Framedlight

After our walk up the Grand Wash, Anne and I had some lunch. It was certainly hot and dusty as evidenced by her car. One of the big tourist spots in Capitol Reef is a boardwalk, which runs around the base of a cliff next to the Fremont River. Here it was very busy as people jostled to see the petroglyphs, carvings in the rock made by the Fremont people. The Fremonts lived along the banks of the river between 300 and 1300CE, as hunter gatherers. They also grew some crops and lived in pit houses and rock shelters. I took some pictures of the petroglyphs and then became distracted by the shadows falling on the rocks. Having seen evidence of the Fremont folk we went to what remained of Fruita, the Mormon settlement.  The Mormons came from Salt Lake City, looking for places where they could settle in Southern Utah. They did face some persecution, so the remote byways suited them. In the 1870's and 80's various little places were se...

It was an early morning start from the "Snuggle Inn" in Loa. The sun was catching the irrigation systems in the fields and we passed a herd of bison in a field, not roaming free unfortunately but worth investigating. We passed through the little town of Torrey and entered  Capitol Reef National Park, Our first stop was the Visitor Centre where they were just about to start a talk about the history and geology of the Park. Capitol Reef National Park occupies an area of 378 square miles encompassing about 3/4 of the 100 miles long Waterpocket Fold, a steep monocline or fold in the earth's crust which formed about 70 million years ago during the uplift of the Colorado Plateau. The formation is white and yellow Navajo sandstone and red Wingate sandstone, and these have been sculpted into buttressed cliffs and pinnacles by the actions of wind and water. The Fremont River and it's tributaries have formed deep canyons through the formation where the cl...