Trips of Utah: A showroom for the Walls!

Day 4 : Grand Staircase National Monument

Like I had mentioned in my previous post, Highway 12 is an All American road (scenic byway) and it passes through the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument.  My initial presumption about grand staircase was that it is a scenic point where you can actually ‘see a grand stair case’.  But later, I got to know that Grand staircase is the name of the region, primarily because of the 5 layers of cliffs in that region, which, when looked from the top (imaginary), might appear like a Grand staircase.

Anasazi Village pit house remains

This 3 million plus acre region is declared as a National Monument.  Hence, Highway 12 that passing through grand staircase boasts of covering 2 National Parks and 3 state parks and a National Monument, before it culminates at Capitol reef. 

The drive till Escalante was a typical high desert drive with barren lands all around. We passed by a crossroad to Kodachrome state park, and later bypassed Escalante Petrified forest state park.  The stretch from Escalante to Boulder included ‘the million dollar road' (nicknamed because of the effort spent to build this load) and an amazing stretch where we had cliffs on both sides of the road, overlooking a valley, and it appeared as if we were driving on a high-mounted bridge across the valley. At Boulder, we thought of taking a break from the drive and entered into Anasazi Village State park.

Day 4 Agenda

This is more of a historical museum of ruins belonging to ancestral pueblo habitation. The park has excavations of native house structures (they call it the Coombs site)  of the tribals, and a replica of Kayenta Masonry house and a pit structure house. The visitor center has an attached museum, which displays the excavation artifacts.  We spent an hour in this museum and later headed towards Capitol Reef. We spotted numerous deer on the way, and had to yield to some as well. It started pouring cats and dogs as we neared Capitol reef at around 5:20 PM and the road for next half an hour was blurry.

 Day 4 : Capitol Reef National Park

'The Castle' near the Capitol Reef Visitor Center 

Our plan was to be at Capitol Reef for sunset, but with thick clouds hovered around, there was no sign of sunlight for rest of the day, let alone sunset! With not much alternative due to pouring rain outside, we headed into the Visitor Center and took the 20 min movie on this National Park. This was our fifth National park of the trip, but till then, we hadn't taken a movie in any of the previous parks, even though every visitor center had one to offer!

Chimney Rock

To our luck, the rain had stopped when the movie completed and gave us a chance to explore some more for the day.We had collected our ‘Scenic drive’ map already, so we started the scenic drive at around 5:45 PM.  The 10 mile (one-way) scenic drive bisects the National park as it heads south. But the park area covered by this road is very less;  there are a lot of back-country dirt roads starting from this road, which further lead to ample trails and scenic beauty interior of the park.  

We first stopped at the Gifford Farmhouse, which is just a mile from the visitor center. The house was closing in next 10 mins at 6 PM for the visitors, so we first entered the farmhouse to have a glance into the antique furniture, cutlery, kitchen and the gift shop.  There were 4-5 horses in the stable just outside the farm house.  The park campsite is also very close to this historical marker. We headed further on the scenic route and the drizzle continued. 

The walls at Capitol Reef

The giant walls of the reef on both sides projected the chiseled rock sculptures hidden in them. We crossed through a rock formation called ‘Egyptian temple’, where the walls appeared like intricate decorated maroon pillars closely packed next to one another. The paved road ended a mile after that, and there were couple of unpaved roads leading further into Capitol gorge and pleasant creek. We parked in the empty parking lot, spent some time on the covered picnic tables with some snacks and turned around back on the scenic drive. 

Sunset at 'the sunset point' 

Once we reached the visitor center, we decided to head east on 24, to cover some more points in the park. We stopped near the Historic Fruita School House, a one room school that was once owned by the Mormon community that lived here.  Next point on the road, a little further ahead, was the Fremont Petroglyphs.  There are signboards that lead into the parking. Petroglyphs are the ancient drawings pecked into the canyon walls, by the Fremont tribal folk. There are a couple of binoculars kept on the boardwalk through which you can have a closer view of the drawings.  

Sunset lights on 'The Castle' - From sunset point

Next, we completed Capitol dome, a white rock structure, previously called Navajo dome resembling the US Capitol’s dome. The name 'Capitol Reef' has been derived because of the presence of such monolith domes, that resemble the US capitol. There was Hartman’s Bridge (again a Natural Rock bridge) , but we skipped it because of a mile’s hike needed to reach there. Our plan for the sunset was at the sunset point which was towards west on 24 , also our stay for that night was further west, at Bicknell.  So we turned around and headed back towards visitor center. With still an hour left for sunset, we stopped by couple of other points on our way to Panorama point. One of them was The Castle ( just across the Visitor Center). The three layered multicolored rock structure had already started to glow bright by the rays of evening sun. The rock perfectly resembled its name, it appeared like a fortress surrounding a hill, and a castle at the top of it!

Sunset at the reef

The next stop was Chimney rock, where a lone pillar like rock stood like a multi-storied building. The canyon walls behind, were equally attractive.

We headed to panorama point, an elevated area, from where miles of canyon walls are visible. We learnt from one of the boards that, the air at Capitol Reef is one of the cleanest in America and it claimed that the visibility crossed over 100 miles!  It was true, we could see distant mountains (probably of Colorado) behind the canyon walls, right from this point!  A couple of miles on an unpaved road from the panorama point leads to the parking lot of Gooseneck overlook. The sunset point is 0.3 mile hike from here. We crossed the parking lot and a few hundred feet across to have a look into the Gooseneck bend in the water down the hill.  With our past experiences, we knew that best time for viewing the sunset glow on the rocks was 30 to 45 mins before sunset. It was almost 8 PM and the sunset time was around 8:45 PM. So we hurried on the short trail towards sunset point. It was perfect time to reach there and it was as if the rocks were waiting for our arrival. As the last rays of sun struck the canyon walls, the colors became vibrant. The sky was clear now, after the rains, and the weather was pleasantly delightful. 

Sunset at the reef

The next 15 mins was spent just watching the game of lights and shadows on the cliffs and domes one after the other.   The view of ‘The castle’ particularly from this point was fabulous. The past three days had shown us completely different ways of savoring a sunset. Till then, for us, the sunset meant to be on the beaches or mountains where ‘The sun’ himself was the subject. Here, the sun hardly was a subject, but the magic of his rays were!

We headed back onto Hwy 24 westbound, to reach our motel stay at Bicknell. We had a light dinner at our room to end the penultimate day of this experience.