Escalante Utah

We spent three nights camping in Escalante Petrified Forest State Park, which is just outside of the town of Escalante, UT. This is on Utah Highway 12, a well known Scenic Byway that goes past Bryce Canyon National Park, Kodachrome Basin State Park, Escalante, Boulder, to Torrey, the gateway to Capitol Reef National Park. Escalante is the largest town in the region, with a bunch of inns, restaurants, and even grocery and hardware stores. It is the at the center of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, or what is left of the monument after a Trumpian edict.

The campground is very nice, with covered picnic areas at most campsites. I assume that the covers are for the very hot weather in Summer; we were there in late September.

There were displays explaining how petrified wood is formed, where the organic material in the tree is replaced by silicate minerals while retaining the original structure. There was one enormous petrified tree right adjacent to the campground.

There was a hiking trail the lead to the highlands above the campground, where there were amazing petrified wood samples.

Here is a view of the campground and the adjacent lake from the highlands above.

Our trailer is the little white one in the center of this photo.

The area is amazing. This is the Devil’s Garden area where there are amazing rock formations called Hoodoos. Wonderful for photos.

A very dangerous hike…. 

But really amazing!

I decided to take some selfies. I set up a tripod and used a remote to take pictures. When I looked at the pictures I decided to stitch them together to make a short video.

The selfies were good enough that I cropped two into really nice pictures.

This picture is the countryside near Calf Creek. We hiked to the Calf Creek Falls in Oct 2016 with our friends Nat and Hermine; that was our first camping trip with our new trailer when we camped near Capitol Reef National Park.

We also went to the Burr Trail, which starts in the town of Boulder. Again, great  photos.

Before our trip, our Salt Lake City NPR station had promos for the Escalante Canyon Arts Festival. We were very excited about this, figuring there would be artist’s booths displaying art and crafts. Nope. It was more of a participatory festival for artists, with instructional workshops and competitions the artists. It was a good thing we booked our campsite long in advance, because everything was booked up! All through the area we saw cars pulled over with an artist standing at an easel. We met Bruce from Phoenix, who was camped next door, and he told us that the next weekend there would be competitions for best art created during the festival. Here is Bruce and the oil painting he created earlier that day.

We also met up with Jeff and Liz, retired teachers from Sierra Vista, AZ, near the Mexico Border. Like us they have an Oliver Travel Trailer, and Jeff and I had corresponded from the Oliver Trailer Forum.

I was a little disappointed with my photos because each day the sun was bright and the lighting was extremely harsh. However there were clouds on our last morning, and I got some great photos as we drove west on highway 12.

 

This countryside is truly stunning! It was a great trip!