Drove through Bryce Canyon National Park then south on route
89 into Zion national Park, the big door prize. Bryce and Zion are part of the
Grand Staircase Escalante, not the proscribed national monument but the broad geologic formation
of this region.
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| On the Way to Bryce Canyon National Park |
Look at https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c5/Grand_Staircase-big.jpg
for an excellent depiction of the Grand Staircase.
Imagine a wedge shaped plain about one hundred miles long
trending highest in the west to lowest to the east. Over two hundred and seventy-five
million years water and wind has cut deep, long, magnificent meandering canyons,
sculpted the sparsely vegetated surface of the plain and its canyons into spires,
towers, buttes, mesas, needles, arches and all manner of other weird and
wonderful geologic features. The Escalante and Colorado Rivers are responsible
for this grand mess.
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| Lots of Needle Capped Arches in Bryce Canyon |
In addition to this majestic geology, one finds rich
archeologic evidence of ancient First Peoples like those pesky Paiutes.
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| Needle Formations, a Bryce Signature |
Depending on where you stand the rock is fifty to two
hundred and seventy-five million years old. Four bands of north to south
trending impressive cliffs about twenty miles apart define elevation changes, define the edges of a series of plateaus. Moving from west to east, from
younger to older rock strata and from higher to lower elevations, Pink Cliffs,
Grey Cliffs, White Cliffs, Vermillion Cliffs and Chocolate Cliffs exhibit
colors of those different strata. And thus,
the name Grand Staircase for the whole assemblage, as the cliff bands are ‘steps’
along the west to east progression.
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| The Splendid Grand Staircase Escalante |
In order from west to east, Bryce, Zion and the big kielbasa,
the Grand Canyon, the grandest of them all, along with hundreds of associated
smaller canyons, slice and dice the plateaus into an intricate and remote rock
wilderness. So remote and inaccessible that the Grand Staircase was the last
region of the lower forty-eight states that cartographers nailed down.
Today the region is road free except for four-wheel drive ‘jeep’
trails. It’s a big empty playground for young, strong hikers, climbers, ‘canyoners’
and fat guys in big off-road machines. Let’s not forget the three hundred species
of amphibians, birds, mammals and reptiles living in the Grand Staircase
Escalante including mule deer, mountain lions, cougar, bighorn sheep, elk and
even some bears.
With two-wheel drive, Emily and I can only nibble at the
edges of the Grand Staircase.
On to Zion National Park. Oh my!. We enter Zion from the east and drive through to the southern side and finally to Rockville, UT, the mother of all tourist traps, where one can spend one's money on all manner of glitzy, organic, gluten plastic, salt, sulfite, preservative, antibiotic free, free range, artisan, locally grown bull shit imaginable.
Zion is magnificent, sublime, smashing, splendid. Not enough adjectives to describe this place. I'll let a few pictures speak for themselves.
On to Zion National Park. Oh my!. We enter Zion from the east and drive through to the southern side and finally to Rockville, UT, the mother of all tourist traps, where one can spend one's money on all manner of glitzy, organic, gluten plastic, salt, sulfite, preservative, antibiotic free, free range, artisan, locally grown bull shit imaginable.
Zion is magnificent, sublime, smashing, splendid. Not enough adjectives to describe this place. I'll let a few pictures speak for themselves.
This night we camped on Kolab Terrace Road on North Creek on
BLM Land, where there was an ant convention, with representative ants from all
over the world in attendance it seemed. Nowhere to camp except right in the
middle of the convention.
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| Our Campsite for the Night. Ant Haven |
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