Capitol Reef National Park is a waterfold created when the Pacific Plate Past over the Atlantic Plate. Then one side went up and the other went down.  Don't ask me any more because I never took Earth Science when I was in  high school. It was called Capitol Reef  Because the first European men to discover it had nautical backgrounds and any barrier was called a reef. The Capitol part comes from the dome shaped formations which reminded them of the Capitol in Washington D.C.

Debby thought that they could have easily called it by another name but I guess Milton hadn't started making his chocolates yet and if he did he didn't have a lobbyist with the people who named it.

While there we walked in a dry wash. Good thing there was no water because we couldn't climb the cliffs to get out of the way.

Interesting thing about this dry wash hiking trail. There are two approaches, one is to drive down the paved road, which we did when we hiked and the other way is to drive on a dirt  road which is off the Park's Scenic Road. We drove to that end also but didn't hike from that end. When we hiked the Wash and arrived at the end we were surprised by the facilities.


One wonders why they need Braille in this location and then set up the rest room so that a blind person or one in a wheelchair would have difficulty getting in.


Notice the lip


That's the road in. I am not picking on the handicapped but somebody who is blind or in a wheel chair would need help getting to this spot and that helping person would presumably know how to read but then again our Government works in mysterious ways.

The park also had petroglyphs supposedly drawn by the Fremont people who were around about the time of the Anazasi (Ancient Puebloins)
Anybody remember Eric Von Danikan. (For the youngsters reading this -he was a researcher in the 50's or 60's who believed that we had been visited by aliens from outer space. Some of his evidence was similar to these petroglyphs. One tourist who was viewing these at the same time claimed that they have similar petroglyphs in  Australia)


Notice the guy with the glass like globe for a head.

The Capitol Reef  Visitors Center is located in what used to be a Mormon Settlement called Fruita.

Home | The Big Trip