Capitol Reef is particularly remote among the many national parks that stretch across the extraordinary landscape of southern Utah. Perhaps its relatively recent establishment (1971) as a national park, or the location, accessible via a long, lonely stretch of Utah Highway 24, are why it is overlooked among other of the nation's great parks, or even the more heavily visited ones in Utah like Zion and Bryce. To say it stands alone among all the natural sites I beheld just on the trip would be strong words indeed. But Capitol Reef might be the most striking landscape in which I have ever found myself. Even before the park began, I thought, "this must be it," But no, it was merely the spectacular prelude, west of Torrey, Utah. When the park proper does begin as you wind east on Utah 24, the red rock buttes seem to go on forever. Utterly stunning. I was amused to read a sign just past the visitor center that read something like "scenic dr...