After leaving Zion National Park (click here), our next stop was Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. Full disclosure: as much as I plan before a trip, and during, I didn’t know what to expect. As a matter of fact, when we arrived at the Visitor Center, my husband ran inside to find out how we would get to it from here. He quickly returned.
“How’d you do?,” I asked as he buckled his seat belt.
Laughing a little, he replied. “I asked the woman at the desk and she asked if we came from Bryce.” He told her we had and she said, “You were driving on it already via Scenic Byway 12 (known as the most beautiful road in the country). There’s no one designated spot.'”
“Well, aren’t we dumb. I guess ‘monument’ isn’t always a marble statue.”
“She also said wait until you see what’s coming up,” he reported.
Months later, I am pretty sure there is still egg on my face but being visually impaired, I just can’t see it.
On the east side of Zion, where we had come from, you are surrounded by colossal sandstone formations. Grand Staircase–Escalante becomes more vast. Now you are looking across enormous canyons; there are layers of colored rock, mesas and plateaus. Every turn in the road reveals a different vista.
Several lookout spots allow you the opportunity to take it all in. You would be making a mistake as large as the view if you did not. At one pullover, Mister Rain took a photo showing the road down below in the distance where we would be shortly.
The highest elevation in Grand Staircase-Escalante is 8,500 feet. Here it seemed as though the road had been built right on top of the exposed rock. The 60-mile drive through the monument seemed never-ending. The fact that I still wanted it to go on says all you need to know. As for me, I now know exactly what Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument is.
It is breathtaking.
Sister Rain Note:
I intentionally do not get political on this site. However, in July 2026, the current President of the United States slashed 1.8 million acres of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, cutting the protected area to 181,500 acres. A 90% reduction. Whatever your leanings, if there is a thimble-sized love of country inside you, you are disgusted by this abhorrent act.
I don’t know policies, perhaps I wouldn’t understand them if I did. But I believe with every red, white and blue fiber of my being that you cannot love America and not cherish and keep safe her extraordinary beauty.
#SisterRain #ALittleSightALotOfHeart #LegallyBlindTraveler #Travel #Adventure #Explore #RoadTrip #America #AmerianHistory #Utah #GrandStaircaseEscalanteNationalMonument
