To be honest, I'd never heard of this place until we started planning this road trip. It's embarrassing to admit.
We thought it would take about an hour. Were we ever wrong. Took double that, because the road is a series of turns and passes, including one place where there was a 10% grade, the steepest we had ever encountered.
But what a beautiful drive. The passes were high (9300 feet), making the engine labor on the way up, and the brakes and transmission labor on the way down. We happened to catch the Aspen turning, and saw some amazing sights. Vicky captured as much as she could out of the window, but we felt bad that we couldn't stop and really enjoy what we were seeing in our need to get to the campground before all of the sites were claimed.
We did, however, drive past three campgrounds that we had down as possibilities for this trip until we found they were closed for the season because the water has been turned off. It is already too cold this time of year. The area is very desolate.
When we finally got to a gas station, prices were high.
Vicky got me a cup of coffee there--$4. $4 for gas station coffee?
Capital Reef is beautiful, with much of the same type of beauty we have seen at Red Canyon, Bryce, Zion, and Escalante. Huge rock formations. Multicolored. Stunning vistas.
We stayed at Fruita campground. It was a former Mormon community of about three families.
We got a spot right next to one of the old orchards. How often do you get to camp right next to a fruit orchard where you are allowed to pick and eat as much as you want? We also found a spot that gets sun for a few hours of the day, so our solar panel will keep us all charged up.
We found several hikes in the area. For today we decided to hike to Fremont Lookout. The trail head began close to our campsite, at the location of a shed and blacksmith shop of some of the original settlers of the area.
Check out this unusual this tractor. 4-wheel drive. From this photo one can see that the 4-wheel drive was done by a chain drive connecting the front and rear wheels. Ingenious.
So how did one use this behind a tractor? It had a seat, wheels, and a long fork? Where did the farmer sit?
I have never seen or heard of a tractor that was designed in this way. It was designed to be driven from the attachment, not the tractor! In other words, the farmer sat on the attachment, some 15 feet behind the tractor, and drove the tractor. The tractor actually had reins, like a horse.
Why would someone design something like this? I presume because most farmers already had plows, rakes, etc., that could be pulled by horses. So when the tractor went into production, the makers realized that unless they designed it for the attachments farmers already had that farmers wouldn't be able to afford the tractor and all new attachments. Solution? Make the old attachments for horses work on the new plow.
This place gets my vote for the most interesting trail head I have ever seen.
The hike itself was all in the sun. We climbed about 300 feet to a flat mesa that extended about one mile. At first we thought our viewpoint was the big rock.
We climbed to be able to reach it, all ready to celebrate when we realized that we were only about half done climbing. The Fremont Lookout is actually a point on the tall peak behind this rock.
So up we went. Did I mention it was in the full sun? The hike was 4.5 miles, with 1100 elevation gain. We were sweating like crazy when we got to the top.
But was it ever worth it? We were the only people on the trail so once again felt like we were the only people on earth.
Here are two photos looking back down at the flat mesa we had crossed.
The hike afforded us a nice view of a rock wall/fence built by the settlers. Their cattle probably roamed the mesa, but they didn't want them to get down to their orchards which were near the creek (Fremont "river").
Many of the rocks along the trail had these interesting black coverings. They looked like burnt cross-word puzzles. Never seen anything like them.
Today's nature photograph. A dragonfly at Fremont Lookout.
Hike Report: Fremont Gorge Overlook, Capital Reef National Park, UT
(Note that the elevation gain changes a bit when one disables the elevation correction. Note also that, as is typical with both my hiking and biking Garmins, elevation gain does not always equal elevation loss, even though we always start and stop in the same exact location; I basically take an average of all of these figures to arrive at what I believe to be the best estimate of elevation gain. I also use data from two different Garmin computer programs, which usually provide slightly different estimates (one Garmin uses Google Maps and the other uses barometric pressure to estimate elevation). The figure I arrive at is probably accurate to within 50 feet or so, which is pretty good. Also, usually it is within a few feet of elevation gains provided on the occasional trail map that reports elevation gains of hikes, which makes us feel confident in what we estimate when this information is not provided by trail maps.)
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