Utah Trip - Scenic Byway 12

The road from Bryce Canyon to Torrey, Utah, just outside of Capitol Reef National Park, has been designate a National Scenic Byway.  It travels more than 124 miles through slickrock canyons, red rock cliffs, pine and aspen forests, and alpine mountains.  It runs through the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, Dixie National Forest, and past a number of state and national parks and historic sites.  Our first stop on leaving Byrce was the Kodachrome Basin State Park.

The basin was named by the National Geographic Society after a visit in 1949 during which the Society members felt the colors were rich and diverse and showed up well on Kodak's signature film.  We hiked about 4 miles through the park which features a variety of sandstone pillars.  From there we headed east through the Grand Staircase - Escalante National Monument and passing a number of impressive western landscapes.

One of the landscapes is called The Blues.

                           This picture doesn't do justice to the expanse of this blue-gray formation.

As we continued along Scenic Byway 12 we reached a spot called Head of the Rocks, which is a desolate area east of the village of Escalante.

Our next stop along the Byway was at the Anasazi State Park Museum.  This archaeological site gives the visitor a look at the life of  the Ancestral Pueblo who lived in the area of Boulder, Utah, between 800 A.D. and 1000 A.D.

The last section of the Byway climbs out of Boulder to almost 11,500 feet over the Aquarius Plateau to Torrey, Utah.  This portion of the road wasn't even paved until 1985 and was only a seasonal road prior to then.