Zions to Provo and Home

Back to Provo. We left St. George this morning and headed back in kind of an indirect way (shock). East through Hurricane, Zions NP, to Mr. Carmel Junction, then north through Orderville (didn't see a whole lot of order there) to the Escalante turnoff. Soon after you make that turnoff, you go through Red Canyon. It was a clear, cold, beautiful day and the rocks were glowing. Escalante seems like an interesting, nice place. Isolated. But the area is gorgeous. They have a new high school. Would be rough to bus to road games from here. Home of the Moquis. Just north of Escalante, the Escalante River swings east on its way to Lake Powell. We entered into one arm of the Grand Staircase-Escalante NMT (I believe one of Clinton's giant Utah land grabs) and down into a magnificent canyon area carved by the river and its tributary creeks. It covers a huge area, all the way to the small town of Boulder. From Boulder to Torrey, the road crosses over the Boulder mountains and a 9000+ pass. The east side of the range is covered by some of the largest aspen groves I have ever seen. Must be glorious in the fall. But the best part of the up and over is the view. You can see forever to the east...over all of central Utah...Capitol Reef NP, the Waterpocket Fold, the Grand Staircase down into Lake Powell, the canyons of the Escalante, the Burr Trail, the Henry Mountains. And no people. We finally rolled into Provo around 5:00pm, having seen more little Utah towns than we really needed to....but it was fun! The Matt Anderton's and the Dover's met us at Applebee's and we had a nice dinner, then spent some time at Amy's visiting. We were up at 4:00am on the 16th to catch our flight. (January 15-16)