An Oasis

By: Ryan
   After leaving Bryce Canyon, we found a small hotel just outside of Capital Reef National Park, where we would spend a night in full sized beds, do some laundry, have a swim, and showers all around. We had learned that there were first come, first served campsites inside Capital Reef, so our night in the hotel also put us in good position to get a site before the afternoon rush. By noon we had selected a shady campsite a short walk across a grassy lawn from the bathroom.  The fact that there was shade and grass here in arid southern Utah was a welcome surprise. The main geologic feature that makes Capital Reef special is something called a water pocket fold and is responsible for this lush environment in the middle of a desert landscape. The park is centered around what is essentially a long buckle in the earth's crust which channels and protects any water that falls nearby.  In the late 1800's Mormon settlers happened upon this area and decided to stay. They used the relative abundance of water to establish orchards throughout the valley, orchards which are still maintained by the park service. Not to put too fine a point on it, but arriving in this park is a truly surreal experience. On one side of the road are multiple kinds of fruit trees in grassy orchards with sprinklers sprinkling, and on the opposite side, scrub oak, yucca, and immense rock faces rising up out of the dust.  That rocky, dusty landscape was really all we had expected to find for miles in any direction.
      We unhitched the trailer, had a quick lunch, and after a brief stop at the visitors center to pick up junior ranger booklets for the girls and get the lay of the land, we set out to have a look around.  We had a bit of time to kill before the ranger talk about the Freemont culture, so we found the peach orchard that had recently been opened.  You are allowed to eat as much as you like as you walk around in the orchard and you pay $1 per pound  for the peaches you haven't eaten as you exit the orchard.

Desert peaches

Kinda weird, right?

She's a picker,she's a grinner....

 After picking and eating a couple pounds of peaches and taking a short walk on the Grand Wash trail, we joined a small group for a ranger talk.  Over the past couple of weeks, of all the things Zoë has seen, she has taken a particular interest in Native American rock art, so she was excited to learn more about the park's set of petroglyphs in front of which we were gathered.  This set of images were etched into the sandstone patina over 700 years ago by the Freemont Indians about whom little is known.  The name Freemont is not what they called themselves but is the name given them by the first dude to find and catalog evidence of their existence. The name is simply a reference to their artifacts' proximity to the Freemont River.   The talk centered around a discussion of why it is we make images or take pictures, and the difficulty of assigning specific meaning to any given image.  The Freemont disappeared from this area in the 1300's, so the meanings and purpose of their rock art is a point of conjecture and contention even among experts.

Freemont petroglyphs

Here you can see what remains of a Freemont grainery, created by sealing off  a natural cave with a mud wall.

     After the talk, we decided to try to get a hot hike up to Hickman bridge in before heading back to camp for dinner.  Hickman bridge is a natural rock formation that sits at the halfway mark on a 2 mile loop trail.  As we neared the main attraction, the forces exerted on the surrounding rock by wind, water, and time became more and more apparent.  Everywhere there were hollows, ruts, and undercuts in the rock walls and floor where sand, stone, and current had sculpted the environment.  The bridge itself was an interesting and blatant demonstration of such forces, but as it is hemmed in on all sides by canyon walls, it is difficult to get far enough away from it to get a wide view. Soon after we started on the return half of the loop, we realized that we only had 30 minutes to get back to the truck and to the camp store  to get firewood before they closed.  Smores aside, we had planned to cook over the fire that night so the remainder of our hike was more like  a trail jog.  We got a bit sweaty, but managed to make it to the little store just in time to stock up on firewood and get a few homemade ice creams.

Enjoying the shade

Cavities in the sandstone wall still containing the rocks that created them.

The girls exploring an underground cave/tunnel thing.

Hickman bridge

This shot reminds me of the "Great Valley" in "Land Before Time".

Peas...

Cavities in the sandstone wall still containing the rocks that created them.

     This camp site turned out to be, by far, the most social of any we had stayed in so far.  There was one couple traveling with a Camp Inn trailer, a very cool teardrop that I had admired often online, but had never actually seen.  We swapped teardrop tours and a few travel stories.  The guy in the next site over had recognized Claudine as the little trailer he had seen back in the Jacob Lake campground,so we talked a bit about the build.  Two sites over on the opposite side, were an elderly couple whose license plate caught our eye.  Turns out, they are from the next town over from us back home and had been on the road,  tent camping for three months.  To top it all off, who should recognize Kat walking back from the bathroom but our German friends from Bryce Canyon, Jan and Frank.  All of this social distraction amounted to a pot of burnt potatoes, but also a lot of fun conversation.
     The sky began to darken, and Kat took the girls off to their second ranger talk of the day, "The Predator Prey Relationship".  In the mean time, I had discovered that Jan and Frank had never had a smore.  This clearly could not stand.  By the time the girls had returned, Jan, Frank, and I were set up around the fire and ready to get started on the "smurfs" (not before straightening out a little semantic confusion concerning the difference between roasted sugary treats and small blue woodland creatures wearing whitie tighties).  Kat demonstrated the proper marshmallow roasting technique and presented our friends with their very first smore.  They made possibly genuine, probably polite expressions of approval.  At any rate, they now had first hand experience of why it is that Americans are so fat.  During the tasting, the night sky had taken a turn for the spectacular.  Aided by the "sky guide" app on Kat's phone, Kinsey gave Frank and Jan a thorough tour of her favorite constellations.  We learned that where we see the Big Dipper, Germans see the Great Wagon (wagon here refers to a baby stroller).  It was getting late enough that the girls said goodnight and went to bed without being asked.  Kat and I stayed up til after midnight sitting around the fire with Frank and Jan.   We talked about everything from teaching and school systems to differences in political parties to popular theories about the hidden meanings in the "Smurfs" and "Scooby Doo".  In the morning, as we were slowly getting moving, our German friends came over to bid us farewell.  Safe travels were wished all around and they were on their way.
     Jan had said something to me early the previous evening that he attributed to his having had a couple of beers. He was talking about how he liked the message of the movie "Into the Wild" (Jan's interest in movies and theater crops up in conversation often).  He said that the main character felt he wanted to do things himself, on his own, but realized too late that he needed other people.  Jan said that he related to such a shift in perspective, and then quickly said "I don't know why I am saying this. Maybe it is because I have had a couple beers."  Beers or no, for me this was a perfectly apt sentiment.  We  had been on the road for about a month now , with intervals of fairly limited interaction  with people outside our little group; at least beyond a polite exchange or short chat. I have never been much of a conversationalist, but to make a friendly and genuine connection with someone, seems to help the traveler to feel a bit more at home.  This may seem a bit odd considering our friends were further from their home than we were from ours, but that is the way it seemed to me.  
    We said our goodbyes to our Massachusetts neighbors, dropped by the visitor's center so the girls could run through their junior ranger pledge and earn their plastic badges, and rolled down the road toward the park exit.  We had been watching the tops of rock outcrops since we entered Joshua Tree national park about a week earlier in the hopes of catching a glimpse of a bighorn sheep.  We almost didn't believe that they could actually live in some of the places where they supposed to be.  It was hard to imagine them finding enough food and water.  As we neared the edge of the park, however, Kat started hopping around in the passenger seat and yelling about bighorn sheep.   We pulled over, jumped out, and trotted back down the road a bit.  He was way up there, but silhouetted against the sky and framed by his rock niche, he was unmistakable.  He had come out just to see us off; awfully nice of him.