Capitol Reef NP

The cliffs just north of Torrey turn bright orange red in the sunset light.

The Castle rocks near the Capitol Reef National Park’s visitor center stand atop layer after layer of sedimentary rocks of various shades and ages.

The original schoolhouse in the village of Fruita in Capitol Reef NP isn’t as close to the rocks that have fallen off the mountain above as it looks in this photo. But it isn’t that far away from them either.

Hiking back out of the Grand Wash in Capitol Reef National Park, I found two large slabs of rock that had fallen off the cliffs above and framed this view of the canyon terrain between them.

The Narrows in the Grand Wash of Capitol Reef NP have to rise hundreds of feet straight up to reach the afternoon light.

Dark weathering stripes on the Narrows cliffs even continue along the undersides of breaks in the vertical walls of the Grand Wash.

With all of the horizontal stripes of rock around Capitol Reef, you can also find vertical stripes of weathering where water has dripped down the cliffs in Grand Wash.

What does the Narrows in the Grand Wash look like if you try to look from the path up to the sky and back down to the ground behind you? It looks like this! (Try turning the image upside down to see what I mean.)

This quick grey squirrel bounded across my path and up the boulders on the other side in Grand Wash.

A hike on the eastern side of Capitol Reef National Park up a dry “wash” leads into a Narrows between cliffs towering hundreds of feet overhead.

A different perspective on sunset in Capitol Reed NP was looking through this gap in the rocks.

The best view of sunset in Capitol Reef NP may be from the red rock outcropping that these hikers climbed. I can’t be sure, since we stayed safely back on the main trail and just included their lookout in this image.

The cliffs in Capitol Reef NP reflect sunset light with a remarkable intensity!

The evening light from Sunset Point in Capitol Reef National Park makes the colorful cliffs look like over-exposed images. But they really are this bright!

Seldom will you find a campground with a scenic background like Thousand Lakes RV Park in Torrey, Utah.