We are quite old and feeble so our day started out with leisurely showers, breakfast and lunch but we finally seemed to believe that our labored breathing at 7000′ was only terrible if we went hiking. To avoid gray-faced gasping, we decided to take a drive, minimizing our effort but enjoying the scenery. We piled into the pickup and headed east on Utah’s Scenic Byway 12, an extraordinary road for pure, magnificent terrain, geological formations and the colorful effects of millennia of erosion.
This highway stretches from near Panguitch, through the Bryce Canyon country, the Dixie National Forest, the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument and ends when it hits UT-24 near Capitol Reef National Park. It has been declared a National Scenic Byway and An All-American Road, a distinction only afforded to very few roads in the U.S. There is no mistake regarding UT-12.
We left the Red Canyon RV Park and headed east on Scenic Byway 12. In about 5 miles we entered Red Canyon, a Utah State Park that resembles a tiny Bryce Canyon. Many hoodoos, gorgeous rock pillars, massive rim rocks and soils and rock of many colors abound. Fanciful formations take on the appearances of giants, stacks of pancakes, badlands and trolls. Instead of turning into Bryce Canyon, we continued east on 12 and drove down into the area near Kodachrome Basin State Park. Partway there we passed two male pronghorn right next to the road that were engaged in an epic battle to determine which had the biggest testicles and was going to be taking care of the harem of females. No eunuchs were spotted. The drive on UT-12 is truly remarkable and gorgeous scenery awaits around every curve.
We turned around for our return trip at Kodachrome Basin and headed back through the tiny Utah town of Tropic where we passed a herd of sheep and goats that had apparently escaped from confinement and were happily gorging themselves on fruit and grass they found in the nice, irrigated downtown area.
We took a few pictures of the area. Click the asterisk to see them *