Grand Staircase (Off) Road Trip

Friday, October 15, 2021

Since the pandemic started we have taken a couple of short trips to Lake Tahoe and Reno, but have not taken a real trip since our Canadian Road Trip in September of 2019, but that is about to change.  The pandemic certainly isn’t over, but we are fortified with all of our vaccinations and we feel like it’s time to get out and do something. We've decided to take a road trip to the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.  We leave tomorrow and we can’t wait.

The Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument is an area of 1.88 million acres located in South-Central Utah.  It was established in 1996 and Val and I visited it in 1997, but we haven’t been back since.  It is a very remote area with few paved roads and very few people.  We have rented a house in the town of Escalante, which is in the central area of the Monument.  Escalante is the largest town in the Monument with a population of almost 700 so you can see, the area is not very populated.

From Wikipedia (link): “The Grand Staircase is an immense sequence of sedimentary rock layers that stretch south from Bryce Canyon National Park and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, through Zion National Park, and into the Grand Canyon National Park.”

Grand Staircase National Monument

The Geology of the Grand Staircase

We are very excited to be back traveling again and can’t wait to leave.  It is snowing in Southern Utah this week as I write this, but by Sunday when we arrive, the temperature is supposed to move up into the mid 60’s so we are hoping for nice weather.  So it’s time to pack everything up and get on the road for our next  adventure (finally!!).