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.