1157 October 8, 2024 Escalante
It was a crisp and breezy autumn morning. I drove the Jeep to Torrey and walked about the town.
I tried to go back to the grocery for bananas and blueberries but I had no luck. When I got back to the campground, Tim was ready to roll.
In the 1930’s Boulder was a small isolated community. There was no road connecting it to Torrey. Supplies and mail were delivered via mule train. Often, by the time the milk arrived, it was butter! Today we took Highway 12, a scenic byway also called the Million Dollar Highway to Boulder. This road made a huge difference to the town.
This road is open range. There were cows and calves standing along the shoulder of the road of this steep and winding road. Ranchers have had range rights here for more than one hundred years. The legislature would like to change this but there is no legal recourse. By the end of October, the ranchers and their cowboys will have driven all of the cattle from the mountains.
Campgrounds and restaurants in Torrey will also close in the next two weeks as everyone hunkers down and prepares for winter.
The temperatures here have been in the 70’s and 80’s while we have been here. This is 15 degrees higher than average temperatures for this time of year. The owner of Etta Place who owns acres and acres of apple orchards, was worried that an abrupt change in temperature and a sudden frost would destroy next year’s apple harvest. This had happened before. Apparently trees do better with a gradual change.
We noticed that the aspen trees that were golden when we took this road the other day, now stand bare, especially near the summit.
Orange snow poles were being erected along the roadside today.
We drove past Boulder and into Grand Escalante National Monument. The road followed a ridge and we could see the blobby, rounded, red and white striped sandstone formations below on either side. There were lots of pinyon trees and scruffy vegetation.
After the ridge, the way was steep, 14% grade with sharp curves and we descended into and among the rocks.
We stopped several times to admire the view.
We arrived in Escalante around noon.
This afternoon, we went to the Escalante Interagency Visitor Center. We talked with a ranger who showed us maps and made some Jeep trail recommendations.
We found the Mercantile Natural Food Store and we had fun choosing some flax seed muffins and curry butternut squash soup. We both left with smoothies.
We went to the little community grocery store and we did find bananas and blueberries!
For dinner, we packed lettuce wraps and drove to the Escalante Petrified Forest State Park. We had originally intended to hike before dinner…but we were tired! We did walk to the wood alcove. his park is estimated to have 5 1/2 million tons of exposed petrified trees.
We went to see the 50 foot petrified tree. This tree is 150 million years old.
After eating, we went down to the reservoir.
Another good day!