Perhaps the most scenic byway in the USA...Utah Route 12, which leaves US 89 at the Red Desert in Hillsdale, Utah and continues a hundred miles or so to Route 12 in Torrey, may be the most spectacular scenic route anywhere. Boulder, Utah, a ranching community about in the middle, still received mail by mule until 1940, when the depression-created Civilian Conservation Corps built the road. It wasn't entirely paved until 1985. Near the western end of Route 12 is Bryce Canyon National Park. Capitol Reef National Park lies near the eastern end. All of the rest is either in the adjacent Dixie National Forest, or the vast southwestern Utah area which is the Escalante/Grand Staircase National Monument. All of it is magnificent. Around every bend is a new vista, often completely different from the scene that took one's breath away just a few moments ago.
The big kid with Escalante mountains, desert and mesas behind.
The town of Boulder, once the most isolated community in the United States.
Mary Frances in awe of a painted canyon.
A deep gorge cuts across the Grand Staircase National Monument.
The quaking aspens...
For years, in the crossword puzzles I've done far too many of, a common clue would be "quaking tree" or "forest noisemaker" and the answer was always: a-s-p-e-n. I wanted to hear for myself, so at an opportune moment high in the Escalante, we stopped and listened. It sounded just like wind blowing anywhere to Mary Frances, but there was a bit of crackle to it, and that was enough for me. When we got back in the car and descended the hill, we found ourselves in the seemingly unpopulated community of Grover. Had our friends the Grovers managed to beat us to this magic place? Then I remembered our passing through the town of Hatch day before yesterday; and that town even had a post office.
Listening to the quaking aspens at 9600 ft elevation, near Grover, Utah.
Mary Frances reading about and viewing the Tantalus Flats.
Sandstone sentries guard their mountain.
A typical view along Route 12, Escalante/Grand Staircase National Monument,
Utah, makes me wax poetic, within the limits of my ability to do so:
Escalante!
No artist's brush
Nor poet's pen
Nor stranger's tale
Can show the half of thee.
I am part of you
For a day or two or three
And then forevermore
You are part of me.
Stone Gods stand over nature's coliseum.
Capitol Reef...
Entering Capitol Reef National Park.
Sandstone structure, Capitol Reef National Park.
Don't park in the wash - flash flood warning signs throughout Capitol Reef.
A great formation in the Grand Staircase.
About the size of it...
It's impossible to describe how big something is in a picture in which the object is a mile and a half behind the person pictured for scale. Even more impossible when there's no person in the picture at all. But the truth is, all these structures, sandstone or granite, buttes or mesas or canyons, all of them are BIG. Here Mary Frances stands up close and personal with a wall of Navajo sandstone near the Capitol Reef. What you see is six or eight times her height, but in fact the wall shown extended five times higher than what is shown. Even the small structures here are big.
A human being is a tiny thing beside these great rocks.
The mysterious holes in the stone.
Reminds me of my great uncle Knute.
Relatives of the Michelin Man.
Welcome to Moab - across the Colorado River.
Our room at the Big Horn Lodge, Moab. A big improvement from our previous digs.
Canyonland by Night...
When we reserved our room for a two-night stay at the Big Horn Lodge, we also bought tickets for a dinner and boat ride known as Canyonlands by Night. This turned out to be a pretty decent "authentic" buffet cowboy dinner of barbecue pork or chicken with salad and fixings and a cash bar, followed by a boat ride on the Colorado with a light show on the adjacent canyon walls. To their credit, they didn't overlay cartoons or silhouettes or even colors, but rather used some high-powered lighting to illuminate and accent the natural shapes of the stone while telling the history of the place and letting your imagination find scenes in the light. Pretty much what we do day after day when we see these shapes in the light. We weren't allowed to take pictures, so there are none here, but the link above has many.
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