On my motorcycle ride across the country earlier this year I wasn’t able to stop and photograph as much as I had envisioned. I had less time for the trip than I had originally planned, and the daily planning required for selecting routes and making motel/hotel reservations took up a lot of the time that I wasn’t actually riding. In some stretches of the ride I trailed storm systems that were traveling west to east, as I was, so on a few days in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee my days effectively got shorter as I waited to start the ride, hoping the systems would get ahead of me enough that I wouldn’t ride into them. On top of all that, it wasn’t easy to stop and take a stroll or hike with my camera away from the motorcycle to look more deeply at an area or subject that’s caught my eye. I couldn’t strip off the bulky protective gear and stow it securely because the cases on were full! However, toward the end of one of my days in Utah I rode down into Capitol Reef National Park and at the end of the paved road I left my jacket and helmet on the motorcycle in a quiet spot and walked down the dirt road into the amazing Capitol Gorge.
Capitol Reef’s spectacular landscape is the result of a long fold along a fault in the Earth’s crust, the Waterpocket Fold, that exposes layers of sandstones. Castle-like promotories along the steep cliffs jut above broken layers of rock.Erosion by rains and floods has created twisting narrow canyons along the edges of the fold’s vertical cliffs. It was down into one of these canyon’s that I walked. Here, looking at the entry to the gorge, a white dome of Navaho Sandstone rises beyond the steep red walls guarding the entrance.I loved the tall sharp edges and smooth faces of this beautiful cliff of red sandstone. According to Wikipedia, sandstones in these layers are “the remnants of wind-born sand dunes deposited approximately 200 million years ago.”In this image you can see various colors of sandstones from different eras, with the white Navaho Sandstone at the top.The entry to the gorge is an old wagon trail that used to be the main route into the park in its early years. As I walked down the quiet dirt trail, the late afternoon sun grew stronger, making for nice light and emphasizing the textures of the walls.Here at a bend in the canyon holes and perforations in the sandstone on the right loom above the trail.Long horizontal stretches of these patterns of erosion look a bit like the texture of a tasty rustic bread.The honeycomb of surface holes, called solution cavities, is called tafoni. The holes develop on the surface of the sandstone faces as weaker spots are eroded. The steep curving walls, high and low, the narrow space, and the fantastic textures create a special feeling and place.Here the tafoni blends into a striated base that follows the turn of the rock face from vertical to sloped. A few little scrubby plants hang on!Steep textured walls overhang the narrow trail – nice!A narrow band of glossy tafoni projecting from the base of red sandstone looks like a meringue.Walking back out, the low sun highlights the textures and and layers of stone – and the bright green of a few plants of the sparse desert scrub.The late afternoon sun throws the surface features of this tall face into high relief.The low sun is also catching the jagged edges of the sharp projecting cliff edge and the layers of sandstone below. A last look at the steep walls late in the day before I get back on the motorcycle and ride the scenic road back out of the park.
