Cathedral Valley

There are so many places to view the magnificent rock formations in Capitol Reef National Park. We have hiked several trails and driven along the Scenic Road and Hwy 24 so today we went off the main roads and traveled a gravel road recommended for high-clearance vehicles. 

The Cathedral Road started about 16 miles outside of the park in Caineville on Hwy 24 except that Caineville is not any more than a hole in the road, and there was no sign! So we drove past the turn off to Cathedral Road by about 8 miles, turned around and almost drove past it again! Then John let me drive so he could be the sightseer for a change. I don’t think I scared him to badly!

We had only made it about 5 miles when we stopped and aired down the tires due to extreme washboarding on the gravel road. That helped some but it was still really bumpy. In fact, it was so bumpy that my FitBit recorded each bump as a step and I logged 18,000 steps in the Jeep!

We drove past more fabulous rock formations, canyon walls, and desert landscapes. According to the map we passed the North Caineville Reef, Red Desert, Wood Bench slopes, the Middle Desert, the Monoliths and, of course, Cathedral Valley.

One set of rocks were called the Temple of the Sun and the Temple of the Moon. The Canyon walls all along the Valley reminded me of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, another setting felt like the Throne of Zeus or temples for the Greek Gods.

At the end of the road we headed up into the Fishlake National Forest where the topography changed to mountain forests with golden and fiery Aspens among the cedar and pine trees. Fishlike was invitingly blue and John wished we had more time here so he could try his hand at fishing on it.

It was a long drive back to the RV park.