Moseying amongst the red rocks

Grand Staircase-Escalante Natl Monument

Sitting beside the roadway, on the Capitol Reef National Park scenic drive, I watch a play of sunlight on the multicolored but mostly-some-shade-of-orange-red-or-charcoal rocks, as it highlights the visible sedimentary layers. The layers themselves I can imagine looking like this forever; their presence measures the years of geologic time, a rock cadence of eras.

The rangers say that most of these layers, long buried but later exposed when the “reef” thrust itself up into the sky eons ago, were witness to the dinosaurs. That means the dinosaurs were here – alive on the earth – for a very long time. The fact they are now gone leaves us with the impression that they weren’t successful here, but these rocks say otherwise. We homo-sapien-sapiens should survive as long.

The shadows of the afternoon clouds create a drama of alternating dark and sunlight on the rocks towering over my head and stretching off into the distance. The “Capitol Reef” (or Waterpocket Fold) is over 100 miles long. On an NPS informational plaque I learn that early prospectors were often former seamen and with their nautical frame of reference, they called any landform impediment to their passage a “reef.” In this case, the light grey or white Navajo Sandstone formations that intermittently cap the reef have eroded into the shape of domes (like the Capitol dome in Washington, D.C.) – hence “Capitol Reef.”

The Capitol Reef

I often find myself giving advice to other travelers on how they can get through many miles on a road trip, as if driving were the point instead of the means. I do this myself. My natural inclination is to drive -- I love to drive -- as far as I can in an allotted span of days. On this day, the fact that I am sitting beside the road in Utah soaking up this view is the result of several unwanted, but afterward deemed fortuitous, errors.

First, this was supposed to be a motorcycle ride; instead, I am traveling in a pick-up. My motorcycle is being held hostage by a mechanic who failed to order a part which is now being “shipped” from somewhere far away. Second, my first road trip day began in a too-leisurely way; I didn’t get on my way from Phoenix until noon. Then, I discovered that a portion of my first day’s route was a graded dirt road, 46 miles long. It was a road I was not willing to forego and which took almost three hours to navigate (to see the Grosvenor Double-Arch). Therefore, I arrived at my destination in Torrey, Utah, very late -- ending any possibility of exploring Capitol Reef National Park that evening. This snowballed into further delay the next day.

Grosvenor Arch

The next morning, over breakfast at the Capitol Reef Inn in Torrey, I consider my options. I had had plans for this day, but I had driven State Route 12 the evening before in the dark. SR12 is a magnificent road, worth seeing. Built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s, it connected the then still isolated town of Boulder to the world, via the "hog-back" -- a ridged escarpment with stunning drop-offs and scenery on both sides -- you drive atop the "spine" of the hog's back with hair-raising precipices on both sides.

Continuing on according to the original plan and driving through some combination of the San Rafael Swell (or Reef), Arches National Park, Canyonlands National Park, Valley of the Gods, Natural Bridges State Park and Monument Valley meant I would miss the scenic beauty of State Route 12 and the hog-back in daylight, plus I’d be assured not to see any of those other places either; those that I could get through at all in one day would be nothing but a blur at seventy miles per hour or more.

Instead, I decide, I will take my time at Capitol Reef, and then retrace my route and “mosey” back down SR12 through the Grand Staircase/Escalante National Monument. I will perhaps see a little of Bryce Canyon National Park at sunset before heading south to Kanab for the night. Remembering earlier very pleasant experiences with moseying, I toss the original high speed plan and choose moseying for this day.

Near Park Headquarters

So I sit beside the road soaking up this place. This is a luxury. I recommend doing this solo if you can. It is a brilliant thing to be alone with your thoughts in a place like this, where the grandeur of creation wraps around you with tangible warmth. I have spent the past several hours on a round trip of a mere ten and a half miles of National Park Service roadway. The rest of the plan can wait, even the abbreviated one I have settled on for today. I drive a little. I stop to take a photo or two. I write some. I stay a little longer. I pick fresh fruit off the orchard trees within the Park. I won’t make it to Bryce Canyon today.

Robert Schaller
Summer, 2005