[This is the second installment of a travelogue from our recent trip to national parks and one state park in Utah and Colorado. More installments will follow. You can find the first installment here.]
If I had any regrets about our recent trip, it would be that we did not plan enough time to enjoy this next segment of our journey. We traveled Utah’s Scenic Byway 12 from Bryce Canyon National Park to Capitol Reef National Park on our way to Moab, Utah. I had heard that the Byway was one of the most beautiful roads in the country, and after driving it, I would concur.
With an altitude ranging from 5,223 feet to 9,636 feet above sea level, the Byway passes 124 miles through a diverse, remote, and rugged landscape. Soon after leaving Bryce, we were climbing up, up, up through a canyon. We didn’t pull over while we were in the canyon, but we did so soon thereafter to embrace this view of Powell Point (elevation 10,188 feet) at the Blues Overlook. Powell Point is named for John Wesley Powell, who led expeditions to map this area in the 1880s.
Back on the road, we passed through the town of Escalante before hitting “the Hogsback.” The Hogsback is a stretch of road known for its hairpin curves that drop off drastically into deep canyons 800 to 1,000 feet below. It’s a beautiful stretch of road, but one where you keep both hands on the wheel and your attention on the road in front of you. As we got to the end of the Hogsback, we stopped at the Head of the Rocks Overlook. From the overlook, slickrock stretches as far as the eye can see.
Shortly after getting underway again, we stopped at the Kiva Koffeehouse, a unique structure built into the side of the Escalante River Canyon. You park on the roof of the Koffeehouse and walk down a set of stairs …
to a semi-circular dining room …
with a spectacular view of the canyon.
After passing through the Hogsback, Scenic Route 12 eventually begins to climb Boulder Mountain. The scenery changes from canyons to Aspen an pine groves. The road reaches the Larb Hollow Overlook at 9,200 feet. At the Overlook, we could see the Waterpocket Fold, a 100 mile-long fold in the earth’s crust where the earth has been pushed up. In this photograph, you see the fold running along the base of the mountains in the background.
The Waterpocket Fold is the unique feature of our next stop, Capitol Reef National Park. From the overlook, the road descends back to the desert and ends at the park, near Torrey, Utah.
President Franklin Roosevelt designated Capitol Reef a national monument in 1937. In 1971, President Richard Nixon signed the legislation that made it a national park.
With its high cliffs and red rock, Capitol Reef is stunningly beautiful.
The Waterpocket Fold reveals layers in geologic time.
The area that encompasses Capitol Reef was home to nomadic people for thousands of years. From 300 CE to 1300 CE, the area was home to the Fremont Culture. They were indigenous farmers who settled along the Fremont River and grew corn, beans, and squash. They left behind petroglyphs and pictographs.
In the 1870s, Mormon pioneers settled along the Fremont River in an area of Capitol Reef they called Fruita. In 1880, Nels Johnson moved into Fruita and planted the first orchards. Orchards of apples, apricots, cherries, peaches, pears, and plums provided food and income to residents of the Fremont River Valley into the 1960s. When the national park was established, the Park Service began managing the orchards, which remain productive to this day.
We picked apples in one of the orchards and had a picnic lunch in Fruita before heading on our way to Moab, Utah.
If I were to do it again, I would have planned more time to spend on the Scenic Byway and at Capitol Reef National Park. Both deserved more attention than we could pay them as we passed through on our way from Bryce to Moab.
