Grand Staircase - Escalante National Monument

 

5

132

K M.

San Pedro, CA

9/23/2008 3 photos

The true name of this park is Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument .  Although this park area is referred to as a National Monument, it is actually under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Land Management rather than the National Park Service.  To the average person, all this probably means is that it won't show up on the National Park maps or website.  Now that the NPS has gone to the multi-agency annual pass, if you are an annual pass holder you will only need to show this to have any kind of entrance fees waived (and I am not sure if there are any.)  

This is a pretty vast area and we barely covered any ground on our way through last November.  One notable thing is that Utah state highway 12, which is a pretty wonderful scenic drive through southern Utah, runs right along the northern edge of the park.  There are several visitor centers and two of them lie on Hwy 12 so if you are making the Hwy 12 scenic drive it may be a convenient stop.  At one of the centers we picked up a flier with directions to some dinosaur footprints embedded in stone, and this is the only real venture into the park that we made.  For the most part, this park is accessible by rugged, unpaved roads so you need a vehicle that is made for rough roads and off-road conditions.  Ours really isn't - but the weather was dry and conditions were good so we decided to give it a try (we were in our SUV but lacking 4WD.)  We had no problems getting to the site or getting back to the main road, but I am still not sure if we actually saw the footprints or just weathering. (The footprints are there, but from the description we weren't really sure what to look for even though we were probably standing right on top of them.)  I thought the directions were a bit lacking for the last little but of the drive, and quite sketchy once you got to the on-foot portion of the journey.  We considered going back on our way back through to get home, but time just did not allow for it.  But it was still pretty cool and I would recommend side trip to anyone who's not afraid to get off road a little (and your vehicle is adequate for the driving conditions!) - although see if you can get the ranger to show you some pics first or give you a good description so you know what to look for once you get out there.

Since we were traveling with 2 small children, we weren't really up for much major hiking (or too much off-roading for that matter) but it looks like this park probably has fantastic hiking and really the scenery is just what you would expect if you have seen southern Utah at all - very beautiful and pretty rugged.

This park may very well be deserving of a higher rating but honestly we didn't see that much and part of that is that it's just plain hard to access much of the park.  That's nice in that it keeps it from getting totally overrun by tourists, but also it's nice to be a tourist and actually get to see more of the sights.  I think the nature of this park is that it's just more of a conservation area than a real showcase of one or two major features - it's not like Zion or Bryce where there are the major viewpoints that you can just drive up to and feel like you really got to "see" the park.   Also my rating is partly based on the poor directions to the dino site.  I would recommend to anyone who's already planning a trip to Bryce Canyon or other Utah sites to visit this park and/or do the scenic drive along Hwy 12, mainly because it is not that far out of the way (it may even be on the way for you as it was in our case as we were also venturing to Capitol Reef, Arches and Canyonlands.)  Also because there are some cool things to see, and since it is off the beaten path you might have the whole place to yourself - especially in the off season.  The other major highway through this area is US 89 which passes through the southern edge of the park.

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