Escalante National Park to Kodachrome State Park, Utah

Fully refreshed by Calf Creek Falls, we motored a short distance to the Escalante River Gorge. We hiked, along with half of Utah it seemed, a very short distance along the Escalante River to the entrance of the Slot Canyon. High waters from the spring melt had closed this 15 mile (one way hike) that made Escalante famous. The twisting serpentine canyon, where one hikes often in knee deep water, pressing chest to back against smooth sandstone walls, had long been a desire of mine to do. Whereas Calf Creek Falls is the cathedral of soaring spirits, the Slots Canyon is the prayer closet of inner beauty. You become part of creation, pressing flesh to stone, led by the hope of the light filtering down through the cleaved walls. Places like this are the West’s Walden Pond. Unfortunately our pond, sic river, was closed. So we scootered onwards.

In fact, most of these parks and monuments we were passing through are more thoroughly explored by four wheel drive and foot, as we were finding. The paved roads gave one just a taste of this alien place. In fact there was even a colony of Mars aspirants dwelling in a special ‘space station-like’ facility to simulate a space colony experience out some dusty road her. Personally I’m more of an ascetic than a scientist, so I’d rather sit under a starry Milky Way than wish to be in it. To each, his or her own, the desert provides a place and atmosphere for that type of dreaming.

Our Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument experience blew by way too quickly; as we managed to miss the Peek-A-Boo and Spooky Canyons turn-off. We had been warned by another tourist couple that this turn-off was not marked well, nor even said the names of these canyons. (Thanks National Parks Service!). These were our Plan B slot canyon hikes (dry and no river to contend with). A bit short-changed on our sight-seeing, and not desiring to backtrack in the mid-day heat, we arrived in the town of Escalante. With nothing to draw our interest, we gassed up and pressed on.

Dropping off the flanks of the 9,000’ Aquarius Plateau was a scenic morsel. Even car, or better yet scooter-based, touring is great along Highway 12. The roads snake along ridges, with both wondrous peak and canyons views alike. I was liking this.

Even the valley floors with small communities of Henrieville, Cannonville and Tropic provided interest. Just as animals adjust their survival strategies to the desert environment, so did the early settlers. In several towns we noticed houses built into the ground, to take advantage of the earth’s cool year-round temperatures. With just the pitched roofs showing, they looked like a tornado’s aftermath; cool but weird. Efficient pioneers.

We called it a day in Cannonville, tenting at the KOA. The campground was packed with foreign tourists making the western circuit of Las Vegas-Grand Canyon-Mesa Verde-Canyonlands-Capitol Reef-Escalante-Bryce-Zion in their CruiseAmerica and similar rental RV’s. The ratio of Americans to foreign nationals was hovering around 25%. As we were setting up camp, a Canadian fellow came up, introduced himself, and wanted to chat about Vespas. He regularly took his small RV down to the American west and was thinking about adding a scooter to his rig. He told me about a friend who, on a lark, jumped on his Vespa one day, and rode across Canada, from Edmonton to Nova Scotia. All in one week! This is am amazing feat of scooter-dom, some 2972 miles in all. Again we found were following in the bold, and perhaps fool-hardy tracks, of some seriously deranged individuals. Even we got some pretty astonished stares from those air conditioned RV’s! We finished settling up the tent and rode two-up on my Vespa four miles into Tropic for dinner. Tropic has several motels and diners unlike Cannonville. It was jammed with foreign tourists, in spite being only a mile in length. Tour buses overnight here before trips to Bryce and Escalante. We had a great dinner and beer (surprisingly, this is Utah after all) and motored back in the cool dusk along alfalfa fields, the overhead irrigation systems moistening the crops and air.

We were up early, always a good idea in the desert, and scootered back to Tropic for a 7am breakfast. Minutes after we were seated, group after group of tourists arrived. Many were part of various motorcycle groups. I heard some Norwegian in the background and introduced myself. A group of eight Norwegian guys were touring for two weeks on Harleys rented out of Las Vegas. They were celebrating their graduation from graduate school. They seemed quite amazed by our scooter adventure on Vespas, one quarter the engine displacement as theirs. We chatted amicably for quite a while. Turns out one of them was from Hamar, where we had visited before. Dear Norwegian friends of ours live near there and the world seemed quite cozy as we discovered shared places in different times. Our new Hamar friend had even lived in Denver for three years, attending University of Colorado. And we had hosted our Norwegian friend’s college-aged daughter back in Boulder for seven weeks the summer before. Norway seemed very close in our hearts as we finished up breakfast, waved goodbye, and scooted back to strike down the tent.

There’s a worthy detour along Highway 12, Kodachrome Basin State Park. which lies nine miles south of Cannonville. In the cool of the morning we rode a nice paved

road to the park. A wonderful campground, full with yet to awaken campers, was idyllically situated among red sandstone fins, spires and walls. Had we known about his place, I think it would have been a nicer camp site for the night. Although our two meal detours into Tropic had been worth-while from the closer-in Cannonville. The State Park has a 2.9 mile Panoramic Trail that exhibits the most unusual white upright cylindrical towers called sand pipes, that are usually partially surround by remnants of the different colored red sandstone. There are more than sixty of these sand pipes, the tallest being 170 feet tall. Except for these spectacular sand pipe formations, the rest of the park felt a bit like Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs, Colorado. We had a nice quick hike, which loosened up our legs for the next scooter jaunt to the magical Bryce Canyon National Park.