Our 100 Day Trek through the US of A, Part 15, Capitol Reef

August 10, 2013

Yesterday July 16 during our " rest week" we traveled to Capitol Reef, by way do a dusty Hell's Backbone Road on a very sunny high 70's day.

Looking down from the car

This is safer?

The modern bridge version

Looking down from the bridge

As always Sandee did the driving, first of all because she enjoys driving, second because she does not trust me to not drive over the edge somewhere into a 2000 or more foot death. In any married life one does give and take and this is

one of my gives, it also allows me to snap pictures. As I gently asked her if she enjoyed the ride during the zig zag climb and told her how I would enjoy getting my car back after this trip, she insisted that I would drive when back on the main road. The highlight of the climb was Hell's Backbone Bridge, where the construction crew carving this road out of the mountains in the 1930's stumbled on a very thin arch where the road had to cross to the other side going down the mountain. To span the gap, the crew felled two large trees and dropped them over the chasm. Now the bulldozer and the compressor had to be transferred to the other side. A volunteer by the name of Lorell "Sixty" (don't ask me how he got nicknamed sixty) Mclnelly with a rope around his midriff drove the bulldozer pulling the compressor over the trees to the other side, while the crew prayed for a successful transfer of the equipment.

Afternoon T storms were predicted with the resulting danger of flash floods, so the off-roading element of this day had to be in the A.M. The Capitol Reef, at first glance gives the impression of a billion year old reef, as it was formed under water eons ago, but it is the end result of the formation of the Colorado plateau crunching up this giant wall during its nascent years. At first we thought it was an "interesting" park, but didn't rank it too high as we traversed the 10 mile scenic route alongside the imposing hard red orange Wingate stone, fracturing into sheer cliffs, with here and there golden white domed tops of Navajo Sandstone creating interesting dimensions of color in the Park.

The reef walls

Water marks

Eons of sand below the wall

In early 1900 some prospectors laid claims here and mined uranium, with which they created solutions that were sold to arthritis and rheumatic patients, in little leather bags to wear on their body or mixed in drinking water.

The question remains, what did these patients die from? And how old did these miners get?

Two mine entrances

Dirt road into the canyon

Forever amazing

Who made those holes?

Grand is it not?

However at the end of the scenic drive we found a dirt road that led us through a canyon, where driving on the bottom staring a thousand feet up re-rated this park to an A minus.

The Capitol reef had petroglyphs from Anaszasi Indians that lived here and fruit orchards from Mormon families sent here to colonize southern Utah.

Mormon families had orchards here

Those orchards still exist, now run by the park service, and visitors are allowed to eat its fruit, unlike Adam and Eve. On the side of the road we found a maybe 200 sq. foot stone cabin where in 1882 Elijaha Cutler Behunin and his wife and 10 children

lived. They ate outside, cooked dinner on a wood stove inside. Sleeping arrangements were Papa and Mama with the two youngest in the cabin, the boys in a dry cave nearby and the girls in the wagon that brought them here.