Southern Utah & NV, 12 days & 1825 m. Days 1- 5

Day 1
We always wanted to see the national parks in sw Utah so on Fri 10/05 we decided to do a road trip and left Eagle the next Weds. Our plan was to take 3 days driving down so we camped our first night at Hyrum State Park, http://stateparks.utah.gov/parks/hyrum, which is a few miles SE of Logan. Nice CG w/ hookups and showers on a small reservoir. Rained a little that night. Up bright and early the next morning and on the road by 11am.

Day 2
We drove a couple of hundred miles and the traffic and construction through Salt Lake City on I-15 was horrible. We finally bailed off the interstate at Nephi and headed SE to Palisade State park, http://stateparks.utah.gov/parks/palisade. This was another Utah state park and was very nice with a lot of new facilities. There is a beautiful 18 hole state golf course that is part of the park. Jennifer and I actually hit a couple of buckets on their driving range. Great sleep and since we only had to drive 110 miles we got on the road about noon.

Day 3
The drive south was uneventful and we stayed on the back roads. We were headed to Capitol Reef National Park and our plan was to stay at Fruita CG in the park. After we went through Torrey the scenery dramatically changed. Our senior pass is great, you hand it to the person at the entry gate and instead of paying a $25 entry fee they hand you back a map and tell you to have a nice time. Camping is also 1/2 price in NP's.

The Fruita  CG in Capitol Reef NP is in an old homesteader's orchard. You can pick apples from 120 yr old trees which we did. The CG is a first come first serve situation and we got there before 3pm and there were only 4 open sites.

We took the scenic drive loop through the park that evening and it was breathtaking. At the far end of the loop you can take a nearly 4wd track down the Capitol Wash. It was amazing. It's a slot canyon formed by millennial erosion. We were surprised you could just drive down it as most NP's are much more structured. 

At the end of the 4wd track there was a footpath and about 1/4m down the trail were petroglyphs estimated to be 3000 yrs old.

It was a great day. My mind could hardly process that what my eyes were seeing.

Day 4
After a relaxing night and great sleep we planned two hikes. The first was to Hickman bridge. It's a natural sandstone arch at the end of a 2.5m walk. We had a picnic with apples from the orchard and cheese.

That afternoon we hiked into the Grand Wash from the Hwy 24 side until we reached the "Narrows". It was a slot canyon no more that 30' wide with 1500' sheer cliffs towering up on both sides. This went down as a once in a lifetime experience.

We got back to the truck and drove to Panorama Point near the park entry. After a short walk to Goosenecks Overlook we looked down on to Sulfur Crk and you could see where the overlook got it's name.

  We walked a little further and sat and watched the evening shadows from Sunset Point.

Back at the CG we had a great supper with white chicken chili we brought from home. A hot shower in the camper was really sweet.

Day 5
We broke camp and headed south on Hwy 12 which is a classified as a scenic highway. The aspens at the 9600' summit of Boulder Mtn were turning and we even ran into some snow bermed on the side from the snowplow.

We stopped at the Anasazi St Park Museum, http://stateparks.utah.gov/parks/anasazi, a partially excavated Anasazi dwelling with artifacts that were carbon dated to more than 10,000 yrs ago. Made us wonder what life was like back then.

                           The smaller rooms were probably used for grain and food storage.

The rocks in a square enclosed their fire and the rock with a depression was probably used to grind grain, mainly corn, and to cook in. They would put super hot rocks from the fire into a liquid in the depression heating it to boiling.

They lived in these below ground pits. The wood of course was recently added to define the structure. In the enlargement you can see a chimney vent at the back for smoke egress. People actually lived here 10,000 yrs ago, more than twice as old as the steps we walked up in a Mayan ruin in Cozumel years ago.

We continued on hwy 12 and turned due south in Cannonville heading to Kodachrome Basin St Park, http://stateparks.utah.gov/parks/kodachrome, our CG for the next three nights. Kodachrome is a huge natural amphitheater surrounded by the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument, (henceforth GSENM). GSENM is a multi-hundred thousand acre wilderness with only a couple of dirt tracks.

There are a bunch of formations called spires that were geysers that laid down much harder mineralization than the surrounding sandstone. The softer sandstone eroded leaving the very unique spires as seen looking west from our camp site.