With a storm imminent, we headed for pavement, abandoning our plan to do a Quandary/Knotted Rope combo. During the night, the rains came. It was one of those cold fall rains that seems to wash everything. The colours on the trees seem crisper, the smells sharper. Just lovely. In the AM, a lull in the rain allowed us to break camp and we headed toward Capitol Reef. Then the skies opened up. Waterfalls came from every direction. The road became a huge puddle of flowing water. We went waterfall hunting. At a stop in Fruita we saw a large tree slump low over the road. An irrigation channel undermined the roots and the tree was playing “Low Bridge over highway 24.
Why I failed to turn on the video on my camera, for what happened next, I do not know. The tree slumped lower to about 10 feet over the highway. A NPS vehicle arrived, but pulled over the side of the road rather than staying in the road. A camper on a truck pulled around him and with Jenny in the road screaming for the fellow to stop, the driver accelerated. The cab of the truck made it under. The camper shell did not. It missed by 4 feet in fact. What was this guy thinking? The driver backed up a bit, just in time for the tree to come crashing down on the hood of his truck. Priceless.
Carol, Jenny and I drove about looking at the various falls and returned just as the road was finally cleared via chainsaw and bulldozer. Carol was off to Prankfest. Jenny and I to Mike and Gary’s, in Boulder, with stops in the aspen groves carving the day up into pieces between many downpours. We sat out the evening and rains of the next day at the Saddle in total comfort. More friends were coming and the canyons would be wet. Pictures? https://picasaweb.google.com/aramv14/WaterfallsInCapitolReef101212