Capitol Reef National Park

Utah 24 into Capitol Reef National Park is AWESOME!  The road is a lot of sweepers and twisties through the bottom of the canyons with all these rock-faces high high overhead. Its hard to get a sense of scale from the pics, these cliffs are 1000 ft up.

Once further in theres lots of overhanging trees with glimpses of the cliffs between them.  Spectacularly good smooth pavement the whole way.

I’d heard from many people including total strangers when we mentioned roughly where we were going that the Burr Trail from Bullfrog to Capitol Reef was one of the most spectacular roads ever.  Unfortunately its not paved much of the way and pretty rough going through spots.  From what we’d already experienced with the area dirt roads from recent rains this adventure was not to be on an overloaded cruiser motorcycle two up.  One day I want to see it, especially now after going on the pavement.  You can just make it out on this map, the grey line along the ridge.

Trying to show the scale of how high up these cliffs are, can you find Cece?  Behind her is a deep canyon with waterfalls and the river, the walls behind her are further back.  Distances are deceiving.

A whole family lived in this house, sadly not for very long.  Only a few years after construction with a couple of flash floods wiping out their crops they gave up on the area.

Stopping to take a break and stretch our legs.  A few miles down this trail was a natural bridge. No thanks, we already saw enough of those without walking so far.

Capitol Reef National Park has some nice petroglyphs right up against the road.  I’ve never seen so many complex figures like this before, very cool.   Looks like earlier tourists and settlers liked to take shots at them.

A lot of mountain sheep petroglyphs.  Everywhere you looked more sheep!

The examples of the petroglyphs in the museum were stunning.  We didn’t see any with this level of detail.  It must be a long hike to get to these ones.

Shots of the cleanest air in the lower 48. Average visibility 150 miles.