One of Grand Staircase Escalante National Monuments great features, beyond the low visitor numbers, is the wide variety of landscape within its borders. This monument holds a huge number of natural features, all different. I moved to the east side today, to explore the Escalante River. It’s the last major river system in the continental United States to be named and mapped. Highway 12 Highway 12 east of the town of Escalante first crosses a grassy plateau. Just outside town, it has a view of a red ridge to the north with an obvious gap in it. The gap is the start of Escalante Canyon, one of Utah’s most impressive multi-day backpack trips. The highway, by contrast, is downright dull. All at once, that changes. The roadway reaches the plateau edge and an overlook, Head Of
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