Day 43 Summer 2010 Park to Park Road Trip

We start out today for a brief bit driving through a 4 KM section in the Northern part of Bryce Canyon National Park..

We leave the park and drive along Utah 12 heading towards Grand Staircase – Escalante National Park. This is a part of the National Park that we have not visited. A few days ago we were visiting the Southern section of GSENP and now we are in the Northern section. As we drive along Utah 12, it weaves in and out of the northern border of the park about 5 times. If we are not in the park, then we are in the Dixie National Forest. I did not differentiate between the two when naming the photos. That was just too complicated a process.

Here is the welcome sign and the visitor center.

At this point of the trip, we are definitely out of the Park and are now driving on Utah 12 Scenic Byway.

The wildflowers are in bloom in this meadow.

It was a short drive today, only 180 KM but it was a very scenic and enjoyable. It is impossible to duplicate the beauty of yesterdays drive, but this is a close 2nd. Here is some of the scenery that we saw.

This next little bit of the road was actually a bit scary. My heart skipped a beat or two as we drove this section. We are at about 8000 feet altitude and are just cresting the peak of the mountain that we have been driving up. The road crests at the top and then for about 500 feet we are literally driving on the peak of the mountain. On either side of the road, the edges drop away into nothingness. If you were to drive off the pavement, you would be careening down the mountain side till you wound up at the bottom several thousand feet below. When building this road, they literally just graded off the peak of the mountain wide enough for 2 cars to drive on.

I have driven on many roads these last few road trips, where one side of the road or the other side of the road dropped off dramatically and dangerously, but this was my first time driving on a road where both sides dropped off. No guardrail and no one would even know you left the road. One wrong move, or someone not sharing the road and you would not live to tell the tale.

Safely across the mountain peak we are heading back downhill.

We saw some cattle wandering near the road.

And spotted a Mule Deer in the forest.

Then one dashed across the road in front of us.

We arrived at our hotel in Torrey UT, went out for a nice pizza dinner and called it a day.

If you would like to see all of our photos from today, you can find them on my FLICKR site.

Day 42 Summer 2010 Park to Park Road Trip

Today promises to be a good day for scenery according to one of our research book. We are going to visit 2 National Parks and one National Monument and drive on several scenic byways.

The first National Park is a section of Zion National Park that we have saved until today because it is at the North end of the park and we can do this on our way to the other places we will visit today.

This section of Zion is known as the Kolob Canyons.

Unfortunately because of the hour of the day, the sun is in the wrong position and is washing out all the colour and clarity of the photos. We stopped at the visitors center and got our passport book stamped and bought some souvenirs.

The canyon road is about 10 km to the dead end.

After leaving the Kolob Canyons, we continued on along the Markagunt High Plateau Scenic Byway.

We then turned onto the Cedar Breaks Scenic Byway and entered into the Cedar Breaks National Monument and showed our National Park Pass and bought souvenirs at the visitor center.

We are above 10,000 ft and it is a little cool to be dressed in shorts and t-shirt. The scenery at the Point Supreme lookout behind the visitor center makes up for the chill.

Next stop in the park is Sunset View.

This is not a big National Monument, but what it lacks in size it makes up in stunning beauty among the rocks and the wild flowers.

We exited the park and drove along the Patchwork Parkway Scenic Byway.

We turned onto the Journey Through Time Scenic Byway. This is where the scenery got really interesting and just kept getting better and better till we got to our hotel in Bryce Canyon UT. We took over 300 photos today, I am finding it difficult to whittle it down to just a few photos for the blog, but here goes…

We drove through an area known as the Red Canyon.

There were even a couple of arches to drive through.

After the arches we drove into Bryce Canyon National Park. Got our passport stamped and bought more souvenirs. My collection of a hat pin from each National Park and National Monument is really growing.

It is early in the afternoon and we have plenty of time to explore part of the park before we check into our hotel room. We will drive out to Rainbow Point and then stop at all the overlooks on the way back.

Rainbow Point.

Black Birch Canyon.

At Ponderosa Point we had fun posing with a raven.

Agua Canyon.

Natural Bridge.

You really need to park at each of these overlooks and get out of the car. If you just drive along the road, this is all that you can see from the car, you will miss all the natural beauty 100 feet beside the road.

Farview Point.

Paria View.

Bryce Point.

Sunset Point.

On our way to Fairyland Canyon we saw some mule deer.

Fairyland Canyon.

While we were here we also spotted a Steller’s Jay.

And we spotted a Pronghorn, but only got a blurry photo as proof.

So there you have it. What a wonderful day. We will return to the Bryce Canyon area in the future, there is so much more to see and do here.

The day was topped off when we arrived at the Best Western in Bryce Canyon, they upgraded us and gave us at no extra charge, an even nicer room than we had originally booked.

To see all of our photos from today, be warned there are over 300 of them, you can see them all on my FLICKR site.