Tag Archives: UT

Forgotten canyon

When I think of solitude on the road, I’ll admit the last place I’d associate with it is Zion National Park. In the twenty years that had passed since I first visited the park (when it was a sleepy secret), word had definitely gotten out. Nowadays Zion is a lot like the Grand Canyon: there are so many visitors that you can no longer drive the park road in your own car for most of the year, and forget any hope of a solitary moment. On my most recent visit, it worked out that I was there during spring break week for most of Utah’s colleges and universities—needless to say, I rubbed shoulders (literally! The shuttle bus was packed!) with a whole lotta fresh-faced students that day. But a kind park ranger gave me a great tip: she told me that if I wanted to escape the crowds, I should try Zion’s lesser-known sister site: the Kolob Canyons Unit, just forty miles to the northwest.

Reader, she was right. There was nobody there. Not one soul, save the ranger manning the lonely visitor center. So while the hordes teemed in Zion Canyon, I had this view all to myself. It felt like winning a trophy for braving the crowd earlier.

Twists and turns

Well, it wasn’t the Loneliest Road, but I certainly had a lonely-road solo drive on the day before I crossed Nevada. I was in southeastern Utah, and I wanted to tick another highway off my road-trip bucket list: State Route 12, which cuts through part of the mostly-wilderness, sprawling, painted-desert expanse of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. The highway itself, completed in 1940 by CCC road builders, is legendary—but because of its remote location, I had never managed to get there on one of my previous Southwest trips.

I knew the drive would have spectacular scenery,

and the squiggles on the map promised a fun challenge of curving blacktop.

And I’ve done enough winding desert drives in the Southwest to expect surprises along the way—

—but the road pulled a few fast ones on me, all the same.

I rounded a blind curve to find this fella standing calmly on the yellow line. I screeched to a halt (and thus vindicated myself for sticking to the speed limit), stopping just a foot or two from him, and he didn’t even flinch. Didn’t even move—he made me go around to continue on my way, while he stared me down.

Still, once my heart rate returned to normal, I tried to remind myself that maybe he wasn’t interrupting my solo road trip—maybe I was interrupting his.

Our best idea

Mt. Rainier National Park, WA

Tomorrow is the 100th birthday of the National Park Service. All of America seems to be celebrating right now, and rightly so. In my opinion, our wildest pockets are our true national treasures, and our national parks, as Wallace Stegner said, our best idea.

Olympic National Park, WA

So since I’ve spent a good chunk of my sketching life in national parks both close to home…

Arches National Park, UT

…and far afield…

Crater Lake National Park, OR

I figured I’d add my voice to the celebratory din, in the form of a little sketchbook retrospective.

Badlands National Park, SD

Beyond the centennial itself, I’m always up for toasting the parks. Not only do I think park rangers are the best people on earth,

Redwood National Park, CA

but I also sometimes think they’re the only thing standing between wildness and destruction.

Carlsbad Caverns National Park, NM

And anyway, I’m not exaggerating when I say I’m a total park nut myself. It’s my goal to visit every NPS property before I die, including national parks, historic sites, national monuments, everything. (Actually, I’ve crossed a goodly chunk of them off the list already—

Guadalupe Mountains National Park, TX

—and I even have the stamps to prove it.)

Olympic National Park, WA

I know I have a long path ahead of me before I reach that goal,

Grand Canyon National Park, AZ

and getting there won’t be easy.

Big Bend National Park, TX

Yet I can’t tell you how grateful I am that the opportunity exists in the first place—

Rocky Mountain National Park, CO

that so many people have fought to preserve these wild places, and won.

Saguaro National Park, AZ

Best of all is the feeling that no matter how long it might take me to get to each park with my sketchbook,

Glacier National Park, MT

I know it’ll be there waiting for me, as close to unchanged as humanly possible. Thanks to the National Park Service, the window of opportunity remains open.

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Frozen desert

In my humble opinion, the absolute best time to visit Arches is in the winter. Sure, you’ll have to wrap up extra warm (it barely got above zero degrees F during the day!), and if you’re sketching, you’ll have to think ahead to keep your paints from freezing. But the rewards far outweigh any annoyances. For one thing, there’s nothing like seeing Arches under a blanket of snow. For another, the teeming hordes that descend upon the place during the peak season are simply nonexistent. So you’re far more likely to have the same luck the Tailor and I did, when we had this…

…all to ourselves.

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Blushing brontosaurus

Vernal is the known as the gateway to Dinosaur National Monument. And don’t get me wrong, I’m always game for a national park—but I would have come all that way just to see the pink concrete dinosaur. (Priorities, right?)

Spurred to sketch

I really have no idea why this sign isn’t where it’s supposed to be (in Durango, CO), and why we stumbled upon it at Hole n’ the Rock instead. But since Durango wasn’t on the list for that trip, and I never would have made this sketch otherwise, you won’t find me complaining!

Sanserif petroglyphs

Now, I’m already going to be on the look-out for interesting signs or bizarre billboards when I’m on the road—but I have to admit, this is pretty good way to get my attention.

Basin & range

There are plenty of places in the West where you don’t reach the mountains until after you cross miles and miles of foothills. Well, not here. There’s something about the sheer scale of this part of Utah—of perfectly flat valleys abruptly cut off by steep mountain slopes, of towering peaks dwarfing farms and towns and cities at their feet—that gets me every time.

Four corners

The Tailor and I make for an odd pair on a road trip. I’m likely to put enormous thought into the road tunes, to cue up the exact perfect song to play as we pass through certain landscapes (I am also usually the only one who notices or cares, no matter who’s with me on a trip). He, on the other hand, is likely to have one half of his mind in the present moment, and the other half somewhere in the Annals of Random History.

For instance, on this day, I was all wrapped up in how the weather seemed to shift with the music, when the Tailor turned to me and said, “Did you know that considering today’s date and our current time zone, the Titanic was sinking precisely one hundred years ago?!?”

So of course I had to add that to the sketchbook. Doesn’t the desert remind everyone of maritime disasters?