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Wed |
Grand Junction to Capital Reef NP, 270 miles Camp outside NP |
Off to the wild wonderful National Parks! I head out driving through the Colorado Monument NP right outside Grand Junction. This is the place that a co-worker of mine at Virginia Tech (now living in Charleston, SC) and I got to visit many years ago while on business. It is still a beautiful scenic drive on top of the canyon rim with many overlooks to Grand Junction and the surrounding areas like Fruita. Driving on to Capital Reef via Green River, UT, the drive is positively wonderful. Long narrow desolate roads cutting through some of the most scenic countryside anywhere. Along the way in Hanksville, UT is a gas station built into the mountain, just like Hole ‘n The Rock. It is getting dark so I pull over in National Forest land and camp. |
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Thur |
Camp at NP |
Onward to Capital Reef, unique because of the dramatic geologic fault here. This is mostly a car tour place. I meet Barb & Jerry Gies fellow RV’ers whom I will run into for the next several parks. |
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Fri |
Capital Reef to Kodachrome Camp at SP |
Leaving Capital Reef and continuing through some of the most scenic byways I detour at Kodachrome State Park. So named by a National Geographic expedition here in the 1940’s because of the strong contrasting rock colors from near white to deep red and everything in between. The park system had to get a wavier from Kodak to continue using that name. A couple hikes through this area to see the "frozen" geyser formation unique to this park. It is speculated that this park was as geologically active as Yellowstone is today and the areas around the geyser pools were harder rock, thus the surrounding land eroded away leaving these tall spires. |
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Sat |
Kodachrome to Bryce, 60 miles Camp at NP |