Category: September October 2024

Monday was another travel day. Short, just over an hour until we arrived at our campground for the next 3 nights. It’s a State Park called Escalante Petrified Forest. There is a one mile trail in the park to show you a display of petrified wood. We had wonderful weather again and, with some shade at our site and good cellular (finally!), we decided to catch up on some reading.

Tuesday we headed out to the visitor centre for a bit of info on a couple of day trips. With recommendations in hand, off we went to the Hells Backbone Road. Built in the early 1900’s, it is a gravel road connecting the towns of Escalante and Boulder. Leaving Escalante, it is about 70 km round trip, coming back from Boulder along Hwy 12. It took us over 2 hrs to make the trip, much of it travelling no more than 35 km/hr.

Once we got to the top, we started a drive along the hogsback. At this point I was no longer happy when we were driving. The heights and narrow road, along with no guardrails were bothering me!

The aspens were putting on a show at higher altitudes. By the time we got down to Hwy 12, I had had enough! We headed a couple of kilometres on Hwy 12 to begin the Burr Trail.

The Burr trail was built by a rancher in the mid 1800’s through part of what is now known as the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument. It remained a gravel road until 1991 when paving began. Today all is paved except for a small section that goes through Capitol Reef National Park. We drove it for about 35 minutes before we turned around to come back to the camper.

Lots of slick rock during the first part of the road.

Getting back to Hwy 12 was easy, but the section of Hwy 12 from Boulder to Escalante included another hogsback! Spectacular scenery, just not so great for me! Going down from the hogsback had some sections of 14% grade. On Thursday we’ll be travelling this area again, only with the trailer!

Paul was happy to drive this section today since he could stop and take pictures. Once we are towing the trailer there won’t be places to fit us at the pull outs.

On Saturday, on the advice of one of the volunteers at the Red Canyon visitor centre, we headed west towards Cedar City. We needed fuel and groceries but the volunteer told us the aspens were in peak along Hwy 143. This route would take us through another national monument and up to higher elevations again. We headed north on Hwy 89 and then west on Hwy 143 at Panguitch. We hadn’t gone too far when we came around a bend and immediately had to come to a stop!

There were a couple of shepherds on horseback who were moving hundreds of sheep to another pasture. They had a few herding dogs; some were working better than others!

Next came Panguitch Lake.

Finally we started to see the aspens!

Just after seeing the aspens, we arrived at Cedar Breaks National Monument. At over 10,000’ elevation, the view from Sunset Lookout was spectacular.

The view is three miles wide and 2500’ deep. We had a great viewing day!

We carried on towards Cedar City where the rock formations changed.

After stopping in Cedar City for fuel and groceries, we headed back Hwy 14 where we saw more aspens as well as Navajo Lake.

Our day had a perfect ending. We ate supper by the fire and then finally had a beautiful sunset!

Sunday was a day of rest and preparation for our move on Monday.