Capitol Reef National Park

After Arches, we headed to Capitol Reef National Park. It was either that or Canyonlands National Park. If I had to choose again, I would choose Canyonlands. Then again, if I had to choose once more, I would choose not to tour two national parks in the same day. At least not on a day that was somewhere around one-hundred-and-hot degrees and on a day where we had to drive 8 hours to our hotel.

Anyway, at Arches we were told the arches were formed from saltwater that flooded and receded 17 times throughout the past billion-jillion years. At Capitol Reef (just a stone's throw away geographically speaking, no pun intended) we were told that the rock formations were deposited from a billion-jillion years of wind-blown sediment and flash flooding. We felt the explanations were somewhat incongruous. Once again, a world-wide flood and successive receding of its waters explained everything much better.

The one cool thing I enjoyed most about Capitol Reef was the ancient rock carvings. Nothing is known about the people who left behind this ancient graffiti, but looking at the figures, I'm pretty sure this is where the show Ancient Aliens got its inspiration (if you haven't seen it, check it out on Netflix...it's put out by the history channel and the first few episodes are pretty fascinating, especially if instead of "aliens" you think "angels")

There was also lots of history and remnants of a Mormon cult  colony that tried farming the area through the 1930s or so. All I could think was that they must have been crazy. Yes, the views were pretty from inside an air conditioned car. But to live there? And farm there? In that hot, dry, dusty, rocky landscape? Not for me, thank you!

En route between Arches and Capitol Reef, we drove by some red sand dunes. Dave and Justin thought it was great fun climbing and exploring them; I thought it was great fun to sit in the air conditioned car and watch them!

Some of the ancient graffiti priceless rock carvings

More rock carvings

Justin wanted to pose on some left-behind Mormon farming equipment

The views were gorgeous, despite the heat

Justin attended a Junior Geologist program (at which he was the only attendee) at Capitol Reef. A nice college intern named Cinnamin (actually her name, it was even on her official name badge) instructed us all about deposition, uplift, and erosion. Then she took us through a demonstration which showed how little rain and wind affect the rocks and how drastically major flooding does.

Cinnamin and Justin, getting ready to demonstrate erosion through rain, wind, and flooding

Dave and Justin, fossil hunting

After leaving the park, Dave and Justin thought it would be great fun to go fossil hunting. Again, I thought it would be great fun to remain in the air conditioned car (did I mention it was hot?).

On to our destination for the night: St. George, Utah. By this point, I was less than appreciative of the state of Utah. What with a fancy Mormon church in every little and poor town we drove through and the hot, dry weather the whole state seemed to embrace, I was ready to leave this state behind in the dust, literally speaking. But we had one more National Park to hit before leaving: Zion.