Escalante Grand Staircase

Heading south from Capitol Reef NP on National Scenic Byway route 12 takes you through Escalante Grand Staircase National Monument.  The scenery is awesome, red rock and sandstone vistas from high vantage points where you can see forever.  The Monument has no visitor center; it's a drive through with several campgrounds along the way.  Trying to capture the vast panorama with a camera is an exercise in futility.  Do the drive.

A half mile section of the route, the Devil's Backbone, is extremely narrow and twisty and has no guardrails or shoulders.  You run off the road and you're toast, sheer drops of 2-3000' on both sides.  The speed limit in that section is 20 MPH and I had no problem whatsoever staying at that speed or even less.  It's a top contender for the White Knuckle-Max Pucker Factor Scary Mountain Road Trophy.

 

Above and below: petrified wood.  Beautiful stuff.

 

Looking down at the park and reservoir from the petrified wood trail.

Now, we're camped at Escalante Petrified Forest SP, near the town of Escalante, UT for 3 nights.  We did the petrified forest hike yesterday, and the the town (population 500) last night.  Doing the town consisted of listening to live music provided by none other than our campground host, and sharing a burger and fries at the Cowboy Blues Bar & Restaurant - a very enjoyable evening.

The altitude here is 6000', temps are comfortable, highs around 80, lows of 60.