Evening in Cathedral Valley

After yesterday's hikes it was nice to relax in the truck for a while and enjoy a little road time between Natural Bridges and Capitol Reef.  Speaking of which, the drive between those two parks has some of the most incredibly scenery to be found anywhere!  It is also a very desolate road with almost no development.  We arrived in Capitol Reef National Park during the early evening hours and were hoping to camp at the park's campground, unfortunately it was FULL.  So, we headed into the nearby town of Torrey hoping to find a nice private campground.  We certainly did find a nice place! We actually ended up renting a small camper cabin at a private campground on the west end of town.  The cabin was warm and cozy, there was a shower building AND the cabin had wi-fi!  We were in heaven :-)

This morning we had a nice breakfast at the cabin then headed out to explore Capitol Reef National Park.  We did a hike through the Grand Wash, which was really cool but also overloaded with people, being that it wasn't that far from the visitor center.  After that hike we couldn't wait to get into the backcountry of the park, which was our plan for the rest of the day and the next morning.  Earlier on in the trip we had decided that we wanted to see Cathedral Valley, which is a very remote part of Capitol Reef that is in the northern part of the park.  There are 3 different ways to reach the valley; we went in from the southeast direction via the Caineville Wash Road.  The road, like many in southern Utah, varies between a base of gravel, clay and sand.  It was actually in very good shape and we had no trouble at all passing through.  It is still a very remote area, though, and we only saw 3 or 4 other vehicles during our time in this part of the park. 

The first area of the valley that we came to was Lower Cathedral Valley, which is famous for its two massive sandstone monoliths known as the Temples of the Sun and Moon.  These monoliths are incredible... they are so big that you feel truly insignificant when standing alongside them.  We walked around the temples and photographed them from various angles then continued on the road to Upper Cathedral Valley.  We were, of course, hoping for a magnificent sunset but it was not to be.  Clouds moved in and made our evening light rather flat.  We drove up to the backcountry campground and set up our camp then returned to the valley to spend more time taking in the wonders of the cathedrals.  The sandstone here is endlessly intriguing.  The lines and patterns in the cliffs surrounding the valley made for some pretty interesting photographs.  As the light faded we made our way back to camp where we enjoyed a very calm and peaceful evening.  There was only one other party staying at the 6-site campground that night and we didn't hear a peep from them all night.  We crawled into our sleeping bags glowing from the excitement of another amazing day of adventure in the southwest, but also a little sad knowing that tomorrow we have to head home :-(