We've been hosting at the Escalante Petrified forest state park, in southern Utah, for a month now. This is a small campground, 22 spots, sitting on a reservoir, nestled into the colorful red and white cliffs. The scenery is beautiful, the weather just about perfect, and the park employees are very easy to work with and very nice. The town is 2 miles by scooter away, a very small town with 1 grocery store, a couple of outfitter companies, gas stations and 2-3 restaurants or cafes, but pretty much closes right up on Sundays. The only fast food is Subway. Not knowing what the town had in the way of "supplies", we stocked up on staples and dry goods and hoped for the best. It's been pretty comparable in prices and is good for a few fresh items you can't stock up. Gas prices are the same too.
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| Grosvenor Arch |
Our "work" is pretty easy, Bill cleans up campsites, weed eats the grounds and other projects. He helps people all evening coming in for sites. I work in the office, greeting the day users, getting campers into sites and office things. Not too tough.
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| Small box canyon |
The park is very popular too and the campground is full to overflowing every night. The day users hike up the hill to the petrified forest and see an old forest, now petrified rock and the colors are brilliant.
The entire area is just an ongoing breathtaking wonder. Bryce Canyon, Zion and Kodachrome National parks are close and the Grand Staircase-Escalante National monument covers the entire half of Utah to the Arizona border. This is the land of slot canyons, rivers and washes to hike down, slick rock to walk on and just amazing views. So on our days off we've tackled a few of these hikes. We've hiked up the Escalante river to a natural bridge, driven over the Hell's backbone road, very steep, twisty dirt road. This climbed to over 9000 ft and had some steep canyon views. These hollows have the appealing name of Death hollow, very inviting to hike into!
Canyon walls have pictograhs and petrographs and occasionally some ruins.
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| 100 hands pictograph |
We've driven down some very rough dirt roads to access the slot canyons. Some we had to turn around on and never got to the wash or canyon. The most popular hike, Calf Creek, was a flat walk 3 miles into a waterfall. But along the way is the large pictograph, grainery ruins high up on the cliff, and creek scenery.
There are some canyons we'd like to do but are either too long of a hike or down off one of the worst roads we've ever been on, Hole in the Rock. I've renamed it Holy Crap road. It's just bone jarring washboard, ruts, sand washes and plain miserable. And there are 57 miles of it! Some of the better hikes are about 30-40 miles down it. So unless we have a 4 wheeler, we're sticking to places we can get to on the scooters or paved roads.
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| Pictograph on Calf's creek |
We did make a run to Las Vegas, twice, to pick up some family visiting and also did some real shopping for groceries, a beer run at a liquor store in NV (cheaper and not 3.2 beer) for several people and got to see our youngest son. The drive over some of the mountains here was just as pretty as the canyon drives. We probably won't venture out for shopping though till we leave at the end of Oct.
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| Willis creek slot |
Our time at Escalante Petrified Forest State Park is drawing to an end. For our first camp hosting experience, I don't think we could have picked a better place. We have both truly enjoyed our time here and will miss the park and the people. It was so nice here that we've already put our names in to come back in May and June 2012. 
We also enjoyed the area on our time off with some hikes along river canyons, into some slot canyons, hunted for strange rock formations called Moqui marbles, and rode some 4 wheelers. Plus a few trips to the "cities" to pick up company (all the way to Las Vegas) and do Walmart/grocery runs and liquor stores in Nevada. Although the drives are long, the scenery is beautiful and varies between colorful rock formations, valleys with wide vistas, up into the mountains with lakes and pines. There is so much to explore here it would involve moving here to really take advantage of it. My favorite is Red Canyon, along hwy 12. After driving along high desert scrub, you are suddenly in a red rock canyon with plenty of large formations. It's stunning.
