Framedlight

Continuing north on Highway-12 we came to the piece of road known as the "Hogsback " due to its undulating nature. Again there were places to stop and look out over the wild inhospitable scenery, which spread, empty of human interference in front of us. We passed through Boulder Town, once known as the "last frontier in Utah", and drove over Boulder Mountain. We stopped at the highest point, Homestead Overlook at 9,400ft. Here the scenery had become lusher with stands of conifers and aspens. As we descended Boulder Mountain we saw Larb Hollow Overlook which deserved a panorama. Finally we approached the end of Highway-12, as we came to Torrey and saw our first sight of Capitol Reef. We turned left onto Highway-24 to reach our accommodation at Loa, a tiny town not far from the junction. We stayed at the quaintly named "Snuggle Inn" and ate fish and chips at the local café, before turning in for the ...

We travelled through the small town of Escalante itself, another Mormon settlement,  and then we were driving through the wilderness area of Escalante National Monument. Again there were overlooks to see across vast distances, mainly at the head of dirt roads which lead into the interior of the Park.  The first of these was at the beginning of the 57 mile long Hole-in-the-Rock Trail, which follows the route taken by Mormon pioneers in 1879-80 to find a route across to the Colorado River. They managed to find the only gap in the otherwise impenetrable 400m cliffs that fringe Glen Canyon, and it took them 6 weeks to forge a route across using picks shovels and explosives. Finally they had to lower their wagons and animals  off from the cliff using block and tackle before building a raft to cross the river. We saw a rather lovely wooden caravan here, obviously made to match the canoe. Then it was short hop to the Head of the Rocks overlook, where we looked across th...