Capitol Reef National Park

Capitol Reef is the quietest of Utah’s five national parks and the least understood. It exists because of the Waterpocket Fold — a wrinkle in the earth’s crust nearly a hundred miles long, where the rock layers were bent up on end and then cut open by water.

The developed part is small. The paved Scenic Drive runs south from the visitor centre, and Highway 24 crosses the park east to west, and between them they take a couple of hours. What is beyond them takes a different vehicle: Cathedral Valley in the north and the Burr Trail switchbacks in the south are high-clearance dirt, and both close after rain.

Fruita, in the middle of the park, is a preserved orchard settlement planted by Mormon pioneers in the 1880s. The trees still bear, and in season visitors can pick fruit in them for a small fee — cherries and apricots in early summer, apples and pears from late summer.

The slot canyons here flood. A storm well outside the park can put water through Grand Wash or Capitol Gorge with no warning at the canyon itself, which is why the forecast, not the sky overhead, is what decides whether to walk one.