Bryce > Moab

View of some badlands from Route 12

View of the Escalante Canyons from Kiva Koffehouse in Grand Staircase/Escalante

The desolation on Route 24

Google wants you to take the highway to get from Bryce to Moab, but the guidebook suggests Scenic Routes 12 and 24.  The guidebook is right.

Aside from the Icefields Parkway between Banff and Jasper, Route 12/24 was the most scenic drive we did the whole trip.  Route 12 descends from Bryce Canyon into the Grand Staircase/Escalante National Monument.  The road started as a wide, green plain surrounded by mountains, but soon snaked its way up and down red rock canyons and on to ridges with great views.  We woke up early to do the drive at dawn, and decided to forego breakfast so we could eat our morning meal at a place we had heard about in Boulder, UT.  On the way, we passed a coffee shop we couldn’t refuse – the Kiva Koffehouse.  We couldn’t even see it from the road, but we knew we had to go based on its location.  It’s a tiny, kiva-style hut built into the side of one of the Escalante Canyons, windows on all sides, featuring commanding views of the lush surrounding area.  Wow.  We decided it would be a great place for someone to have a small wedding ceremony (wink, wink).  We continued from Kiva a few miles down the road to our original breakfast destination – the Hell’s Backbone Grill.  The food was great, but the setting simply did not compare to Kiva.

From Boulder we ascended Boulder Mountain (peaking around 9,000 feet).  There was a storm brewing, and it seemed like every 5 minutes we stopped to take pictures of the incredible surrounding landscape.  The entire experience was enhanced by the music we were playing.  Kristen’s dad Steve had given us a couple dozen CDs to listen to on this leg of the trip, and we randomly selected Eberhard Weber’s ‘The Colours of Chloe’ for our drive up Boulder Mountain.  It’s a free-flowing chamber jazz album, and for some reason, the build-ups and peaks in the music seemed to correspond to our view out of the window.  For lack of a better description, the experience was ‘transcendent’.

From there we hit Route 24, which was far more desolate, and looked more like the high desert landscape we were expecting.  At one point we came to a junction indicating we were within 20 miles of Lake Powell.  We stopped for gas and drinks there, and realized we had entered a very special part of Utah.  All locals had NRA hats on, and the cashier was cleaning a gigantic rifle behind the counter.  I was pretty glad at that point that we had not put a Sierra Club decal on our car.

The rest of the drive to Moab was fairly uneventful, though beautiful – the desert got drier and redder, and the road stretched out forever.