Today was our last day in this area so we had to whittle down the options to a couple. Our first selection was to return to Bryce Canyon National Park so we could check out an overlook named Inspiration Point. We again avoided paying the $35 per car entry fee by showing the little curmudgeon wearing a ranger hat our geezer access card and he said, “move along.”
Soon we pulled into the parking lot near Inspiration Point and, after a short walk, realized the name of the place was appropriate. There is an expansive, gorgeous view of Bryce’s wonders from this 8000’+ elevation observation area. The concentration of cliffs and hoodoos suggest many imagined and fantastic shapes, lots of them which look like rows of really big humans. Beyond Bryce’s spectacular assets are multi-hued mountains extending to the horizon. This is a bucket list destination.
On the way out of Bryce, Peggy made a short visit to the visitor info center and bookstore but escaped with some of our money still intact. Just outside the park, we made another foray out to the canyon edge at Fairyland Point, another appropriately named overlook. On the way there, Peggy spotted a big mule deer grazing among the pines. On the way out, we also spotted a herd of pronghorn. We pulled off the road to admire them but the long line of cars behind us were driven by folks in a bigger hurry than we were and none of the maybe 40 passengers noticed any wildlife anywhere.
Directly across from the access road to Bryce off Scenic Byway 12 is a plain two-lane blacktop that extends north across high prairie. Twice in the past we have driven down this road a few miles but then turned around because the first part of the road was uninteresting. We were stupid. Today we went all the way to a town called Antimony at the end of UT-22 and were pleasantly surprised at the spectacular scenery.
The road passes down the Black Canyon which is bordered by massive cliffs of a mix of volcanic and sedimentary rock formations. The east fork of the Sevier River has carved a serpentine gorge through this magnificent country and the results are staggering. We took a road that we had no idea was so beautiful and were again dazzled by about 45 miles of scenery that probably is not available anywhere but Utah. About halfway to Antimony, we came across the abandoned mining community of Widtsoe (pronunciation unclear) where we saw one of the very few signs of previous human habitation.
Soon we rolled into Antimony which is a small farming enclave in a meadow between the spectacular canyon walls. It would be a nice place to live in the summer, especially if you want to be left alone. Winters here are brutal and any needed help would be a long way away. Not too much further north of Antimony, UT-22 crapped out and became UT-62 which we followed until turning south on US-89. US-89 is also very scenic as it passes along next to the main stem of the Sevier River. We also drove past the house of one Robert Leroy Parker, aka Butch Cassidy. His house was tiny.
We took some photos of Bryce and Black Canyon today. To see some of them, click the asterisk *