Grand Staircase (Off) Road Trip - Escalante Day 1

Smoky Mountain Road

Monday, October 18, 2021

We woke up refreshed this morning as it was much quieter here in Escalante than it was in Las Vegas.   After having some breakfast, we relaxed a bit and enjoyed our first morning in our tiny house.

When we first decided to take a road trip to the Escalante Grand Staircase National Monument, Val started looking around for places to stay.  Escalante is a very small town of around 700, but they do have tourists coming in so there are a few places to stay and eat, and we didn’t really want to have to eat out so Val started looking at VRBO for a small house to rent.  She ended up finding a compound of tiny houses that were rented out by a company called Escalante Escapes. 

There are nine tiny homes around 400 square feet each in size and although they are small, they are fully equipped with a living / dining area, a full kitchen (albeit small), full bathroom with a shower, a bedroom with a queen size bed and even a very small bunk room with bunk beds.  It is quite modern with TV’s in the living room and bedroom, nice appliances including dishwasher, refrigerator, cooktop and a combination convection oven / microwave – all the comforts of home.  We were very pleasantly surprised and really liked it.  There is also a deck with a view of the mountains in the distance and a fire pit with Adirondack chairs.  It is very nice and I congratulate Val on another great find.  We can have breakfast, cook our dinners and make our own lunches to take with us while we explore the area.  The pictures below give you a tour of the house and surroundings.

It really did look like a tiny house on first view.

The entry way on the side.

The living room and the outside deck.

The kitchen area

The hallway to the rest of the house.

The bunk room (we used it for storage).

A built in washer and dryer.

The bathroom

Another view of the bathroom.

The master bedroom with a queen size bed.

A view of the fire pit from the deck.

Val standing on the deck.  The was also a grill on the deck.

Three of the six tiny homes on the lower level.

And three tiny homes with lofts on the upper level.

By mid-morning it was time to start the day and the first order of day was to visit the Grand Staircase Interagency Visitor’s Center in Escalante and get some information on road conditions and weather.  The area is governed by the National Park Service, the BLM and the Forest Service hence the interagency center.   The Visitor’s Center was very nice and the rangers there were very friendly and helpful and we got all the information we needed.

From the Visitor’s Center it was a short drive to the Escalante Petrified Forest State Park so we decided to take a look.  It was interesting, but to be honest, we weren’t all that interested and to really see much you had to take a somewhat strenuous hike so we decided to move on.

Part way up the trail through the petrified forest.

The views were great.

The morning had been sunny and pleasant, but clouds were moving in and the weather reports said there was a possibility of rain in the afternoon so we decided to head back to the house, have some lunch and decide what to do.  After a delicious lunch of homemade muffulettas, we decided that we would explore Smoky Mountain / Alvery Road.

Time for lunch.

The road starts in Escalante and runs southeast for 78 miles to Big Water on Lake Powell.  We couldn’t drive the full length of the road because it was impassable due to some deep mud areas, which was fine with us as we wouldn’t have had time to drive the full length in an afternoon anyway.  The road requires a high clearance vehicle, but not 4-wheel drive and the part that we drove was in remarkably good shape.  The first 10 miles of the road were through a canyon with cottonwoods lining both side of the road with various degrees of fall color.  This was the most scenic part of the drive.

Our drive for the day shown in red.

 

 

From there the road got a little rougher and started to climb out of the canyon and up to a plateau.  The plateau area was high dessert and not as interesting as the canyon, but that is of course relative as all of this remote area is beautiful.  We wouldn’t be driving it today, but the other end of the road where it descends down to Lake Powell is also a spectacular drive.

  

 

It seemed wise to stay left.

We didn’t know how far we could go before the road was impassable and the clouds were getting darker and more ominous so we started thinking about going back.  We actually started to see a few raindrops at the 20 mile mark and we decide it was time to turn around.  This area has a lot of clay in the soil and a perfectly good dirt road will turn to very slippery mud when it gets wet.  There are warning signs on many of the roads that say don’t drive them when wet even if you have 4-wheel drive.  The good thing is they usually dry out pretty quickly.  We had also crossed quite a few dry creek beds on the road and you could see how dangerous they could become with a flash flood.

With all that said, we weren’t really worried as there wasn’t much rain, but it doesn’t pay to ignore possible dangers so we did the right thing by turning back.  Besides that, we had really seen what we wanted to see.

By the time we were back on the paved road, the cloud cover was now complete and we were getting some intermittent showers.  It was late afternoon anyway so it was time to head for home.  We got back in time to relax a little, look at our pictures and discuss what we would do tomorrow.

We had planned on having a fire in our fire pit and roasting hot dogs for our dinner tonight, but the weather had turned cold and windy with a few rain showers so we decided to have more of the soup we had last night that had tasted so good.  It tasted very good tonight too.

The clouds and rain are supposed to blow through tonight and it’s supposed to be mostly sunny tomorrow.  We will wait and see what the weather is in the morning before deciding what to do tomorrow.  Our first day in Escalante was great and we are looking forward to more adventures for the rest of the week.