The Cohab Canyon Trail starts with a series of switchbacks that get us up about 400 ft to the canyon.  Here we explore hidden canyons and climb higher to the Spur Trail View Points for vistas of the Fruita Cliffs and the valley below.  The Fremont River Trail is an easy stroll along the river and then a 480 ft climb for more panorama views. The visitor center trail winds along Scenic Drive from the campground to the Visitor Center.  This trail is also bike friendly, so we ride here instead of walking.  Just up Hwy 24 from the visitor center is the Fremont Petroglyph Panels with a wooden boardwalk, informational displays and mounted binoculars to view the panels.

The only paved road in the park is Scenic Drive.  It winds 25 miles from the visitor center, past the homestead orchards, red rock monuments, tilting rocks, pocketed and rippled sandstone, washes and slick rock.  This is the number one attraction here.

Sandstone Ramp

Headquarters Slot

The next most accessible section of the park is the Waterpocket District in the southern portion of the park.  This is for the five-per centers looking for ambitious day hikes, canyoneering and backpacking.  Notom-Bullfrog Road runs along the east side of the Waterpocket fold for 34 miles from Hwy 24 to Burr Trail.  The first 11 miles are paved.  In good weather the road is passable for passenger cars.  After rain, washes that cross the road make for slick and sometimes impassible driving.  We drive this road multiple times during our stay in Escalante and while here and every time it’s a different experience, (One time after a heavy rain it’s totally impassable at the last wash before the Burr Trail intersection.)  Along this road are the unmaintained and rugged (but well trodden) trails.  We hike Headquarters Canyon, which is considered the area’s best hike.  It’s 3 ½ miles across the Waterpocket Fold and up into the canyon with a sandy wash, colorful rock formations, a good slot section a 35-40 degree sandstone ramp up to a 6 foot dry fall.  We stop here for a snack and decide to turn around rather than climbing up only to walk a few minutes more to the 70 ft dry fall at the canyon end. 

The third section of Capital Reef is Cathedral Valley to the north.  Less than 1% of park visitors venture here.  The primary deterrent is accessibility.  With no signs of pavement and only a ghost of grading, it takes good weather, high clearance 4wd, and patience to complete the 59-mile Cathedral Valley Loop Drive. Before starting this drive, we stop at the visitor center to check road conditions.  The Ranger hands us a half sheet with directions to make the Fremont River crossing. 

Eleven plus miles from the visitor center we turn off on Hartnet Rd.  A short drive and we splash into the Fremont River.  Here the river becomes the road for about 400 ft then the road exits to the left.  We stop and explore along the way. Pictures tell the story:

An abandoned truck at a cattle water tank

ant hills in the desert surrounded
 by rings of wildflowers
Martha Stewart  Ants?

Bentonite hills

Heart Stopping...

Overlooks

A Glass Mountain and Red Rock

Monoliths:  R-L Glass Mountain, 

Temple of the Moon, Temple of the Sun 

and a gypsum sinkhole.

The journey also takes us across a zillion washes: dry, damp and wet.

Wilderness Dave

Eight miles from the park is Torrey Utah.  In addition to the free Wi Fi at the visitor center, fuel is reasonably priced and the Chuckwagon is a good spot to pick up essentials like beer, margarita mix, a deli lunch and do our laundry.

Goblets of goodness YUM!

For a more upscale meal, it’s Café Diablo.  They have an impressive Tequila offering and a menu of specialty Margaritas.  While perusing the menu we sip top shelf blood orange margaritas.   We decide to split two entrees:  The Steak & Green Chile Lettuce Rolls: Garden greens, roasted corn, crisp tortilla chips, green chile dressing and cumin cheddar cheese rolled in Romaine lettuce leaves topped with a perfect fillet of beef and the Shrimp & Crab Stack: layers of shrimp, crab, horseradish remoulade, mangos, tomatoes, avocado, red pepper and arugula. Both dishes were light, bright and balanced.  The combination of these two dishes is our interpretation of surf and turf.  

The closest town to forage for groceries is Loa, 17 miles past Torrey.  Royal Market is well stocked with reasonable prices. Fuel is a bit cheaper here.

The Escalante-Grand Staircase and Capitol Reef are some of the most desolated spots in the US.  We have just scratched the surface here.  But July & August are not the months to explore the desert. Daytime temps are hovering around the 100 mark, and the monsoon season has started early so it’s off to Colorado to get high… altitude.

ROCKS, HOLES, HILLS AND HOLLOWS…

Soft-Serve Hoodoos

The Drive from Zion to the town of Escalante is pretty spectacular.  Our base camp here is the Shooting Star V Resort/Drive-in/Airstream Motel.  We read about this place during the incubation period of our nomad lifestyle and now after almost four years the stars have finally hit the bulls eye.  The original developer dreamed of an Airstream only RV Park with an Airstream Motel renting vintage trailers decorated as luxury movie star on-set trailers and a drive-in movie theatre screening classic films nightly with classic car seating.   He built it but they didn’t come.  In 2014 the park was sold to the current owners.

Our host Troy is super friendly and has lots of information about the area. With only word of mouth advertising, the Airstream Motel is fully booked the ten days we’re here.  In fact they just purchased another vintage trailer and plan to add an Elvis Airstream to the collection.  Movie night is now only Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.  You can rent a classic car to sit in or just bring a lawn chair.  Of course the snack bar is in a renovated Airstream. The movie is free and snacks are really reasonable.  The Airstream only RV Park didn’t work out, so it is open to all classes of trailers, RVs and tent camping.  We get a spot nestled between two movie star Airstreams with stunning views.  It’s a great quiet location outside of town.

Just down the road toward the town of Escalante, is the Escalante Interagency Visitor Center.  Here we get maps and check road conditions.  The BLM Ranger is pretty clear that when we venture out onto the unpaved roads of the region, we are on our own, self-rescue is expected, and we need to travel prepared and with plenty of water.  He won’t tell us where to go, but he’ll gladly answer any questions and give us a map or handout if we ask for it… OK… this is our first time here…. And… Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument (GSENM) spans nearly 2 million acres… and…  it was the last place in the continental United States to be mapped… “Umm… How about hiking trails?”  With a big smile he hands us a map and list of eleven hikes and two scenic drives. A beginner’s guide to the GSENM Perfect!

Undaunted
The Descent!

We also stop at the Hole in The Rock Escalante HeritageCenter and learn about the Mormon pioneer project to forge a short cut through Escalante to the isolated San Juan region in southeastern Utah. 236 folks dragged all of their personal belongings in wagons across the mesa and camped in the desert for six weeks. The men blasted a notch in the cliff a few miles away and built a trail a mile long with a 25 to 45 percent grade, down to the Colorado River.  One of the pioneers described the area:  “It’s nothing in the world, but rocks and holes and hills and hollows.”  The same description applies today.  The hole and the steep trail are still there, accessible from the top at the end of Hole in the Rock Road, (55 miles of unpaved 2wd high clearance road – last 5 miles 4wd) or from below by boat from Lake Powell.

There is so much to see and do along the 55 mile, unpaved 2wd high clearance (last 5 miles 4wd) Holein the Rock Road that we have to make multiple trips to see only a fraction of the attractions.

Dry Fork Gulch

Our first foray takes us 26 miles out to a turnoff onto a narrow, muddy, with deep ruts and high banks, dirt road that gets us to the Dry Fork Narrows Trailhead.  A family in a Range Rover and a group in a small Honda follow us in.  After we all park, the woman from the Rover looks at us, then to the Honda, points to her car and says, “Why did I pay $90k for this?”  We all laugh and head to the trail.  It’s all down hill to the Dry Fork Drainage.  It rained the day before and the canyons are wet and muddy.  We hike up Dry Fork Gulch until the mud threatens to pull our boots off.  We hear that Peek-a Boo Gulch has a forty-foot mud pit, which doesn’t sound too appealing.   On the hike back up to the trailhead we decide to see how far we can get out Hole in the Rock Road. 

Dance Hall Rock

The scenery is stunning and the going is slow.  (Lots of rocks, ruts, mud, washboard, and washes and of course stops to take photos.)  At the Dance Hall Rock, we get out and explore the area.  We get five miles from the end of the road, this part is 4wd and the going is slow.  We estimate at least another 45min to an hour to get to the hole in the rock, which will add 1.5-2 hrs. to this trip.  It’s getting late and the sun will definitely set before we get back to camp.  We reluctantly turn around. 

The sun is going down when we get back into town.  We stop at The Escalante Outfitters for Pizza and Brews.  A couple of Polygamy Porters each (You can’t have just one,) a farmer’s Market Veggie Salad, (spinach, red onion, goat cheese, and slow roasted tomatoes with house raspberry vinaigrette) and a tasty King’s Mesa Pizza, (grilled chicken, ham, peperoni, smoked apple wood bacon & local Italian sausage) finish off our long day of driving and hiking. 

Arch

Another day and its 13 miles out Hole in the Rock Road is the Devil’s Garden.  This is a great area for hiking around hoodoos and under arches.

Dino-Hwy

Just past The Devil’s Garden we turn off on Collet Top Road and go 2.6 miles. Destination: the Twenty-mile Wash Dinosaur Mega-trackway.  We hike around the area and check out the slick rock.  There are over 800 dino footprints, so many overlapping that the individual prints are hard to distinguish.

However, Hole in the Rock Road is just one of many scenic drives.  Actually, just about every road, paved and unpaved, in this area is a scenic byway.

View from Kiva Koffee

The All American Highway 12 runs from Bryce Canyon to Capitol Reef National Park. Some of the most spectacular views are between the towns of Escalante and Boulder, especially over the narrow Hogback, where both sides of the road have steep drop-offs.  A little gem along this road is the Kiva Koffee House.  Away from everything this is a great place to stop for breakfast or lunch, or an espresso or mocha chai and amazing views.

Lower Calf Creek Falls

Trailheads off Hwy 12 lead to some amazing sites.  Best experience: Removing our boots and soaking our feet at the base of Lower Calf Creek Falls after a 1.5 mile uphill trek in 95 degree weather is heaven. A picnic lunch and a nap on the beach and then the downhill trek back to the parking lot.

Box-Death Hollow

Hell’s Backbone Road is another unpaved byway.  It runs from Highway 12 in the town of Escalante up Boulder Mountain (9,000 ft) and back to Hwy 12 in Boulder.  Mid-point is the turnoff to Posey Lake.  At 8,800 ft this is a great place to beat the heat.  The road also passes through Box-Death Hollow where the Hell’s Backbone Bridge spans 109 feet over a 1,500-foot drop on both sides of the narrow one lane bridge.  The 38 mile road is narrow, winding and not for the faint of heart or those with acrophobia.

One of many views from Burr Trail

Switchback to
Waterpocket Fold

Lake Powell

The Burr Trail connects the town of Boulder with the Capitol Reef National Park. Along the way:  sandstone sand dunes, towering red cliffs, golden narrow canyons, a slot canyon, arches, washes, and creek crossings.   The road is paved for the first 31 miles until we reach the national park where it becomes gravel, after about 4 miles we reach the top of the mile of switchbacks that descend into the Waterpocket Fold. At the bottom of the switchback, the Road tees south toward the town of Bullfrog on Lake Powell, north heads up to the Capitol Reef National Park.  We venture in both directions over a couple of days.  Lots of hiking trails and stunning scenery point us to our next destination:  Capitol Reef National Park.