Capitol Reef National Park

Since visiting all the National Parks is on my bucket list, I decided to add a few days vacation to our Lake Powell trip and hit Capitol Reef National Park. It is on the way home, if you go the windy way! So the Hubby went back to work, but my mom, step-dad, niece, and Scamper headed off to hike for a few days.

Our first hike was to Hickman Bridge. These are some pictures along the way.

Capitol Reef is named after capitols and reefs. Imagine that! There are lots of white domes like in the picture above, and it reminded the pioneers of the dome on the Capitol Building. The huge walls of rock that tower over the park made traveling difficult, like reefs in the ocean that you have to go around. Thus the name Capitol Reef.

Here we are standing under Hickman Bridge. Pretty amazing. By the way, there is only a slight difference between an arch and a bridge. A bridge is carved away due to water flowing through. Arches are formed from a combination of water, wind, and weather (freezing and thawing of the water). I thought that was interesting.

Scamper wanted to climb in a little cave every time we passed one. This is just the first of many.

Beautiful view and beautiful colors.

Our second hike was through Sulphur Creek. The pamphlet said this was a very family friendly hike, even though it was 5 miles. It sounded like fun, so we decided to make this one of our hikes.

It sure was beautiful all along the way. And very refreshing to walk through the water. But then...

...we got to the first waterfall. How are we supposed to get down this?

Luckily there was a way around, but it wasn't exactly family friendly. I was pretty nervous with Scamper on my back. I decided I wanted to go back up and slide down the waterfall. But with the water crashing against the rock at the bottom, I decided against sliding. Instead I just kind of climbed down it, but it was plenty thrilling for me.

Waterfall #2. I didn't try to slide down this one. But getting around it was no picnic. We were pretty tired by waterfall #3, so we don't have pictures. Man were we glad to be done. I would NOT call this hike family friendly. It was long, tiring, and pretty scary in some parts. It was, however, very beautiful and I am glad we did it.

Castle Rock--one of the better known rock formations at Capitol Reef.

Our last hike was Capitol Gorge. We spend a lot of our time climbing into little holes here and there. It was also a very pretty hike, because it was, obviously, in a gorge.

Our hike ended at 'The Tanks.' Sounded a lot cooler than it really was. It looked a lot like bathtub rock for those of you who have been to City of Rocks.

Scamper and I are in this picture somewhere. Can you see us?

These were real tree branches. I thought they looked like ropes.

Park rangers!

Another National Park down, many, many more to go!