Wood's Prairie Travels

The drive between Boulder, Utah, and Escalante, Utah, on highway 12 was... shall we say "interesting". The road travels up, over, down, and back up onto several plateaus. The view of the surrounding country on the tops of the plateaus gave us an idea of the vast territory. It also gave us views of impending storm clouds on the horizon. The road itself had several 8% downhill grades and a 14% downhill grade which for those of you who don’t travel these types of highways is really steep! Add to that one section where the plateau literally narrowed to a thin neck on a ridge and dropped off hundreds of feet to the Escalante River valley on one side and another canyon on the other side. It made for a tricky drive. The Escalante area is known for its hiking trails and exploration. However, it is also known for flash flooding... so with the rain on the horizon, we didn’t stay long this trip.

Imagine being an early settler heading west and you successfully made it across the Rocky Mountains only to be confronted with towering golden cliffs that are almost one hundred miles with no break in sight? Well, that is what they encountered when they came to what is now call Capitol Reef National Park. Evidently, the pioneers thought the giant white sandstone dome looked like the “Capitol Building” and the steep ridges of sheer rock looked like an impenetrable “ocean reef” – thus they named it Capitol Reef.  The geology of the area is very interesting since numerous forces created it over millions of years. What had been a seabed with lava flows encroaching on the shoreline was tilted upward in what scientists call a “waterpocket fold”. It kind of wrinkled the landscape.  As you drive through the north end of the park you can see many holes that have been eroded into the golden sandstone that was once a seabed.  Scattered across this part of the country are ...

Did you ever see the movie “Galaxy Quest”? If so, do you remember the scene where the crew was in a rock-strewn valley and got attacked by Stone Monsters? Some of those scenes were filmed in Goblin Valley State Park which is in between Arches and Capitol Reef. Often called Hoo Doo’s by scientists, in this park these unusual shapes are referred to as “Goblins”. And they certainly do create a “goblinesque” spooky feeling while exploring them. The geologic erosion process in this area is a bit unusual in that spheroidal weathering causes these rounded, and seemingly sculpted, “goblins” from the Entrada layer of sandstone which has softer layers of silt and shale. You can wander into narrow cracks of the sandstone cliffs which are topped by the goblins.  Nearer to the valley floor you can see how the water erodes vertical cracks in the golden-red sandstone. It almost looks like dripping candlewax in places. We camped in a BLM dry campsite on the north side of the park in Little W...

What would it have been like millions of years ago when huge sections of Earth’s crust tilted? If there had been people, would they have felt enormous earthquakes? Maybe there was loud roaring and billowing dust as the crust broke and violently faulted upward? Were dinosaurs stampeding away from the sight? The San Rafael Swell in southeastern Utah did just that. Driving west of Arches National Park, on I-70 you can see the gigantic tilted and broken sections of Earth’s crust that extend as far as the eye can see.  Did the event happen all at once like the super volcano of Yellowstone or was it a slow process that creaked and cracked and groaned over millions of years? Any way it happened, the scenery left behind is pretty awesome to view and hard to imagine. If you could travel back through time, would you want to go back to witness an extraordinary event like this? While traveling, we have seen many sights that leave us feeling like tiny grains of sand in a huge desert. Humans...

Many national parks have become so crowded that you now have to get a timed entry ticket before you can enter. Arches National Park is one of those parks. It is easy to understand why so many people from around the world come to view the many natural features within this park. We heard conversations in quite a few different languages as we wandered along the trails. The natural wonders begin just after entering the park when the road steeply climbs several hundred feet above Highway 191 in a series of sharp hairpin curves.  The road through Arches winds around many natural formations. Whether they have actual “arches” in them or not, the cliffs of red Entrada Sandstone have been eroded over the millennia by the weathering forces of wind and rain into fantastic shapes.  In contrast, far to the east the volcanic La Sal Mountains are young and still covered with snow capped peaks. Many of the natural arches in the park are well known. For example, Delicate Arch which is pic...

About forty-five years ago I had taken a month-long geology course where we travelled throughout the southwest learning about the geology that created the amazing natural features found there. One stop had been to Dead Horse Point in Utah. I remember the fabulous view looking down into the Colorado River Gorge at the point of one oxbow bend. Although the view has not changed during the intervening years, the tourism features sure have! The road to the park now has numerous pullouts and view points. Even just driving in to the park is a miracle of sandstone layers and cliffs in a variety of yellows, browns, and reds. There is a visitor center and numerous picnic areas with shade covers in the state park. Many, many biking trails and a number of hiking trails now cover the area which had just been rock, sagebrush, and juniper when I had visited all those years ago. Also, probably most importantly, they have built rock walls to keep people from going out too close to the cliff edges. Ther...