Thursday, September 28, 2000
More Capitol Reef & Escalante - Sept 24
We continued our stay in Capitol Reef with several more days of hiking. We hiked to an overlook and could view a lot of the central section of the park from above, stopping by Hickman Bridge (a natural rock bridge) on our way down. We hiked Capitol Gorge, another narrow canyon that until 1962 was the only way to drive thru the area. UT 12 actually went thru Capitol Reef (National Monument then) via the current Scenic Drive and out this narrow canyon. At the end of the short hike, there's a short climb up to some large water pockets (called tanks) in the rocks above. They were quite beautiful, and a little Canyon Wren came down and visited with us while we rested there. We also saw a Rock Wren on the way out.
Our final hike in the Capitol Reef area was the Chimney Rock loop, to which we added a side trip into Spring Canyon -- another beautiful narrow red sandstone canyon. Thursday we headed for Escalante, UT, via scenic UT 12, one of the most beautiful drives we have ever seen. It goes through Boulder, UT, which must be about as unusual as Boulder, CO, since two of the groups that cleaned up along the highway were "Freedom From Religion in Boulder, UT" and "Meat is Murder, Live and Let Live". Whereas in Escalante it was the local schools and similar mom & apple pie stuff. Funny to see all those familiar names -- Boulder Mtn Lodge, Boulder Realty, etc. The highway has one part that goes along the top of a hogback with steep dropoffs on each side. Luckily Doug had seen this before, because he had to keep his eyes on the road with the trailer in tow. The scenery here is quite breathtaking!
We stayed in Escalante three days and did a wonderful hike each day. So much for the planned "rest day"! We hiked in about 6 miles to Lower Calf Creek Falls, a 126-foot high waterfall over sheer sandstone cliffs. It was a beautiful hike, though long because so much of it was through sand. Once we were at the falls, the spray made us delightfully cool.
The second day was partly cloudy and quite windy. We almost took the day off, but in the afternoon decided to check out the Escalante Petrified Wood State Park. We took the Petrified Wood and Sleeping Rainbows (named after the Indian term for the multitude of colors seen in petrified wood) loop trails and saw lots of brilliantly colored petrified wood. It was a relatively short hike but perfect for this day. We never knew petrified wood came in so many beautiful colors -- reds, yellows, green, purple -- even a little blue.
The final hike was the most spectacular, into three canyons of the Escalante River Canyons area -- Dry Wash of Coyote Creek, Peekaboo Canyon and Spooky Canyon. We said WOW a lot in all three. Spooky was the narrowest canyon we had ever been in. We had to take off our daypacks and pull them behind, tucking our bodies around various ways to fit through. The only spooky part was not seeing the sun for so long. Peekaboo was very twisty with lots of little places to peek around and hide in. It is probably the easiest hike to see such spectacular canyons that exists in the US, and we highly recommend it to anyone visiting this area.
You probably have not seen anything like it. A final little picnic stop at the end of the day brought us to Devil's Rock Garden, a lovely set of rock hoodoos (strange shapes) that you can wander through.
Our final hike in the Capitol Reef area was the Chimney Rock loop, to which we added a side trip into Spring Canyon -- another beautiful narrow red sandstone canyon. Thursday we headed for Escalante, UT, via scenic UT 12, one of the most beautiful drives we have ever seen. It goes through Boulder, UT, which must be about as unusual as Boulder, CO, since two of the groups that cleaned up along the highway were "Freedom From Religion in Boulder, UT" and "Meat is Murder, Live and Let Live". Whereas in Escalante it was the local schools and similar mom & apple pie stuff. Funny to see all those familiar names -- Boulder Mtn Lodge, Boulder Realty, etc. The highway has one part that goes along the top of a hogback with steep dropoffs on each side. Luckily Doug had seen this before, because he had to keep his eyes on the road with the trailer in tow. The scenery here is quite breathtaking!
We stayed in Escalante three days and did a wonderful hike each day. So much for the planned "rest day"! We hiked in about 6 miles to Lower Calf Creek Falls, a 126-foot high waterfall over sheer sandstone cliffs. It was a beautiful hike, though long because so much of it was through sand. Once we were at the falls, the spray made us delightfully cool.The second day was partly cloudy and quite windy. We almost took the day off, but in the afternoon decided to check out the Escalante Petrified Wood State Park. We took the Petrified Wood and Sleeping Rainbows (named after the Indian term for the multitude of colors seen in petrified wood) loop trails and saw lots of brilliantly colored petrified wood. It was a relatively short hike but perfect for this day. We never knew petrified wood came in so many beautiful colors -- reds, yellows, green, purple -- even a little blue.
The final hike was the most spectacular, into three canyons of the Escalante River Canyons area -- Dry Wash of Coyote Creek, Peekaboo Canyon and Spooky Canyon. We said WOW a lot in all three. Spooky was the narrowest canyon we had ever been in. We had to take off our daypacks and pull them behind, tucking our bodies around various ways to fit through. The only spooky part was not seeing the sun for so long. Peekaboo was very twisty with lots of little places to peek around and hide in. It is probably the easiest hike to see such spectacular canyons that exists in the US, and we highly recommend it to anyone visiting this area.
You probably have not seen anything like it. A final little picnic stop at the end of the day brought us to Devil's Rock Garden, a lovely set of rock hoodoos (strange shapes) that you can wander through.# posted by Doug and Willie @ 11:48 AM 
