More Capitol Reef

We are enjoying the hiking here at Capitol Reef National Park, but it is also a beautiful place just to drive through. There are grand views around every corner along Highway 24, as well as the paved portion of "The Scenic Drive."

But the views get even better when the road turns to dirt and those grand canyon walls get up-close and personal.

The road is narrow with lots of blind turns, but Denisa jumped out to take this picture of the canyon walls rising so tall around us.

Those walls get even more up-close when we parked the car at the end of the road and took off on the Capitol Gorge Trail. We are missing the blue skies we enjoyed for our first two days, and we have chances of rain all day now.

The mile-long hike through the gorge has points of interest along the way, including a collection of Native American petroglyphs,

and signatures of early settlers carved into the rock walls. Some of the signatures are too recent to be historic. But in the center of the picture are five names carved high on the wall with a date of 1911.

Our cloudy skies have that rounded menacing look of hail clouds, and we're not sure if a narrow wash down a dirt road is the best place to be on a rainy day. But aside from a few sprinkles, we stayed dry.

At the end of the one-mile hike, the trail turns dramatically up as we went on the optional hike to "the tanks." In this desert environment, there are a few pockets of water that remain throughout the year.

Most people stop when the tanks and their steep walls make it impossible to walk around them. A very small minority will find a way to get by without getting their feet wet.

Denisa took a picture of that minority down the trail where few go. There was a natural arch in the foreground, showing where the water runs during an infrequent rain.

Denisa also took a picture of that same tiny minority that use those interesting holes in the canyon as a climbing wall.

Denisa, on the other hand, walks down the middle of this narrow canyon like a normal person.

There is another, longer trail, that starts at this same trail head. We didn't think that the weather would allow us to take on this four-mile trail. But the clouds are breaking up, as we caught our first glimpse of our destination--the golden throne.

We had actually been hiking for about an hour before we caught that first glimpse of that tall monolith with that unique gold color. It was a rather frustrating hike, as we hiked along three different canyon cliffs before we finally approached the throne from the back side for this picture.

The majority of people would assume that this was the end of the hike, and would return back to their cars. But Denisa had read that there is a sign that reads "Trail Ends Here" and we didn't see it anywhere. She also isn't hiking with the majority of people, and Mark wanted to bushwhack through the brush just to make sure that we had made it to the end. We did find some interesting tanks with a natural waterslide that Mark climbed into.

We also found sizable kitty cat prints in the sand that were evidence that a mountain lion also roamed this remote area.

After 3/4 of a mile, we climbed to this ridge. We were confused to find not one, but three different golden mountain tops. Which one was "The Golden Throne?"

Taken from a different angle, could it be that the one on the left was the throne footstool, while the other two were the throne seat and throne back?

Mark loves these off-trail scrambles. He mused that perhaps we were hiking where no one had ever hiked before. Denisa thought that there had been one other guy that climbed over these boulders and through sandy stream beds to get here--but he obviously wasn't married (for obvious reasons). After we clambered back to the trail, we retraced our steps and actually found the magic sign that would have made this a much shorter hike.

Then it was time to turn our hiking boots back around those three cliff faces to the car. We need one of those arrows to point out Denisa, standing on the dark red cliff face in the middle of the picture. Her dark red blouse makes the "finding Denisa" game harder today.

We thought the day was going to be a rain out, so we were glad to get to explore another area of Capitol Reef National Park. To make the day even better, we started and ended it in one of the park's orchards. We are finding our favorite trees with the best tasting apples. We are beginning to feel like locals as we wander here among more of God's wonders.