Travel to Escalante

This was a travel day, from Hurricane (our motel), through Springdale and Zion, up through Zion’s east entrance, to Bryce Canyon, and then on to Escalante.

We stopped first in Springdale for coffee. Our favorite coffee house across from Oscar’s Cafe was closed (Oscar’s, by the way, is a great place to eat), but we picked up coffee at another place. Then we were off climbing up out of the canyon to the east entrance on a switchback road with a long, narrow tunnel. The tunnel is narrow enough that motorhomes can’t stay in their lane, so when motorhomes are around (they were) there is traffic control limiting the tunnel to one-way traffic. We did have wait a bit to traverse the tunnel.

We didn’t stop again until Red Canyon (just a few miles west of Bryce Canyon). We hiked the short little nature trail and took photos of the hoodoos. One of the photos in the slide show below shows an anomalous collection of rounded grey stones among all the red sandstone. The guide pamphlet pointed out that this is an ancient streambed (and I just thought it was some grey rocks).

As we drove on closer to Bryce, we stopped at the Pines Motel and Restaurant and enjoyed a piece of apple pie. One of Karen’s friends loves this motel and area. It wasn’t fancy, just kind of homey.

We drove into Bryce and stopped at a couple of viewpoints. There are probably several interesting hikes, but we just weren’t up to it.

We arrived in Escalante just before dinner time, checked ourselves into our bed and breakfast room (the proprietor had just left a key for us), and walked to the nearby little cafe for dinner. While there I struck up a conversation with a photographer who was reviewing photos on his camera while waiting, and he showed me some very nice photos of Zebra Canyon. I think we need to go there.


Links
—Red Canyon, Bryce photo gallery