Capitol Reef

 

I have never been to this part of Utah before, and found the area magical and quite colorful.  Torrey is a very small town out in the boonies at an elevation of about 6800’.  It is about 8 miles from Capitol Reef.  I had my best night’s sleep there, mainly because it was the coolest place on the trip and I could sleep with the window open and not have to use the noisy air conditioning.  The photo above is one that I took outside the park visitor center. It is of the "Capitol", as is the second photo below.  Because we drove past all of the fantastic scenery via the bus without the chance to take photos, I snagged some off of the internet so that you could see how beautiful this area is.

Our hike of the day was on the Grand Wash Trail.  And grand it was! 

After lunch at the visitor center,  we stopped at an area that was full of rock art  from the Fremont culture.  I've enhanced the photos, but you will also need to look closely to see the finely carved figures.

Because of the heavy monsoon rains that southern Utah experienced this year, this field east of Torrey was looking pretty good.

Here is one of the old historical buildings in town.

Bryce

After spending the night at the delightful Ruby’s Inn in Bryce City, we set out to explore the park.  Upon stopping at our first overlook, our guides Darrell and Paula, in addition to our bus driver Tam treated us to a geology lecture by portraying 3 of the original explorers of the area.

Here are some of the eye popping vistas that we were treated to before embarking on our hike.

The hike of the day involved going down a fairly steep trail called “Wall Street”.  Aptly named.  As you can see, we used a series of switchbacks to descend into a deep chasm. 

At the bottom are several Douglas Fir trees that have grown very tall and skinny with the foliage only at the top where the trees poke out into the sunshine.

Meandering around a bit at the bottom of the trail before starting the climb back up.

This is the Navajo trail, with the corresponding switchbacks!

The last bit of this trail is out in the open. 

The trail goes right past Thor’s Hammer, which is featured in a lot of the advertising of the park.

Upon leaving the park, we were on to our next stop in Escalante, where we had a great lunch at the Wild West Retreat and a tour of this historic town.  Then on to Boulder and the Anasazi State Park.

The vistas as we drove over Boulder Mountain were quite different from what we had seen so far.  The high point of the mountain is over 11,000’, but I am not sure if were near that peak.  Here is a video with Darrell’s voice in the background. You can tell that it was very windy up there, too.

We spent the next 2 nights in Torrey at the Red Sands hotel. 

Zion

 

On the third day of the trip, we left St George to drive over to Zion National Park.  We spent most of the day there, hiking first the River Walk trail along the Virgin river to where the “Narrows “ starts, and then hiking to the Lower Emerald Pool before lunch.  The Narrows is where people can wade up the river.  Here is a link that describes the hike. On our way to and from the River Walk trailhead, we were able to see at least 4 California Condors circling above the cliffs.  I had been to Zion several times, and this was my first time to see the condors. 

The walk along the river was lovely.  We stopped where the trail ran out and people were wading into the river to continue hiking.

Upon finishing that hike, the bus took us back to the Zion Lodge to take a break before hiking to the Lower Emerald Pool.  Shortly after getting there, an ambulance and park police car with sirens wailing drove past our location on the way to where we had just left the end of the River Walk Trail.  We found out later that some small boulders had dislodged from the upper cliffs above the start of the Narrows, and one of the boulders had struck a female hiker.  Her injuries were not life threatening, but I would assume severe enough.  At Zion, there are frequent rock falls that can happen at any time. 

The Lower Emerald Pool Trail was next.  Lovely! 

Here is the actual Lower Emerald Pool.

Water is constantly running off of the rocks above into the pool below.  Check out the rainbow at the bottom of these rocks.

On the way back down the trail to the Zion Lodge, we saw a very nice lizard, and then a deer browsing at the side of the trail.

We had box lunches that we ate while sitting on the lawn in front of the Zion Lodge.

When we were finished, we proceeded through the tunnel to the east side of the park, and on to Ruby’s Inn and Bryce National Park.