Our New Favorite Hike?!? to Navajo Knobs

When we get to a new national park, our first stop is at the visitor center to get information on hikes. We find the signature trail of the park, and put it first on our list of things to do while we are visiting. That hike here at Capitol Reef is Navajo Knobs. So we were on that trail by 9:30, enjoying the wispy white clouds in the royal blue sky. It was interesting that the first section of the trail show-cased the tall white rock faces around us. Mark is at the bottom center of the picture, ready for a long day on the trail.

Among that sea of white rock, we could look down to see Hickman's Bridge, the natural bridge we had hiked to the day before.

After an hour of hiking steadily uphill, we had entered into the red rock zone. Mark is standing on the edge of the cliff, looking down at the tiny visitor center along the highway below.

From that edge we could also look down on the rows of fruit trees in the orchards that we are certainly enjoying. We can also look down on the tiny cars on the highway, and other roads snaking up the canyons.

For some reason, Mark likes to set Denisa on the edge of these cliffs, then take pictures to prove what a precarious place she is perched.

But very often he sits down on a very precarious place himself. This felt like a very nice bench, with a solid place to rest his feet.

But when Denisa hiked down the lip of the cliff, she saw the bigger picture. The rock Mark was resting his feet upon was just a tear drop boulder that is ready to fall off that steep edge at any moment.

Another hour brought us to another rock cliff, but the view below has changed. Now we are looking down on one of the signature rock formations of the park--Castle Rock.

The picture below is of the same Castle Rock. We have driven by this beautiful sandstone formation several times. It's funny how everything looks so much bigger when we are looking up at it from the highway, rather than down on it from the cliffs.

Another panorama shot picture helps to show the enormous beauty of this hike. Denisa is a tiny pin point on the cliff towards the right side of the photo. We can barely see our destination--Navajo Knobs--on top of that same cliff line about a mile away.

The trail wound its way along the ledge of the cliffs, giving us great views the entire way. You can see Denisa in her bright turquoise blouse near the right side of the picture, looking out over some of God's wonders today!

It's just impossible to try to capture how big and beautiful this hike was--but that didn't keep us from trying. Denisa walked ahead on the trail, so Mark could take a picture of her from the distance to give some size perspective. The only problem is that she's too small to even be seen among these huge cliffs. So we have marked her position with an over-sized red arrow.

Here's blurry proof that she's in the picture above, feeling very small among all this grandeur.

Sometimes she found things more her size, like these red mushroomed-shaped rocks that suddenly appeared for part of the hike.

Our destination for the day is Navajo Knobs, and we really didn't even know what they looked like. But after almost 3 hours and 4.7 miles of hiking, we can see them in the distance. Again, we have a red arrow pointing to the top of one of the knobs. If you look very carefully, you can see that someone has beat us to the top and is standing on the knob. (That's the tiny black dot under the arrow.)

Our timing was perfect, as those hikers were just coming down as we were heading up. That means we had the knobs and this glorious view all to ourselves.

It's quite a scramble up the rocks to this perch at the top. You might notice that Denisa is sitting at the top, while Mark is jumping to other high rocks to take these pictures.

Mark is fearless, and he is quite comfortable standing on that narrow pinnacle for his picture.

We ate our picnic lunch while we enjoyed the beautiful views around us. There is no better view from any fancy restaurant in this world!

As we climbed down from Navajo Knob, we had the long hike back. That's when Mark got the idea that he wanted to see if we could bushwhack our way off the trail to another edge of the cliff. It took some scrambling up and down boulders and through the thorny thickets that grow between those islands of rock. This is taking that "whither thou goest I will go" pledge to the limit!

After several dead ends, we finally made it to the cliff edge. Once again, Mark has Denisa standing at the edge with a drop-off straight down to the ground.

But from here we could see the backyard of Castle Rock, and all the beautiful scenery of its kingdom.

It was even tougher bushwhacking through the brambles to find the trail again. Then Denisa convinced Mark that if we were going to have enough energy to make it back to the car, we had to stay on the trail! We tried once again to take pictures of our surroundings. Can you find Denisa's bright turquoise blouse in the picture below?

We didn't take many pictures on the return hike, and the good news is it was mostly downhill. One last picture of one of those giant views off the cliffs as we declared this one of our favorite hikes ever!

We got back to the car around 4:00--just 6.5 hours and 10+ miles after we started. We had just enough energy for one more stop--the orchards at the foot of the cliffs. You can see Mark with his handy apple-picker in hand at the bottom of the picture.

There are ladders in the orchards, needed now since most of the easy-to-reach fruit has already been picked. We ate several apples to give us some energy for the 8 mile ride back to the motor home.

It's fun to drive down the highway with those tall red mountains outside our car window and imagine what the view might be from the top. Navajo Knobs is so high, we can't even see it from the bottom.  This evening we know that view, and that has made it one of our new favorite hikes.