Start Location: Moab, UT
Ending Location: Cedar City, UT
Miles Today: 341
Trip Miles: 3449
States Visited: 8
National Parks Visited: 8
Low Temp: 68.3° F
High Temp: 97.6° F
Min Elevation: 3975'
Max Elevation: 8407'
Route Map:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoodoo_%28geology%29
National Parks 2010 - Day11
We slept in this morning so we got a little bit of a late start but
were still on the road by about 9:15. We continued north on route
191 out of Moab to I-70 which we took west for only about 30 miles.
Finally we exited to route 24 which would lead us to Capitol Reef
National Park.
Capitol
Reef, like much of southern Utah is composed of colorful canyons,
buttes, and monolithic rock towers. Route 24 actually passes
through the park and this is one of the parks with no entry fee, so we
didn't need to use our pass. The park is long and narrow being
100 miles long but much narrower. We road route 24 and took
plenty of pictures while also stopping to take pictures of some of the
many petroglyphs in the area. We also stopped at the visitor
center and took an 8 mile scenic drive south into the park. The
drive was actually 10 miles but the last 2 miles are gravel and
we decided to forego that. We also stopped at a large picnic area
where we ate lunch and met a nice couple from Scotland who were here on
a National Park bus tour. They had a group of 44 people from
Great Britain, Wales, annd Scotland. They arrived in Denver
on September 2 and will be leaving Friday from Phoenix. They were
enjoying the tour but had been so many places that they were having a
little difficulty remembering where they had been and when - we can
certainly sympathize with that.
Speaking of meeting people,
I forgot to mention that when we were in Alamosa we met a couple
from Australia. They were on a Harley that they had shipped over
here to tour. They had been on the road since July 10th and were
going to be here for another two weeks before heading home.
Once
we left the park, we worked our way northwest for a while and then
headed southwest to our final destination for the night in Cedar
City, Utah. Traveling in this part of the country can be a real
adventure. The two lane roads we chose this afternoon didn't look
very special on the map but we passed over two passes in the 8000'
range and had beautiful twisting roads interspersed with long roads
that seemed to go all the way to the horizon. Like usual - no
traffic. It's seldom boring here.
We will head to
Bryce Canyon National Park tomorrow morning and plan to return to Cedar
City tomorrow night to wash clothes and rest up for the push home.
We're looking forward to this one since it is one of our favorite
parks - can you say hoodoos. We plan to spend several hours just riding around in the park and stopping for the views.
