It was an overcast day with scattered showers. The clouds made it a nice day to be outside and a beautiful sky, but hiking was a bit troublesome (which I will come to in a bit). The park made up of beautiful rock formations rising on either side of the main road. In some places there are beautiful red rocks that rival those in Sedona, AZ.
Elsewhere you see white domed shaped rocks that look like capitol buildings - part of the inspiration for the park's name. Early explorers called it a reef because it was hard to cross - as a reef is to sailors....I think this is a strange name for the park, but at least it is not named after the first settlers.
We opted for the Hickman Bridge hike ranked "moderate" with a 400 foot elevation change and nearly 2 miles round-trip. It put Sister to the test as the majority of the climb came at the beginning of the hike. First to hike out of the canyon and then up and across the rugged, rocky terrain above.
It started out alright in terms of the weather - it was cloudy as you can see but it didn't start raining until we were getting really close to the bridge. Additionally Brother and Husband went way ahead of Sister and I which made me anxious. At some point Sister decided she was going to catch up and she started practically running uphill and I could barely keep up with her! When I look back on my pictures I am stunned how few I took because I was too busy going! At one point the trail goes along a wash and it was there that I panicked about the oncoming rain. Of course if you live in the west you hear about flash floods all of the time. Additionally at the Visitor's Center there are notices about being under cover when storms come and to be aware of flash floods. When we walked along the dry wash with the threat of rain looming I became concerned about be separated from Husband and Brother and whether we should turn back. So with Sister as my guide we speed-walked in order to catch up with the boys. We did so as the rain began and we were very near the natural bridge. The boys were not concerned at all and I was the only worried one in the group. I agreed to hike on until we could see the bridge but when it was visible I took one picture and said that we had to head back now in the most motherly tone possible. The rest agreed with the rain now falling steadily and Husband and I both in only t-shirts and shorts. Thankfully both kids wore their jackets - though none of us own any rain gear!
This is the one picture I took as I insisted we turn back. Follow the trees back to the smallest...The smallest trees in this picture are behind the bridge, the opening or arch in the rock is why you can see the smallest trees. The bridge is center in the photo. It is a terrible picture for all the work it took us to get there. But at that point I think I had convinced Husband we were facing flash flood conditions and he and I were very cold so we hiked out, in the steady drizzle. No, no flash flood. We were perfectly safe, albeit wet. When we got back to the truck, our safety assured, Husband pointed out that we didn't even really see the bridge. The three of them were disappointed and then I felt badly about worrying so much. Being the mama is a difficult job. So it was not a very satisfying hike in that respect.
A second disappointing aspect of our visit was that none of the orchards were open. This park maintains the historic orchards of the settlers and allows visitors to pick from the trees when they are ready. A ranger told us that cherries would be available "tomorrow" !?!? Are you kidding me? We are only there for one day and we miss cherries by a day!!?? Cherries are one of our favorite fruits, I wish he would just said "no the orchards are closed" why even tell us how close we were to enjoying heritage varieties of cherries? Brother was really bummed because I read the website to him before we visited and it seemed to promise access to one or more orchards at that time of year.
Finally we attended a Ranger talk about the ancient people of the area and the petroglyphs they left behind on the rocks. I have a pretty decent picture of these petroglyphs. Starting at the bottom left of the picture, notice the brick-like rocks, above that some lighter colored larger boulders, then in the backwards J formed by the lighter rocks on the left side of the photo notice the petroglyphs on the red rock.
The kids got to volunteer to be a part of the talk so they were happy, however the information presented was rather general to many ancient peoples of the Southwest.
So that was Capitol Reef. There are many other hikes to do, but I felt like we got a good sense of the place, the history, the people, and the geology through the Junior Ranger activities. One day was adequate for a visit, two would have been nice especially to deal with different weather. We really liked our campground - so I will review that next.
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