Kodachrome Basin and Bryce Canyon

On our sixth day in southern Utah we decided to head north towards Kodachrome Basin and Bryce Canyon.  We headed north off Highway 89 on the Johnson Canyon Road, up into the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument.  This road was paved for quite a few miles, before we eventually branched off onto Skutumpah Road which angled northeast towards Cannonville and Kodachrome Basin State Park. It was deer hunting season, and the back country was busy with lots of trailers, ATV's and 4x4's as everyone seemed to out looking for that big buck.  We saw him... when he dashed across the road in front of us, but fortunately for him there were no rifles around at the time.

I'm not clear exactly how the Grand Staircase Escanlante National Monument is managed.  It is administered by the Bureau of Land Management, and not the National Park Service.  This is a relatively new park and there are a number of long term residents that live on lands within the park.  Mostly these are larger ranching operations, and there were a lot of cattle ranging all over this area that we passed through on this day. Seeing the pasture that these things graze it's no wonder this cactus and sage fed beef doesn't hold a candle to our Alberta Beef.  It was also a little unusual to us that hunting was allowed within the park...

Initially the Skutumpah Road was a pretty easy drive as it just wound around through the benches of sage, junipers and pines.  There was nothing particularly photogenic up here so we just kept driving.  Eventually the upper reaches of the road got pretty rough.  The road got really steep and winding and crossed down into a couple of deep valleys including Willis Creek and Bull Valley Gorge.  We had to ford these small streams with the truck.  Although rather interesting, we decided to push on to Kodachrome Basin.  Rob was not feeling well from the rough driving through this section and we all agreed that we would not return to Kanab by this same route.  Eventually we hit the pavement again and drove the last few miles into Kodachrome Basin State Park.  This park was named by some National Geographic photographers that explored this area back in the 1940's.  After paying the entry fee we headed off on a side road to Chimney Rock.

After exploring this area for a while and making a few photographs we went back into the main area of the park.  Here there was a store, a campsite, trail rides and a few other facilities.  The formations here were pretty cool and we spent a little time wandering around, exploring and making some photographs with the big cameras.  Mostly we worked an area call the Box Canyon.

By the time we wrapped things up at Kodachrome Basin it was getting to be late afternoon.  We decided to head back in the general direction of Kanab.  It was a drive of about 2 hours to loop all the way around and back to Kanab as we did not want to return by the more direct but much rougher route through the back country.  We decided to make a stop at Bryce Canyon National Park.  By this time it was late afternoon. We paid the $25 entry fee even though we knew we would only have a couple of hours at best.  The park was quite busy, and too commercialized for my liking.  Fortunately the shuttle buses were not running this late in the season and we were able to drive into the viewpoints.  We only had time to hit one, so in consideration of the time of day, we elected Sunset Point.  The parking area was not full, but it was very busy.  We got out and looked around and decided to drag out the big cameras and capture some photographs of the canyon formations from Sunset Point.  The rim trail was full with tourists and we had to work our way around to a little quieter spot to set up.  But, as soon as the big cameras came out we drew a crowd, getting all of the usual questions...   "are your surveying?"...  "what is that?"...  "is that a Hasselblad?"...  only one guy that I talked to actually knew that I was shooting with an Ebony and that is was a sheet film camera.  I found it a little surprising that here we were in one of the most beautiful places on earth, in fabulous light conditions, and people were taking pictures of me and my camera, rather than the beautiful landscape in front of them.. Go figure....

At one point three big guys with eastern European accents gathered around me and started asking a lot of questions.  I was grateful that Brad wandered over and kept an eye on my gear that was spread out on the ground while I was working, as these three seemed a little suspicious.  In hindsight it was probably totally innocent as these guys didn't even initially know what I was doing, so there was probably very little incentive for them to attempt to steal anything.  By the time we wrapped up here it was getting dark and we still had a drive of one and a half hours to get back to the house in Kanab.  Once again it was dark when we got back and went through the usual routine of having something to eat and preparing for the next day.

We had been told by a number of people over the past couple of days about a spot called Whitepocket, that was even better than The Wave.  We were reluctant to try driving in on our own.  It was a long road through some areas of deep loose sand and it was apparently east to get stuck.  We decided to hire an outfitter to take us in.  We weren't able to line one up for this day, hence the trip to Kodachrome and Bryce instead.  But, we had a guy lined up for tomorrow to take us in.