Grand Staircase (Off) Road Trip - Homeward Bound

Escalante to Flagstaff, AZ

Saturday, October 23, 2021

Today we left our tiny house in Escalante and headed for home.  We wanted to get an early start so we were up early this morning to do some final packing and getting ready to leave.  Unlike the sunny skies we have been seeing all week, this morning was overcast and looked like rain so maybe that was an omen that it was indeed, our time to leave.  We had our breakfast, did our final packing and loaded the car and were on the road at 9:00.

Out destination for the night was Flagstaff, Arizona and it was only 320 miles to get there, but it was all on two-lane, mountainous roads so the going would be a little slow in places.  The good thing is that it's a very scenic drive.

We retraced our drive on highway 12 past Bryce and Red Canyon to US89 where we turned south.  Utah SB12 has been designated an All-American Road and it certainly lives up to the honor; from beginning to end the scenery is amazing.  It is not anywhere near a main route, but is well worth the time to get off the beaten path and enjoy this road.

We followed US89 all the way to Flagstaff and it was a pretty scenic drive in its own right.  It steadily drops in elevation as it goes through forested high desert to red rock canyons.  After going through Kanab, Utah, the road follows the Vermillion Cliffs to Page, Arizona where we had lunch.  From Page south, the land became more of a desert, but still very interesting with many mountains and rock formations on the drive.  We have driven 89 from Page to Flagstaff many times and always enjoy it.

Thanks to gaining an hour as we passed from Mountain Time to Pacific Time we arrived in Flagstaff around 4:00.  We relaxed a bit, had some dinner and called it a night.

Flagstaff to Barstow, CA

Sunday, October 24, 2021

We would have liked to drive straight home today, but it is well over 600 miles and decided to split it up into a two day drive and spend tonight in Barstow.  It is 360 miles to Barstow, but it is all on Interstate Highway so it should go pretty quickly.  This will be the first time we have ever stayed in Barstow as it is usually not a destination spot, but it worked out best for us to stop there.

The drive was very uneventful and went by fairly quickly as we have been listening to David McCullough’s “1776” audiobook and it has been very interesting.  We passed through Williams and Kingman, Arizona before crossing the Colorado River and back into California.  We stopped in Needles, CA to buy gas and get some lunch and then drove the rest of the way into Barstow.

We arrived around 4:00 and settled into our hotel and started wondering what to do for dinner.  We still had some lunch fixings left over from our Escalante outings and decided to have those for dinner and clean out the ice chest.  That worked out fine as we were able to have a leisurely evening before our last day on the road before coming home.

Barstow to Home

Monday, October 25, 2021

Today is our last day of our trip and as always, we have mixed feeling about it.  We are looking forward to being home again, but it is also sad that our trip is ending.

It was only a four hour drive home so we were in no hurry to get started.  Our hotel was right next to the Barstow Outlet Stores so we decided to give them a look before we hit the road.  There was a Columbia Sportswear Outlet that Val wanted to check out so we went there and surprisingly Val didn’t find anything she wanted, but I did.  I have been looking for an everyday, lined rain jacket for several years and they had just what I wanted at a great price, so I bought it.

From Barstow, we took Highway 58 that, as I mentioned before, is now four-lane freeway all the way to Bakersfield.  This weekend California has been having some very heavy rainstorms and although it was only partly cloudy in Barstow, we could see ominous rain clouds on the horizon.  

It wasn't raining yet, but the clouds ahead were very ominous.

As we got about halfway across the Mojave we started to get some light rain and by the time we headed up into the Tehachapi Mountains it was really coming down, so much so that is was making driving a little challenging.

It was still raining hard by the time we got to Tehachapi, but we had to get gas and some lunch so we got off and drove through Tehachapi, got our gas and then had a very good lunch at Kohnen's Country Bakery.  After lunch it was time to get back on the road and brave the weather.  Normally, we would take 58 into Bakersfield where we would get on Highway 99 headed north, but they are doing a lot of construction in Bakersfield and traffic is always bad anyway, so considering the heavy rain, we decided to take a route through some of the backroads to get to Interstate 5.

That worked out very well, as the heavy rain did continue, but there was very little traffic so it was relatively easy drive considering the conditions.  The rain continued, but started to ease off as we reached San Luis Obispo County and by the time we were on Highway 46 headed for home the rain had stopped.

We got home around 4:00, unloaded the car and settled in for our first night home in over a week.  What was supposed to be an easy drive today turned into be a bit of a challenge, but it all ended well.  The good thing is we got almost 2 inches of badly needed rain in Atascadero.  We had a great trip, but it felt good to be home.

 

Final Thoughts

It was great to get out on the road again and actually take a real trip.  We had a wonderful time in an area we love.  Southern Utah is such a great place to visit, there are the well-known national parks such as Zion, Bryce, Arches and Canyonlands, but there are so many other lesser known areas to visit.  If you want to a get away from the crowds, try areas like Grand Staircase-Escalante where we went.

We had such a good time on this trip.  The tiny homes of Escalante Escapes that Val found worked out so well for us that we will go back to them whenever we visit the area around Escalante.  We had great weather and were able to do almost everything we wanted to do.  Road conditions limited us on several of our planned day trips, but we wouldn’t have had time to do everything anyway.

A map of our travels while we were in Escalante.

My favorite thing we did on the trip was to drive to the end of Hole-in-the-Rock Road; I have wanted to do that for such a long time.  It’s not the most scenic drive in the area, but knowing the history of the road made it a very interesting drive.

One worry I had when we started the trip never came to fruition.  We do most of our road trips in my 2008 Toyota 4-Runner and it’s getting a little long in tooth and I could just imagine us breaking down out in the middle of nowhere and having to figure out a way to get back.  I am very happy to report that the 4-Runner performed flawlessly, not a hint of a problem so kudos to Toyota for building such a reliable truck.

So that about wraps it up, our plans for our future travels are a bit up in the air right now.  We had planned taking a 30 day Panama Canal Cruise from San Diego to Fort Lauderdale and back, but we are having second thoughts and may cancel.  Next fall we have our twice postponed, 74 day cruise around Africa so hopefully that isn't postponed again as we are really looking forward to that.  I do think we have some more road trips in the future, but nothing definite yet.  If you see a new post in the Blog, you’ll know we are traveling again so we’ll see you on down the road.

Grand Staircase (Off) Road Trip - Escalante Day 5

Escalante Day 5 – Posey Lake Road and Devil’s Backbone

Friday, October 22, 2021

It’s hard to believe today is our last day in Escalante, the week has gone by so fast.  It’s getting repetitive, but once again we woke up to a beautiful day with a few high clouds, but mostly blue sky.  It was also the warmest day of the week, but where we went today was quite a bit cooler.

The plan for the day was to take a shorter trip and be back to the house by 3:00 or 4:00 and do some preliminary packing so we can get an early start home tomorrow morning.  We decided to do a scenic loop drive to the west of Escalante that would take us up and over a 10,500 foot pass.

The red line is our route today and the blue line is our side trip to the Devil's Backbone Bridge.

The first section of our drive is on Posey Lake Road that starts in Escalante and goes up into the mountains.  We started our drive and after about 15 miles, we came to the intersection of Hell’s Backbone Road and decided to do a side trip.   

We have driven Hell’s Backbone Road before and it is a nice drive with some spectacular views, but the real feature is the Hell’s Backbone Bridge and the deep gorge it crosses.  Until 1937 there was no bridge and the road ended at the gorge, but a bridge was built by the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corp) to create a shortcut from Escalante to Boulder.  It’s hard to believe this was a shortcut considering the modern highway that connects the two towns today, but then it was a long arduous journey so the Hell’s Backbone Bridge was a big deal when it was built.  The original wooden bridge lasted until 1965 when the wood timbers were replaced with metal and then updated again in 2005.

It's hard to get a clear view of the bridge so this will have to do.

From the Hell’s Backbone Bridge area, you look down on the remote and pristine Death Hollow area that is only accessible by hiking.  The views were amazing and made the 22 mile round-trip side trip worthwhile.

From the bridge we returned to Posey Lake Road and continued our journey for a few more miles until we reached Posey Lake.  Posey Lake has a campground and picnic area, but the campground is closed for the season as there is already snow in the area.  We decided to stop for lunch and had the whole place to ourselves; we didn’t hear a single vehicle go by the whole time we were there.  The road is dirt, but is very well maintained and drivable by any auto.

Lunchtime at Posey Lake.

We had been looking forward to seeing some fall color on our journey and we did at the start of our drive today where there were lots of cottonwood trees, but as we reached the higher elevations the cottonwoods disappeared and replace by aspen as a source for fall color.  Unfortunately, it was already winter up at Posey Lake and the aspens had lost all of their leaves already.

After finishing our lunch, we continued on Posey Lake Road, but the driving became a bit more difficult.  The road was still maintained, but now there was snow, slush and mud on the road that made driving a little more difficult and would get worse as we went on.  We were certainly glad to have our 4-wheel drive for that.

A few miles up the road from Posey Lake is Cyclone Lake and in one of my photo guidebooks I have used for this trip, the author said that if you go to this lake at the right time in the fall, the fall color of the aspen trees lining the lake is beautiful.  Well, not only were the aspen trees bare of all their leaves, there was no water at all in the lake and it didn’t look like there had been any lately.  Oh well, you win some and you lose some.

Just past Cyclone Lake we came to a turnoff for Forest Road 140 and this was the road we were going to take.  It would take us up and over a 10,500 foot pass to an area known as Griffin Top.  We were beginning to get a little worried as we thought if we are having snow in the road now, what will it be like at 10,000 feet?  We saw a truck full of cut logs coming from the opposite direction (the first vehicle we had seen since the Hell’s Backbone area).  We were going very slow as we passed since the road is quite narrow so we stopped and asked about road conditions ahead and he told us that if we had 4-wheel drive we’d be fine.  It turned out he and his wife sell firewood and were hauling a load back.  They had a huge load of wood on a not so big truck, but they seemed to be moving along just fine.

The road did get worse and at times we had to drive through quite a bit of snow, but it was doable and we made it.  For people who live in a climate where it snows, it may seem like we were worrying for nothing, but we live in an area where it never snows so driving in it is very foreign to us.  Plus, if you start to slide in some places the only place to go is over the side and down.

The driving here wasn't bad, but there were times where there was deep slushy snow and mud that made us glad we had 4-wheel drive.

After the pass we started back down and the snow gradually lessened as we started on the last part of the loop back to the main highway.  Further down the road, the area opened up from forested plateau to sweeping vistas of the area below all the way to Capitol Reef National Park to the north.

As we got lower, we turned off of the Forest Road 140 onto Forest Road 17 that is called Main Canyon Road (also called Old Escalante Road).  Main Canyon Road follows Birch Creek and we started to see the cottonwood trees again.  They were mostly past their peak, but really spectacular in some areas and we made many photo stops.

 

Finally we were back at SB12 south of Escalante and headed back to our tiny house.  The roads we were on today (with the exception of Hell’s Backbone) didn’t have the spectacular scenery as some of the other areas we have been this week, but it was a great drive and we were glad we took the time to do it.  Also, winter had already set in up there so the leaves were off the trees and the grasses had all died so it is probably a much more beautiful area earlier in the fall.  Anyway, for us, it was another good day in the back country.

We were back at the house by 3:00 and after a brief break we did all the packing we could do today.  The evening was spent relaxing and snacking on the leftover food we have.  It will be sad to leave, we will miss our tiny house and the great time we have had in Escalante this week.  Tomorrow night we will be in Flagstaff, Arizona.

Grand Staircase (Off) Road Trip - Escalante Day 4

 Kodachrome Basin and Grosvenor Arch

Thursday, October 21, 2021

We woke up to another beautiful day in Escalante.  We had some laundry to do this morning so we planned to stay around the house until after lunch today.  We did make one trip in the morning to the Escalante Heritage Center that focuses on the Hole-in-the-Rock expedition, and there is also information on the history of the town of Escalante.  It was very interesting and gave us an even deeper understanding of the difficulties the early settlers in the area had.

Escalante Heritage Center

Our plan for the afternoon was to visit Kodachrome Basin State Park and GrosvenorArch on Cottonwood Canyon Road.  Cottonwood Canyon Road is another off the beaten path road the runs all the way down to Highway 89 near Kanab.  We had originally planned to spend a day exploring it, but the latest road report said that recent rains had turned sections of it into mud and the road was impassable.  It was just as well as we are running out of time and we probably couldn’t have fit doing the whole road in.

After lunch, we got on SB12 and headed south past Bryce and Red Rock Canyon to the town of Cannonville where we turned onto Cottonwood Canyon Road, which goes by the entrance to Kodachrome Basin on the way to Grosvenor Arch.  The road is paved until the turnoff to Kodachrome Basin State Park where it turns to dirt.  It is a well-maintained road and suitable for any vehicle unless it’s wet.  The Grosvenor Arch turnoff is 10 miles past Kodachrome Basin and it is only a short spur to the arch.

Our route  today from Escalante, Cottonwood Canyon Road is marked in red.

To be honest, I wasn’t really expecting much of Grosvenor Arch, but it was really interesting and in a very scenic area.  Val and I hiked around for a while and took lots of pictures and were very glad we made this side trip.

 

 

It was getting to be late in the afternoon so we headed back to  Cottonwood Canyon Road and on to Kodachrome Basin.  One of the reasons we made this trip in the afternoon was we wanted to catch the late afternoon sun on the red rock formations for our photos and we had timed it pretty well.  The park is not that big and most of it is accessible only by hiking.  We didn’t really have the time or inclination to take any of the longer trails, but we did take several short hikes and really enjoyed ourselves once again, of course, taking lots of photos.

It was starting to get late and we didn’t want to get back to the house as late as last night, so we called it a day and headed back to Escalante.  We arrived just after 5:00 and settled in for the evening for some relaxing and planning tomorrow’s trip.

Tomorrow is our last full day in Escalante, the week has really flown by.  Our last adventure of the trip will be a drive through some of the backroads in the Hell’s Backbone / Posey Lake area.