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Capitol Reef NP - Day 1.5Apr 26, 2008
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Carly at the Nature Center painting with mud. Yes, she was a...
Making a mold of a critter print.
Washing said mold.
| Capitol Reef National Park, Utah - Day 1: We moved to the Fruita Campground in the park in the early AM. It’s a nice campground right off of the Fremont River in the valley and is surrounded by orchards. There are also several interesting hikes that leave from the general area. There is a nature center close to the campground that was opened for the first time of the year so we biked over and spent the morning there. The kids loved it. We did a nature scavenger hunt, made post cards, painted with mud, and made impressions of animal tracks with plaster of paris at a nearby creek. Carly and Erik made casts of deer prints while daddy made one of a raccoon track. All 3 children were satisfied. After stopping on the way back to procure scones, sweet potato butter, and homemade ice cream we hiked the Fremont River trail. The trailhead was 50 ft. from the camper. The kids did some scientific studies using things provided in the junior ranger backpack which we checked out. These backpacks are fantastic as they are filled with local natural science information, materials for experiments and games. The first study that the kids did was to identify aquatic insects from the nearby stream. All of the insects were found looking under stream rocks. The finds included mayflys, stoneflys, fishflys, as well as some un-identifiable subjects. In the evening, we attended a ranger talk at the campground amphitheatre. We learned interesting things about the geology as well as the valley and its settlers. The presenters were volunteer rangers who were some of the most knowledgeable that we have run across in the NPs. One of the most interesting things that we learned was about Horseshoe Canyon which we had hiked several days earlier. Recently an acoustics expert had figured out that every place where there were pictographs an individual could stand or sit at the very end of that stretch of the canyon and could talk in a low voice and it would appear to anyone standing in front of the pictographs that the voice was coming out of the rocks. The theory is that Shamans would do this unbeknown to the others to keep in power. |
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