2018-16 Capitol Reef National Park and Vernal Utah

2018-16

Bicknell Utah
Capitol Reef National Park
Ducheshe Utah
Vernal Utah

hwy 191 near Red Fleet State Park, UTAH

Red Fleet State Park, Utah

Campground: Aquarius Inn & Rv park, Bicknell Utah. $20 full hookup. Rv site is separate from the hotel and contains a couple of old mobile homes. Town currently has only one restaurant and gas station. Approx 10 miles from Capitol Reef.

Aquarius Inn and Rv park, easy access, cheap

Ducheshe County Fairgrounds. Free parking lot. Odd because they have a new Rv campsites with full hookups, but are not able to rent them out. Read following report.

Ducheshe County Fairgrounds., RV park off tot the left
but currently they are not available for rent, read story....

Campsite: Vernal Walmart. Parking lot, free.

Walmart parking lot camping

Campground: Steinaker State Park (Vernal) Utah. $23 partial hookup (electric/water) $8 reservation fee. No over-the-air Tv, no Verizon signal (must go into town, 7 miles away), good radio reception. Campsites do not have water views, but a nice walk will bring you to the lake.

Steinaker State Park

Camper note: Plenty of boondocking sites before entering Capitol Reef NP.

I continued my journey along scenic route 12, stopping at a couple of scenic pull-outs along the way. The road had been recently improved between Cannonville and Escalante making for a pleasant drive. Evening stopping to see an ancient “cliff granarie” high up in a sheltered alcove. The “scenic” part of the drive came between Escalante and Boulder. The road winds through a mountain range to an elevation of around 9,000 feet and grades between 8,9 and even 10%. That wasn’t the most exciting part of the trip, it came when I reached the summit and discovered a section of the highway had no barriers on either side of the road as I wound my way along the top of the mountain. Shear cliffs descending on either side. I quickly felt light headed, butterflies in my tummy and close to shear panic. If you ever want to feel like your on top of the world, this place would pretty much do. It seemed to go on forever, though in reality it was just over a mile in length before land started to appear on either side of the roadway. My heart continued to beat faster as I slowly and I do mean slowly inched along the top of this mountain ridge. Of course there wasn’t a guard rail in sight, all the easier to see over the edge. Ekkk! Well obviously there was no turning back, just the thought of that gives me shivers.

Ps: No pictures. Are you kidding, who would want to relive that moment a second time.

off of the mountain ridge, I'm able to enjoy
the scenery

near Boulder Utah

Boulder Utah, my heart rate is back to normal

I finally descended and entered the town of Boulder Utah where I visited the Anasazi State Park. It has an archaeological dig of an ancient pueblo building. Not terribly exciting, though I did notice that all of the original wooden posts had been burned, so when the Indian’s left, they must have burned the place down.

Anasazi State Park.

Anasazi State Park. rebuilt 

Over another mountain range and I descended into Torrey where I’d planned on staying at a commercial campground. None were available in my preferred price range, but the visitors center recommended The Aquarius Inn/Rv park in the next town over. Turned out perfect as the price was only $20. The next day I drove over to Capitol Reef National Park. It contains some of the most unusual and diverse rock formations, colors and just darn strange shape for rock I’ve ever seen. The main entrance to the park in a valley called Fruita, a lush stream fed area where the ancient Native Indians once farmed and later the Mormon’s settled and began growing fruit trees. An old school house and Petroglyph panel’s can be seen on the sides of some of the sandstone walls. Another “scenic” drive goes through the park, but fortunately, no death defying vistas. Just a pleasant, if narrow road leading through the canons in the park.

Just a note, the half dozen small towns/settlements I’ve recently passed through have No commercial stores or restaurants, not even the usual Dollar General or Family Dollar. We are talking really small farming towns or in some cases, settlements on the edge of a tourist attraction.

Capitol Reef National Park

This is Capitol Reef, I recently read where Zion NP had an
average of 30,000 visitors a day, some guests had to wait a hour
and a half to get on the trams

Distance traveled: 100 miles
Distance traveled: 58 miles

Ducheshe Utah. I stopped at this very small town expecting to just camp out in their parking lot. Come to find out they have a brand new campground with full hookups but are not permitted to use it because the County manager signed a “non-compete” agreement with the major of the small town, since he owns a dilapidated, run down, Rv park right in town. Can we say “dumbest move ever”. Well I did stay overnight in the parking lot. The Fairgrounds has a lot of new buildings including an Event Center, but once again, the only thing the place is used for is a yearly rodeo type affair. The county preferring not to attempt using it for anything else.

The town is pretty depressed, I did stop in the local library and they are quite up-to-date with electronic equipment, laptops workstations, a 3-D printer which was kind of cool to watch and see what they had already made. Often giving away the item to kids who come into the library.

A number of motels and hotels have since closed and are boarded up. A newer hotel has been converted to an Extended Stay mini-efficiency apartments.

Vernal Utah

So with not feeling the town all that much I decided to head onto Vernal Utah, home a large Dinosaur Museum. The museum has an excellent timeline walk through, with appropriate fossils, petrified wood, dinosaur tracks and of course huge dinosaur bones/skeletons, all following the millions of years of timeline. The area has a fairly large population, with much irrigated farmlands surrounding the town and many of the homes and businesses must have “water rights” as well to have lush green lawns, trees, etc. I did hear one gal saying the property she’s on has those water rights which she has to pay an extra $40 a month for it’s use. Keep in mind, without the two rivers flowing through this area, it would look like the desert environment that it really is.

I had planned on Boondocking once again, but was thwarted with that particular attempt. I won’t go into details, but in was not pretty…. In place, I’m staying in a Walmart parking lot for a couple of days, after begin able to make a reservation at Steinaker State Park starting on Monday (Memorial Day) since all the weekend campers will have left by Sunday or early Monday morning.

Once arriving at Steinaker St Park, they informed me that they have 6 long term sites not listed on the web site and they would have been able to put me on one of those sites. So if you’re in the area and haven’t made reservations, give them a call or stop by, they just might be able to fit you in without a reservation.

The lake will be drained sometime this year as they need to do repairs on the earthen dam. They tell me about 10 feet of water will remain in the lake, not sure how much that will be as to forming a lake/view.

An awesome Dinosaur Museum in town which is sponsored
by multiple Government Agencies 

an entire wall of petrified plants

McConkie Ranch Petroglyphs

There are quite a few day trips to be taken from this area and I did the McConkie Ranch Petroglyphs on Sunday. A privately owned ranch that flanks large 200 foot tall sandstone cliffs. I really enjoyed exploring these glyphs and especially liked the various images and figures of Chiefs, Priests/Shaman and even what appears to be an entire family portrayed on the sandstone walls. Some figures as high as 9 feet tall. The trail was a bit challenging with lots of rocks to climb over around and squeeze through at times, but overall well worth the effort to see these images close up. I really need to get a walking stick.

pictograph including some color, imagine what it must
have looked like when 1st done

all cared for on private land

I could spend hours looking at these

great detail 

most of the color has been washed off of other pictographys
this is over 1,000 years old

stunning design

looks like an entire family,, not often depicted 

Chipmunks, prairie dogs and deer. Wildlife you say. Well that’s about all I’ve seen so far this past week. Steinaker State Park has lots of little chipmunks scurrying around, willing the campers to give them a free handout. In Vernal I saw a whole colony of prairie dogs in a vacant lot and out at the McConkie Ranch with all the deer antlers lined up along the fences, I actually saw a large magnificent deer running along the edge of a pasture. Largest deer I’ve seen in a long time.

Moonshine Arch

a classic view of Moonshine Arch

The visitors Center has a number of brochures advertising 12 day trips that can be taken from Vernal Utah. Since I’m only a mile away from the Moonshine Arch, That’s the one I did today. After driving along a gravel and sand road to the start of the hiking trail, I of course got lost on my initial route. I must admit the brochure, though very detailed, left a bit of the more important info out…. Like which direction to take once getting to the green gate. Instead of saying go thru the gate, the next line stated, the tour continues to the left (which was another dirt road). But eventually I found the correct route and was helped by a small boy-scout troupe with two den mothers leading the way.

sliding down the slick rock with fine sand

Basically a nice mile hike each way, through some fine sand, across smooth rock formations, as the trail continued to rise in elevation. Moonshine Arch is a best kept secret, being only 8 miles outside of Vernal. The massive arch is 85 feet long and about 40 feet above ground. Next to it are large shelter overhangs. Needless to say, Utah has a number of these gems scattered throughout the state. Really nice way to spend an early morning.

Note: you will need to get the brochure from the visitors center for directions as the dirt road in not marked off of hwy 191. The only signage markers are provided after you are on the dirt road for approx a quarter of a mile.

2 wheel drive parking area just before
entering the gulch

I think they are correct, this is not
suitable for a two wheel drive vehicle!

Red Fleet State Park, Utah

in search of dinosaur trackes

A few miles north of Steinaker State Park is Red Fleet State Park. I would have to say I think Red Fleet would be a nicer state park to camp in, as they have some really nice campsites with grass surrounding the campsites, paved camping pad and nice trees. All overlooking an impressive lake with boat rentals.

This is the location of more dinosaur tracks which are accessible via a mile and a half hike (each way) or a short boat ride, which I’ll take tomorrow as winds are expected to get up to 25 miles an hour in the area today. Red Fleet State Park has also been in the news lately, as tourists visiting the dinosaur track site have unknowingly been throwing pieces of the dinosaur tracks in the lake. Not realizing that it wasn’t just a stone they were throwing, but an actual dinosaur imprint.

I did make it to the site via a kayak the following day and it has been just a perfect morning outing. Getting to paddle out on the water in a kayak a short distance over to the dinosaur track site. Enjoying searching for the tracks on my own before a couple large families with young kids descended over the hill. They had taken the land route of about a mile and a half each way to get to the site I had just easily paddled over too. Many of the dinosaur tracks are 150 to 200 million years old. Only recently in time being exposed once again after all those millions of years at having been buried under sandstone layers. Kind of neat to be able to touch a dinosaur footprint that’s 200 million years old.

Afterwards, I paddled around on the lake a little bit longer, enjoying the large rock formations boardering the water. Overall a perfect mornings outing. Though I will admit, I’m not in the best of shape for paddling long distances I think I did alright on this venture.

these dinosaur tracks are between 150 and 200 million years old 

I’m continually amazed by the stunning geologic rock formations in this area of Utah. Signage along the highway tells the traveler which layer they are looking at as one passes by. Having been uplifted over centuries due to earth plate tectonic movements, earthquakes and erosion.

Well, I think that’s more than enough to report on this week, as I continue to enjoy traveling the back-roads. Can you believe I did all this in the past 7-10 days....

More Photos at:

Capitol Reef National Park

McConkie Ranch Petroglyphs

Vernal Utah area photos