Capitol Reef National Park - The Valley of Cathedrals

Today we decided to take a ride outside the park called the Valley of Cathedrals.

We rented a Jeep Liberty for our 69 mile journey.  

Normally dry, Caineville Wash receives a small amount of perennial seepage water at Willow Seep.  Precious for livestock. 

You can see here the road is dirt bound and can become inaccessible during thunder storms.  

Marker for Temple of the Sun & Moon.  

Temple of the Sun a majestic free-standing butte that rises almost sheer from the valley floor to a height above 400 feet,  

A shirt distance from the Temple of the Sun is Glass Mountain, a curious mound of large selenite crystals. Selenite is Gypsum in the form of glassy crystals, its name means "moonstone." 

The road passes beside the clean-cut, vertical edge of a high bluff of Entrda sandstone called "Layercake Wall." The sheer face of the bluff displays numerous evenly bedded, varicolored layers of soft rock. 

The view of the Layercake Wall from inside our vehicle. 

 The intriguing layers of dark lava that can be seen from the roads in this vicinity are know as dikes and sills. 

We reach the marker for Gypsum Sinkhole. 

This sinkhole is a cylindrical pit about 50 feet in diameter, with sheer or overhanging walls.  At one time the pit was thought to be caused by a meteorite. Later studies led to the conclusion that it was created by the dissolving and draining away in the gypsum underlying Carmel formation.  Several years ago a party explored the sinkhole with ropes descending to 200 feet beneath the rim.

Cathedral Valley Junction routing point. 

Just Beautiful!

This shows our trail heading up out of the canyon.  

The Leslie Morrell Line Cabin and Corral are located in the Cathedral Valley section of northern Capitol Reef National Park in Utah. The cabin was built in the 1920s on Lake Creek by Paul Christensen at his sawmill as a summer residence for Christensen and his family. Christensen sold the cabin to Leslie H. Morrell around 1935, who took the cabin apart and rebuilt it at its present site for use as a winter camp for cowboys on the Morrell ranch. The use continued until 1970 when the area was sold to the National Park Service. It is one of the best-preserved relics of ranching activities in the park.

We have 29 more miles to travel. 

A view of the Upper Cathedral Valley.

Little did I know I was witnessing my first cattle round-up. 

Two cowboys and three dogs herd the cattle up the road.

You can see a better picture of the cowboys in this photo.  I was amazed how easily they herded the cattle.   

Every park has a balanced rock and we found ours. 

We decided we would take the short 1/4 mile hike to the Lower South Desert Overlook.

It's me.  Now where did I leave the jeep?

The overlook is on top of a line of high cliffs. 400 feet above the valley floor.

We decided to call this "Rings of Saturn" 

The Fremont River is rarely more than a foot deep but today we estimated that it was 

about 1-1/2 to 2 feet in deep.  Four wheel drive though not always necessary was a welcome relief to us.  We know we would have not made the drive in the mini-van.  The drive took us some six hours in total.