May 14-15, 2017 Escalante, to Capital Reef National Park, Utah

We hiked Upper Calf Creek Falls today. It is a short, steep hike on slickrock down into the falls.

Overlooking a pool near the falls in an alcove. The vegetation was very lush. A view of the the top of the falls and the pools above it.

John standing in a circle in the rock. You don’t see circles very often. One of the pools above the falls with a falls at the end.  

Pools with in pools. Oak trees near the bottom of the falls.

This is good as a view as you can get of the lower falls that drop 87 feet. It is chocked with poison ivy, some as tall as I am, near the bottom.  John dodging the poison ivy.

Yucca blooms and poison ivy at eye level. The slick rock is so white it looks like snow. It has black lava rocks on top of it. 

  Scarlet Gila, a don’t poop sign above the falls. I guess they have been having some sanitation problems with the water runs high during rainstorms, polluting the river. Paintbrush and wild lines in the rocks. We stopped at The Kiva for lunch. It is a round coffee house decorated like a kiva inside with windows all around. We had a great view of the Escalante River during lunch.

A wild rose, evening primrose and another weird rock. It has a high iron content.  On our way to Capital Reef we went up to over 9,000 feet, where the aspen are just thinking of budding. There was snow in some places.

We are now camped at the campground at Capitol Reef. It is a lovely campground with trees and a river running by it. Lots of birds. There is weather coming in, the clouds were very interesting. We hiked to the visitors center from the campground to check things out.

At the visitors center John noticed this bat that was caught in the grill of a truck! Seen lots of insects and such, but never a bat. More even weirded clouds.  

This area was homesteaded by about 10 mormon families in the late 1800’s. They planted orchards. We just missed them all blooming. This is the garage for one of the homesteaders. It has a blacksmiths shop and tracter among other things. Trees hanging over Fremont River.

One of the homesteaders houses, well the back from the trail. It is open as a museum and gift shop now. We stopped for homemade ice cream. They also have homemade pies and baked goods.