This morning, we got up early, and took a drive to Sunrise Point to watch the sunrise. However, the weather didn’t cooperate, and we ended up with a marginal sunrise. It was fun to practice, though, despite the cold.

As we were leaving Sunrise Point, we ran across three mule deer scrounging breakfast. These animals were wonderful to watch, and had an impressive elegance about them. We watched them for thirty minutes or so, and let them go about their business.

We set our sights on Capitol Reef National Park, and started our drive. Little did we know how far that was from Bryce! I’d see some information indicating it was three hours, but I figured I’d beat that time easily. Not hardly. Even if there weren’t a ton of neat places to stop and look over the terrain, it was still a slow, tough drive, with lots of climbs up and down mountains. I think the highest we were on was over 9000 feet.

Once again, there was an abundance of birch trees, with the occasional pine after we crossed 8000 feet – very reminiscent of our drive to the Grand Canyon. This time though, the pines were the minority, with the birches owning the land for as far as you could see.

We finally arrived at Capitol Reef National Park, and started our drive through it. Again, it was full of unusual rock formations, along with intrusions from the Fremont River. My favorite stop was the petroglyphs. I’m finding that I am somehow drawn to this odd form of communication – almost as though the past is reaching out to me. The glyphs at Capitol Reef were similar to those I saw at the Grand Canyon – I can’t wait to compare them side by side. There were quite a few more here, along with some more modern scratchings – dated 1911 and 1945 – all of which lived pretty well together.

We decided to start heading toward St. Louis, and got our van pointed toward Colorado, with us spending the night in Grand Junction.

Grand Junction, BTW, is the first time we’ve seen a cell phone signal since we passed through Flagstaff Thursday evening. Obviously, cell phones don’t mean much to the desert folk!