Our 100 Day Trek through the US of A, Part 13, Escalante

August 10, 2013

Escalante sunset

During our mid trip week, thus about 50 plus days in, we decided to take a break from travel and rented a very modern home for a full week in Escalante, Utah smack between Bryce National Park and Capitol Reef National Park. All around us is the desert and we border the last piece of mapped USA which was completed only several decades ago.

Our rental in Escalante

Comfortable look out option

Very UN-Escalante home

Here are some random notes about that week:

Late afternoon rain coming signs

The Grand Staircase- Escalante National Monument is a 2 million plus acres large and an open air research lab for scientists of all kind of disciplines, from paleontologists to biologists and even NASA finds this area interesting. It is the last vast almost undiscovered wilderness in North America. Scientists discovered here blue bees and mammoths roamed this area eons ago. I never saw a blue bee, although I stopped at many a flowering bush.

On the way to Capitol Reef we traveled the Million-dollar Road between Bryce and the town of Boulder where dairy farmers shipped weekly by donkeys 50 plus gallons through the cliffs and hills to a place where the USPS could meet them to further transport the cream to the Bryce creamery. They placed the lidded pails in a cool cave from where the postal service collected. However on very hot days the cream exploded in the leather postal bags to sour cream. All this before dynamite and the CCC (see picture below) created the road connecting the two towns in the 30's.

The country side near Escalante

Young unemployed men formed the CCC

The donkeys traversed this with the cream pails

Just beautiful

A coffee shop in nowhere

Despite our desire to not leave the house and just lounge around, we did traverse twice into the wilderness for hours and of course we visited both National Parks.

Those trees tap root themselves into pure rock

Straight in front of our window lies a canyon, so, early in the morning we pointed Hansie towards the canyon, but after 1 mile in we turned around to get food and water, since we forgot to bring that and if ever stranded in this wilderness, we should not expect anybody to find us for a day or so. Therefore it would be irresponsible not to bring at least sufficient water. The desert is soaring to the 100 degree mark every day and then drops to the mid sixties during the night.

No tire problems please

Desert colors

Flowering in arid climate

Nature in the desert

We are every time again and again remarking to each other, that the desert flowers beyond belief and the colors one finds are unexpected from lush green to purple. We traversed the Smokey Mountain Road across dry river beds avoiding chipmunks, hoping that in this so called monsoon season no unexpected rain would create the dreaded flash floods because very muddy roads would stick us somewhere here for up to a day waiting for the soil and river beds to dry out again.

Water erosion created this

Our road trip in the wilderness

Dry river bed

So green

After this trip we registered low pressure in the right front tire. A visit to a mechanic brought our pressure back to par and the tire has so far held up, but we decided then and there that when we reach Denver, we will have our tires checked.

We also visited the Escalante Petrified Forest State Park early in the morning since we had to trek up a hill to find the petrified logs and we preferred 75F over the 95F a few hours later in the day.

Petrified in color

Escalante reservoir

Different colors

A few days later on an overlook we discovered a chipmunk cleaning house. We spent 10 - 15 minutes watching the critter in the hope he would come out all the way for a picture. But he did not, so we moved on. We stopped a few hours later and visited again, bur the "door" was closed. We are still wondering why he spent so much time and effort bringing pebbles and sand etc out and then somehow "closed" the hole.

We enjoyed cooking at home and sleeping in as well as just looking out into the desert and seeing the sun set on the mesas.

We still wonder where the daily visiting humming bird gets its supply of honey after the flowers disappear in a few weeks.