This post could have also been titled "That Time I Tried to See All the Things." As it tends to go with these types of things, this part of the journey started with the best of intentions. Utah has crazy terrain and I had/have fallen in love. The land is just so completely different from the Northeast with its canyons, cliffs, and giant globs of rock. It didn't help matters that I had started to watch Ken Burns's National Parks documentary a couple of weeks before leaving for this trip. Apparently, according to Mr. Burns and crew, there were many places to explore and many were in Utah so onto the itinerary they went and I ignored those minor details of mileage and timing.
These two parks were visited on our way from Zion to Arches with an overnight in Escalante. I discovered after the fact that the most direct route between the two is 359 miles. In order to see Bryce Canyon and have a bit of an adventure in Grand Staircase-Escalante, we took the 402 mile scenic route which added 52 miles of off-roading. While I love driving on crappy/non-existent roads (10 points to the brother who taught me how not to destroy a car when not on pavement), turns out my traveling buddy does not. Whoops.
Our first stop was Bryce Canyon National Park. My main motivation for wanting to visit this park was the hoodoos. I mean they're called hoodoos and they look awesome so who wouldn't want to drive a bit out of the way to check them out? It's like Fraggle Rock. In the flesh. Only outdoors. And not a cave... just trust me on this one. If we had explored the area, I'm fairly certain that we would have found Wembley or at least Sprocket. Unfortunately for our traveling duo, we did not have time to check them out. So we did the next best thing and visited some sites along the auto-tour route.
Driving around to viewpoints is always subpar, while I did get to see my beloved hoodoos it ended up being a bit of a tease. My next trip to the area definitely has the goal of mingle with the hoodoos on it. (Can you tell I like the word hoodoo? If you're counting along, we are up to 5).
After spending about an hour in Bryce Canyon, we hurried on our way to Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. We had to beat the sun if we were going to be able to hang out in some slot canyons that afternoon. As the sun was just about to start thinking of setting, we made it to the trailhead and figured we could make our way through at least one slot canyon - Peek-a-Boo.
At the start of the trail, it doesn't look like much - just a descent into a wash surrounded by some desert-like terrain and a few trees thrown in to mix things up. But as we inched our way closer to the entrance of the canyon, I began to realize that we had initially been looking only at the top of it hidden in the terrain.
We began to wind our way through the curves of the canyon and it started to narrow making it harder to anticipate what was around the next corner. My friend spotted some feathers in a pile which looked like a bird had been recently caught. As we inched our way forward, I saw a fresh pile of someone's droppings so-to-speak which signaled us to hightail it out of there. It might be pertinent to mention that the last time this particular friend and I were hiking together and a pile of bird feathers were found, there was a bear cub around the corner. Oh and the night before the Bear Incident of 2014, we saw a mountain lion. Cool? Yes. But I have absolutely no desire to encounter another predator anytime soon. I've reached my quota for the decade.
We made it back to the trailhead without incident, which was perfect timing because the sun had just started to slip behind the horizon. Escalante is not only an amazing place to explore - there are so many other spots in the park I want to see - but it also gets bonus points because you can camp pretty much anywhere for free. Being two ladies from NYC, we obviously chose the spot that had cell service, was 100 yards away from one of those camper rv things, and was near the main road. This may have lead me to waking up 547 times throughout the night thinking we were about to be run over whenever a car drove by but at least I knew there were other people around. Someday I'll graduate to more remote camping in new places. Besides which I definitely have to come back. Twenty-four hours in these parks is just not enough. Lesson learned.
notes:
- if you are heading to any of the spots along hole in the rock road in escalante, make sure you have enough water, food, gas, etc. there are absolutely no amenities once you are there.
- the surrounding dixie national forest looks beautiful. i would have loved to spend some time there as well. just you know some food for thought.