Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument

Another find! If we had gone to Arches/Canyonlands we would never have found this. We were peacefully driving along the side of Boulder Mountain enjoying the aspen, fir, deer and mesas in the distance when all of a sudden on both sides of the road huge white rock canyon systems appeared. We drove along the top of a ridge between them and then down into the river valley on one of the canyon bottoms. It was full of trees & grasses – beautiful. We went in and out of the edge of the Monument for about 50 miles until we got to our motel in Cannonville. The rock features were magnificent. We talked to our motel proprietor and she told us that most of what is in the Monument is on roads not designed for regular cars and that since the Monument is so big it takes a while to get to anything. We are now talking about how we need to rent a more off-road vehicle than our RedRoo and come back to Utah for 6 weeks or so and really see the canyon parks and monuments.
View from Boulder Mountain

From from Boulder Mtn

Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument