June 9 Day 13

Where are Tom and Lennie Now? -Click Here For Our Current Location

Today we left Bryce Canyon National Park, and headed for a scenic drive on Highway 12 in Utah.  Our plan was to travel through the Grand Staircase National Monument area, as well as Capitol Reef National Park. 

The Grand Staircase area was really interesting, the rock formations went from shades of red, to white, to green.

We saw many views like this one, where the road just seems to disappear into the foothills of the mountains.

Here is one of those areas where the stone was almost pure white.  For those with a little geology background, these formations are from the Meso-phanero-paleo-ceno-zoic-quatern-tertiary period.  Well, OK, I made that crap up, let's just say they are REALLY old and leave it at that? 

This was a really neat section of road, even though the picture does not do it justice.  It is referred to as a saddle, the road sits along the peaks of the mountain, and a huge drop exists on both sides of the road, down into the canyon below.  Unfortunately, I did not get to sight see much, as the winds up there were very gusty and tended to push the bike around.  With only the road width to drive on, I was watching the yellow line more than the scenery.

More of those white rocks, these ones had a bunch of wavy lines.

The colors in this area were just incredible !!  More of those disappearing roads too...

Near the end of the day, we reached Capitol Reef National Park.  The park is huge, but the roadway within the park is pretty short (about 20 miles round trip).  Most of the park is only accessible via 4 wheel drive vehicles or on foot.  We had neither.  OK, we do have feet, but they were very tired from Zion and Bryce, and the temperature was 95 at this point, so we chose to just partake of the 20 mile scenic drive. 

Sometimes Lennie is afraid that I will miss an interesting sight, so she tries to help me out whenever she can, by pointing them out. 

Below is our route for today, we covered 157 miles, bringing our trip total to 3711 miles.

Tomorrow, we are headed to see the Natural Bridges National Monument, and then on to Canyonlands National Park.  We will be spending the night in Moab, Utah.  Time for me to get some rest, goodnight everyone.