Framedlight

There is one small side road from Scenic Drive and this takes you to the start of the Grand Wash Trail. Anne and I had done a part of this walk, but had started from the other end on Highway-24, so it was nice to see where we would have ended up if we had finished it. The trail starts in an open area which has a little hut, for the use of visitors, perched under some rather nicely colour matched cliffs. Anne and I had a wander around the area. Some of the rock formations were a little bizarre.  Butch Cassidy was rumoured to have hidden out here, but I think most places in Utah have a claim on that. Back on Scenic Drive The Moenkopi Formation sandstone seen here can form these towers

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...

The Grand Wash Trail cuts through the Waterpocket Fold in Capitol Reef, running east to west from the Fremont River to Scenic Drive, one of only 6 drainage channels cutting across the whole 100 miles of the Fold. It is 2½ miles long but one way only, unless you have a car at both ends. The floor of the canyon was damp when we entered it, a reminder that this walk is best not done in stormy weather, when you might meet a torrent. In many places the sandstone was peppered with holes caused when sand grains or minerals are washed out of the rocks by water. We walked  a little over a mile until we got to the end of a section called the narrows, where the floor shrinks to only 16ft. The walls of the canyon rise up sheer for 500 ft and it was quite dark and oppressive. We met few people on our hike. A group with a leader, two couples, and two boys in their late teens or early twenties, who were listening to the bible on some audio system and commenting on the words. Maybe descendant...