Tuesday, June 4
We stayed in Tropic for easy access to the Grand Staircase National Monument. The entrance was under half an hour's drive away. Unfortunately, the Cannonville visitors centre was closed on Monday and Tuesday, so we had to rely on a tourist map of the monument from the town's supermarket, along with our GPS for navigation. The majority of the monument roads is unimproved dirt tracks, the road signs are subtle so you need to keep an eye out and have a good idea of your route. Keep a close eye for the hike and attraction signs because they are easy to miss. But wow is it worth it! |
| The 400 south in Grand Staircase |
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| Willis Creek |
Part of the charm of this monument is that there are very few tourists, we went an entire day seeing only 3 other cars. The views are incredible, just to drive through the monument is inspiring, even if you can't stop to hike.
Our first stop was the Willis Creek hike. According to the map, the hike entrance was at an intersection of two roads, but we found that if you keep left (while driving south on Skutumpah Rd from the Utah 12), you'll find the hike entrance a few minutes past the intersection with Willis Creek Rd. There is a short trail to Willis Creek, then you can follow the creek up or down through the narrow canyon.
After this, we stopped for morning tea at the Grosvenor Arch picnic area. We then proceeded to the Cottonwood Narrows. The path to get into the narrows is subtle, and there's several ways to get down into the canyon, all requiring a short scramble downhill. Once in the narrows, we walked a while on the gently downhill winding slope until the heat of high noon and our fear of sunburn forced us to turn back.
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| The Cottonwood Narrows |
We returned to the car then drove down to the Toadstools. The drive south along the 400 was incredible, with every turn and hilltop providing an awe inspiration. We had to be careful though, because other people were having these "wow" moments too and would stop their car just after a sharp turn and forget that it's not safe to stop there. When we reached the south end of the monument, we started the toadstool hike. It took us a while of wondering what was so special, until we looked up, and realised the toadstools were elevated on the cliffs in the distance.
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| The Toadstools |
Initially, we planned to head to Big Water for lunch, but according to the look of the scant town and our GPS, there are no restaurants there. The nearest restaurants at that point were in Page, Arizona. So we decided to take the detour to the south. On the way, we filled with fuel at a station just east of Big Water - turns out this was significantly the cheapest fuel we found during the whole road trip.
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| The 400 south, Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument |
We're so glad to have taken the detour to Page. This town is usually used as a base for the north edge of the Grand Canyon. It was tantalisingly close. We stopped for lunch at a strip mall, and asked the server where to visit for the short hour we had to spend there. We followed his suggestion to drive to the Chains, which is on the Page side of the bridge that crosses the dam at the Colorado River (highway 89). We drove down to a large parking lot. From here, it's a matter of remembering to sunscreen, and finding a way through the rock-face down to the dam. It would have been nice to have some towels to lie on and relax here for a while with some drinks. There's plenty of places to access the water for a swim.
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| The Chains, Page, Arizona |
Now, coming back it got complicated (ie: don't do what we did!). It seemed that our quickest route back, with only 3 hours left of daylight, would be back through the Grand Staircase. Knowing what I know now, I'd have chosen to come back the way we came, via the 400 to the 12. We took the roads marked blue on the tourist map (written on the tourist map as for "all vehicles"). These are for 4x4 only. This became the convenient time when I found out my partner had not rented a 4x4 but a crossover that just looks like a 4x4. It took about half an hour of driving down a dirt road north from Big Water, to even know if we were going in the right direction or on the right road. It took another half hour to see how inappropriate the road was for our vehicle. By then, there was no time to turn back and take another route, since we'd received very strong advice about not driving at night.
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| The 400 south, Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument |
With daylight hours dwindling, we took our chances on the blue roads. The GPS knew where we were, but provided street names inconsistent with our maps, creating some anxiety. It suggested routes that didn't seem to make sense - involving routes that didn't appear on our tourist map, and the routes suggested certainly didn't take into account finding a reasonable road ASAP. I was on the edge of my seat the entire 3.5 hours it took to drive the 50 miles from Big Water to Escalante, with some parts of this route being entirely rock, and some parts of the unfinished road damaged by landslides. There is no phone reception in case of emergency, and it's almost 40 degrees in early June. I was imagining all sorts of scenarios where the car broke down or reached an area it couldn't pass, we already knew we couldn't turn back, and we would have to walk the remaining 25 miles in the heat with our remaining 1 litre of water. Suffice to say as exciting as it was for Mike to drive such crazy tracks, I do wish we'd made some better decisions and gone back via the 400 (or rented a real 4WD. cough.). I wouldn't recommend anyone go on these blue roads without a proper 4x4!
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| This is the good part of one of the "blue roads" |
The scariest part was when half way through, we came across some damaged downhill slopes full of boulders from landslides. Downhill, the car could handle them, but I have doubts that a 2WD would be capable to go uphill on these damaged roads. We were lucky that the most challenging and steep parts of the road were on our downhills, had we driven this route from north to south, we could have had some serious trouble. This route we took was Smokey Mountain Road - Smokey Hollow Road - Smokey Mountain Road (yes, again - this road is convoluted in some spots and we tried to take a short cut) - Left Hand Collet Road - Hole in the Rock Road (which is actually suitable for all vehicles), we arrived at this road near the Devil's Garden. There was a dinosaur tracks centre along the way too, but we had lost patience by this point.
We reached the Devil's Garden close to sunset, and stopped for a bathroom break, to soak in the view and to catch our breath of relief to have found a more civilised road. We could see a storm coming in from the north so we pushed on to drive back to Tropic, dreaming of relaxing in Las Vegas soon. We got a salad and some yoghurt from the supermarket and called it dinner.
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| The Devil's Garden |
Overall, the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument is underrated and my favourite and most memorable day of our trip. Even with only a few hours, it's worth a drive through or a visit to one of the shorter hikes. And I could definitely have stayed busy there for a few days - even with all that we did, we barely saw all that this monument has to offer.
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