Gifford Homestead | The USA: Landscapes and Urban Spaces

Although Highway 24 crosses it from east to west, Capitol Reef National Park is a very long and narrow park oriented along a north to south axis. From Highway 24, a scenic drive leads a few miles toward its destination at Capitol Gorge, but, in common with a majority of national parks in the US, most of Capitol Reef can be accessed only on foot or with 4WD vehicles negotiating gravel roads that are often very long. The park’s most remarkable feature is Waterpocket Fold, but the best part of this can be seen only along a paved road originating in Glen Canyon National Recreation Area and a long drive thereafter on gravel, or on a similar combination of roads from Boulder.

We had to confine our look around the park to the scenic road, but still enjoyed every moment we were there. However, even before accessing the scenic road, we saw Capitol Dome, Hickman Bridge (which required a delightful hike of about a mile each way) and historic Fruita School (which nestled beside the highway in a very fertile spot overlooked by cliffs and canyon walls).

Just beyond the park’s visitor centre, the scenic road began for real. It led first to a picnic site where we saw deer grazing on very healthy grass. We next arrived at the Gifford Homestead, which lay at the heart of the fertile Fruita Valley. The homestead, owned by the Gifford family from 1928 until 1969, was part of Fruita Rural Historic District, a district that provided an excellent insight into early Mormon settlement of the valley, and where cherries, apples and peaches used to be harvested every year until Mormon settlement terminated when the Gifford family left to live elsewhere. Near the farmhouse were a barn, a smokehouse, a garden, pasture, rock walls and a carport dating from 1954. In the farmhouse, where a shop sold souvenirs both edible and durable, rooms set aside as a museum contained quilts, a spinning wheel, the Gifford family chair, a Hoosier cupboard, a bookcase, a Monarch stove and a Singer rigid-arm sewing machine. This delightful spot among sublimely beautiful cliffs, domes and spires conveyed something of the simple but challenging life settlers in these parts were confronted with less than a century ago.

In all, the scenic road was only 8 miles long, but it provided views that existed only because of the Waterpocket Fold.

We stopped to examine the entrance to Grand Wash and, while Hilary rested at a spot where the paved road had given way to gravel, I walked to where the road ended to look at Capitol Gorge. The combination of canyons, cliffs, domes, spires, mountains and strata of many bright colours was reward enough, but the human imprint in the fertile Fruita Valley, made possible only because of the life-giving Fremont River, brought some sense of intimacy to what were otherwise awesome landscapes. In summary, Capitol Reef National Park proved an unexpected gem.

As we drove west but still within the national park, we enjoyed seeing The Castle, Chimney Rock, Panorama Point (from Panorama Point, we followed a short trail to Goosenecks Overlook) and Twin Rocks. We then left the park to drive to Torrey, a small but pretty settlement in verdant surroundings almost 7,000 feet above sea level.

Fruita Rural Historic District, Capitol Reef, Utah

Gifford Homestead, Capitol Reef, Utah

Capitol Reef, Utah

Goosenecks Overlook, Capitol Reef, Utah

Cedar Breaks National Monument was relatively small, but it had geological formations and coloured strata not dissimilar to the formations and strata in Bryce Canyon, so we had a delightful time looking around. Moreover, because better-known Bryce Canyon and Zion national parks were not, by American standards, very far away, the number of visitors was small.

The main attraction at Cedar Breaks was its stunning amphitheatre, which could be admired from above at Chessman Ridge Overlook and three other overlooks easily accessed by paved road (two other overlooks existed at the end of hiking trails). The amphitheatre had spires, columns, arches and canyons benefitting from intensely bold colours. It was the product of many of the same forces that had created other iconic landscapes in the region such as Grand Canyon, Zion Canyon and the Bryce Amphitheatre. Shaped like a huge coliseum, the amphitheatre was over 2,000 feet deep and over 3 miles in diameter. Millions of years of deposition, uplift and erosion had created this large bowl in the steep, west-facing side of the Markagunt Plateau, which was 10,000 feet above sea level (most of our time in Cedar Breaks was spent above 10,000 feet. The highest point was 10,467 feet at Chessman Ridge Overlook). The intricate formations within the amphitheatre were the result of almost constant erosion by rain, ice and wind. Various combinations of iron and manganese gave the rocks their different shades of red, yellow and purple.

We undertook two very different hikes, both about two miles in length. The first hike was a loop trail from Chessman Ridge Overlook that led past pretty Alpine Pond. We walked through forest and beside meadow covered with wild flowers such as Indian paintbrush, blue columbine, cinquefoil, fleabane and wild rose. There were occasional views of the amphitheatre through the trees, but the trail was primarily designed to help people connect with the monument at an intimate level. Our second hike was an out-and-back trail to Spectra Point from where there were stunning views of the amphitheatre far below. At Spectra Point, there was a gnarled and weather-beaten bristlecone pine about 1,600 years old.

Bristlecone pines are found on harsh, wind-swept cliffs with thin soil, but it is precisely such environments that allow the trees to live for so long. Competition from other trees is greatly reduced and the poor conditions encourage centuries of slow but steady growth.

Cedar Breaks, Utah

With only three paved roads in the national park, two of which were not popular with visitors because they were quite remote from the best-known attractions, most of the thousands of visitors who entered Zion every day during summer ended up on the scenic road through Zion Canyon, the one leading to the Temple of Sinawava. Because of the volume of motorised traffic that used the road, a decision was reached a few years ago to run frequent shuttle buses up and down the canyon from spring to autumn. The buses stopped at every scenically rewarding spot along the road and also provided access to the many trails leading to more remote spots. We parked the car at the Zion Canyon Visitor Centre (the car park was enormous) and took a shuttle bus to the Temple of Sinawava. We were glad we did so and got this aspect of the canyon out of the way first because, once everyone was off the buses and confined to what was now a path beside the North Fork Virgin River in a canyon that had been narrowing since its mouth, the sheer number of people felt oppressive and we therefore found it difficult to fully appreciate the spectacular scenery around us. However, once we were making our way back to the visitor centre with many stops along the road to examine the views properly, the number of people declined significantly.

In terms of its attractions, Zion National Park was the most conventional national park we had encountered on the trip so far. Our overall impression was one of mighty mountain peaks, almost perpendicular rock cliffs and pretty rivers and creeks. The water sources supported grass, wild flowers and trees, which in turn provided shelter and food for many small birds and mammals. This said, we also encountered forested highlands and lowland deserts. Following heavy downpours, waterfalls suddenly appeared on cliff walls. Sadly, we did not encounter such downpours.

Millions of years ago, streams, inland seas, deserts and volcanoes deposited thousands of feet of mud, lime, sand and ash. The immense pressure and heat of the accumulating sediments turned lower layers into stone. Later, underground forces lifted the plateau to over 10,000 feet and rain began eroding the minute cracks, depressions and gulleys that appeared in the ground. After millions of years, the cracks, depressions and gulleys became the canyons for which Zion was so famous today.

It was a delight to see the narrow canyon above the Temple of Sinawava, Weeping Rock, the Grotto, Emerald Pools, Great White Throne, Court of the Patriarchs, Sentinel and Towers of the Virgin, and to drive into the park along the stunningly beautiful Zion to Mount Carmel Highway. However, we liked the delightful Virgin River the most, not least for the superb mountain and canyon scenery that overlooked it. Before leaving the park, we got off a shuttle bus at Canyon Junction and had a very quiet but scenically rewarding walk back to our car.

Zion National Park, Utah

Breakfast sorted, we drove from the visitor centre along Kolob Canyons Road to Kolob Canyons Viewpoint. From there, we undertook a short hike for views a little different to the ones at the viewpoint, then returned to the car and stopped a number of times as we descended the paved road. As in Zion Canyon the day before, we were confronted with fairly conventional mountain scenery shaped by creeks that had sufficient water to sustain quite dense vegetation along their banks, but the summits, canyons, rock faces and patches of forest made for a delightful start to the day. However, even better was when we walked some way along Taylor Creek Trail. Taylor Creek had water in it and we had to cross it about a dozen times as we made our way upstream. Looming overhead were patches of woodland, rock walls and mountain summits. We spent time at the Larson Cabin located in a grove of pine and juniper trees. The cabin had been built in 1930 and Gustav Larson lived in it until 1933. Larson built his cabin near where two forks of the Taylor Creek converged. Towering overhead were some massive peaks (to the north was Horse Ranch Mountain. At 8,726 feet, it was the highest point in Zion National Park).

We enjoyed our visit to Kolob Canyons, if only because we saw no more than two dozen people the whole time we were there. We also saw wild turkey, many small mammals and medium-sized birds of prey too distant to identify with certainty. Especially on the Taylor Creek Trail, we admired the rich variety of trees and flowers, and the opportunity to engage intimately with a very attractive part of a national park that we appreciated the more we saw of it.

Larson Cabin, Kolob Canyons, Zion, Utah

We drove to Cannonville where we topped up the tank with gas, then negotiated the few delightfully fertile miles to Kodachrome Basin State Park. We arrived so early in the day that the light was still striking the wonderful geological formations from low in the sky, and the only people we saw were a few rangers and four families that had parked their RVs for overnight stays. We followed a trail that was largely a loop for about 1.5 miles. Because everything in the park was on a modest scale, the trail allowed us to engage intimately with a landscape that was constantly changing. Even quite small ascents ensured that remarkable views open up in front of us. As for the rich colours of the rocks, the park’s name was fully justified.

Kodachrome Basin was a spectacle of towering sandstone chimneys that changed in colour and shadow as the sun made its way across the sky. We caught the park when the red-tinged spires stood out magnificently against a deep blue sky enriched by the occasional puff of cloud or jet stream left by a passing plane. Nearly 70 monolithic spires ranging from 6 to 170 feet in height rose from the valley floor or protruded from the sandstone. Once a vast inland sea, the seabed rose millions of years ago. The water drained from the land and desert conditions began to assert themselves. The landscape that now confronted us had been primarily shaped by wind and water erosion, but it had been in the making for about 180 million years. The spires and cliff walls manifested extremely pretty but unusual shapes because rocks and minerals of different colour and character, including sandstone, gypsum, shale, quartz and clay, were deposited when the area was once a sea.

Because a lot of the park stood at just below 6,000 feet above sea level, we saw pinyon pine, Utah juniper, sagebrush, ephedra (Mormon tea), Indian paintbrush, yellow flax, yucca and different varieties of grass. We also saw jack and cottontail rabbits, chipmunks, white-tailed antelope squirrels, ravens, jays, wrens and sparrows.

Before leaving the park, we drove along an unpaved road to Chimney Rock, a road that took us into an area not so startling in terms of its scenery, but one representative of parts of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, which enclosed Kodachrome Basin on all sides.