Utah National Parks

In my previous blog I talked about Bryce Canyon National Park.   Utah has a many more National Parks and we visited four more:  Zion National Park, Capitol Reef, Canyonlands, and Arches.   Each is unique while being somewhat similar. 

Zion National Park is the oldest and most visited national park in Utah and exhibits some of the most spectacular scenery.  There are deep sandstone canyons, rock towers , high mesas and plateaus.   We hiked the River Trail along the Virgin River which is credited with forming much of the park with its meandering stream.   The River Trail was handicap accessible, and therefore very popular with everyone, while the more experienced hikers opted for the Narrows and other more strenuous hikes.   We also did the Lower Emerald Pool trail which was also billed as an "easy" trail.   It was, in the sense that you didn't have to scoot along slippery bare rock and hike for hours to reach the emerald pool, but it was quite strenuous if going up the side of a large hill bothered you.   We were disappointed in the emerald pool -- it was small and scummy.   The waterfall we were expecting to see was not the roaring type but merely a weak trickle over the edge of a cliff.   The Minneopa Falls in a dry summer has more action that it did.  It was nice to be able to look UP at the beautiful canyon walls instead of down as we did at Bryce Canyon.
The bus system made it easy to go from one trail head to another and the buses ran every 10 minutes.   It was one of my favorite parks.

Capitol Reef was our next adventure.  It's a small national park, but has the honor of having been the west coast of the US in ancient times.   The reef was actually the end of the land mass (no Nevada, no California), and the rocks show the ripples of the tides and there are many fossils of aquatic life to view.  The reef itself shows the geology of various levels of activity.   Unique to the park is the Fruita area which was settled by Mormons in the 1800's.   Several orchards of peach, pear, apple, and plum trees are still in the area, as are the home of the Gifford family, the last Mormon family to leave the park in 1969.
We didn't hike any trails in this park, but we did stop and pick enough apples to make an apple pie and still have enough apples for an apple crisp later.   The fruit is free for the picking, but we were too late for the peaches and pears :-(

I'll fill you in on Canyonland and Arches in my next blog!