Our Great North America Trip, Utah: Capitol Reef NP; Arches NP; Canyonlands NP; May 31 – June 3, 2009

 

We continued to explore Utah. You could easily spend a whole month here exploring National Parks, but on this trip we want to cover as much ground as possible.  Here some images of Capitol Reef National Park.  It gets its name from one particular mountain that resembles the dome of the US Capitol in Washington, DC (see picture below)

 

 

A typical rock formation of CR NP

In one canyon you find graffiti from Mormons who passed through here in the 1800s  (Utah is the State where Mormons established themselves to escape prosecution and discrimination; and to practice polygamy…….)

 

“The Tanks”  These are water pockets resulted from erosion.  They serve as watering holes for local wild life in this otherwise dry area.  I nearly fell in one; but Betsie caught me….

 

We spent a day driving and hiking through “Arches” and tried to see as many of them as we could fit in.  They all have names.  As you probably know, they were “created” thru erosion (water and wind) of sandstone hills that were there before, over hundreds of thousands of years.

 

In front of the “South Window” arch

 

The “Double Arch”

 

Inside the second one of the Double Arch

 

“Delicate Arch” the best known of them all; it’s pictured on Utah car license plates

 

“Delicate Arch” is not close to the road; it’s about a one hour hike across barren rocks (under the beating sun).   You have to do something for a picture like this one……

 

“Landscape Arch” the largest of them all; width: 93m; height 32m; it’s pretty thin as you can see so one of these years it’s going to collapse.  This is the fate that will befall all arches eventually, but new ones will come into being……

 

Inside “Partition Arch”

 

Lizard eats lizard…

 

 

Canyonlands Nat. Park.  As the name implies: lots of canyons; we spent one day in the northern part: Island in the Sky and one day in the southern part:  The Needles

 

Dead Horse Point

 

Some impressions of the Island in the Sky area above and below

 

“Upheaval Dome”   One theory about its origins is listed below: impact of an asteroid

 

 

After camping at Dead Horse State Park, we drove to the southern part of Canyonlands: “the Needles.”  See above an example of rock formations that inspired the name

 

The other peculiar rock shapes you find here are “mushrooms,” see above and below

 

Above an old cowboy camp with furniture and an old stove still present

An Anasazi Indian granary (to store grains) still in good shape after 700 years

 

Some of Canyonlands’ outstanding rock formations photographed in the late afternoon, above and below

 

Along the road out of Canyonlands you find this National Historical Site:  “Newspaper Rock” with Indian (native american) pictographs going back 2000 years as well as some from the period when Europeans had arrived in North America.  The more recent ones dating from the 1600s and later show men hunting on horseback.  Before Europeans came here, there were no horses.  (In other words, native americans started riding horses only after Columbus had discovered America.) If you click on the explanation above (to enlarge it), you may be able read the full story.  Two photos showing some details below…..