Wednesday, 28 May, Page, AZ

Lake Powell Resort
(via Escalante NP, Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park, & the Glen Canyon Dam)

Having found out that tomorrow’s planned trip up Escalante to Hole-in-the-Rock Road would be impossible in anything but a proper 4x4 (Land Rover or equivalent, not some ‘soft-roader’!), we decided to do the top road to the town of Escalante (the UT-12 - one of the ‘top 10’ scenic byways in the US!)Many mammalian and uplifted/faulted sandstone rock formations and very few cars!

Grand Staircase – Escalante National Park
The Grand Staircase – Escalante NP, is not double/translatedly-named. There are two distinct yet related parts to this name.
Escalante comes from the Dominguez-Escalante Expedition of 1776. Two Spanish priests, Fathers. Dominguez and Escalante, traversed much of the southwest in a gruelling expedition in an attempt to reach California from Santa Fe, New Mexico. A.H. Thompson, a member of the Powell Survey team, knew the history of the area and thought it would be a good way to honor one of the first known explorers of the Southwest.
The ‘Staircase’ part comes from the distinctly coloured layers or steps found in all the exposed stratified rock.
In the 1870s, geologist Clarence Dutton first conceptualized this region as a huge stairway ascending out of the bottom of the Grand Canyon northward with the cliff edge of each layer forming giant steps. Dutton divided this layer cake of Earth history into five steps that he colourfully named Pink Cliffs, Grey Cliffs, White Cliffs, Vermilion Cliffs, and Chocolate Cliffs. Since then, modern geologists have further divided Dutton's steps into individual rock formations.
However, such layering is evident in all the sandstone from Arches to Zion, but was ‘claimed’ for this park because of the closeness to the name of Father Escalante.
The Park exposes over 4 billion years’ of the Earth’s geological history.
Hoodoos are one such geological oddity. Pronounced Ho-Do, the name originates and includes definitions from West African voodoo culture, a column of rock and something which brings bad luck, nonsense!
These pinnacles are caused by a variety of geological events, uplifting, deposition, faulting and erosion.

Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park
This caught my eye, in my endless search for real dunes to walk and photograph. It was a mere 15 off our journey, and not traversing Escalante meant we had the spare time, to see them.
Quite cute and well defined but a little disappointing in scale.
Still, at $6 for the two of us, who can complain?
Tried to capture some angles giving the impression of a mini Saharan desert-scape, but… no, not quite.

Glen Canyon Dam
It was only when the last of the 8 dams which uphold the natural force of the Colorado River (the Glen Canyon Dam), that Lake Powell was created. It is a valuable power generating resource, stores water for, amongst other places, Las Vegas and Los Angeles, and provides us all with a fantastic water playground and recreational area.
The staff were very helpful at the Carl Hayden Visitor's Centre, and were far more relaxed about who can visit the dam and what you could take with you. The Hoover Dam was a far more officious and restricting affair, with only a briefcase-sized bag allowed and no photographs inside. The Glen Canyon Dam crew were very accommodating, metal detectors notwithstanding - my granola bar set the alarms off because of the plastic 'foil wrapper! National emergency avoided - I used their 'trash can' forthwith!

Glen Canyon NRA/Lake Powell
John Wesley Powell (the famous explorer after whom this lake is named), once described this place as:
“… a curious ensemble of wonderful features … carved walls, royal arches, glens, alcove gulches, mounds and monuments”.
The name Glen Canyon was thus born.
The lake is almost 200 miles in length and its shoreline (of over 1960 miles), is equal to the combined coastal shoreline of the Pacific west (Washington, Oregon and California combined!
Fishing, boating, skiing and pleasure trips (more later) are amongst the chief activities pursued here.

Journey Notes and Details
Distance: 322 miles
Duration: 9 hrs 25 mins
Temperature: 96F