High Desert: As we left Highway 89 and the small town of Big Water, Utah, we experienced some dramatic high desert landscapes and scenery. Shown is a view of the landscape with some interesting atmospherics in the sky to top it off. This image was taken shortly after we left Big Water. Photo by Gary Warren/ladailypost.com
Desert Stream: A small desert stream of water crossed the road we continued traveling out of Big Water, Utah. The stream was trickling water when we visited the area in August when many similar streams would be a dry bed by late summer. Photo by Gary Warren/ladailypost.com
By GARY WARREN
Photographer
Formerly of Los Alamos
On a recent trip we drove our car, an SUV, rather than our RV as we intended to spend a few days in San Diego. Those plans changed when the hurricane made landfall the same day we were to check into our hotel. The San Diego visit will happen at another time but this trip turned out to be a nice tour of the Southwest region of the U.S.
We left a few days early so that we could take the back roads and explore areas along the route. One detour in southern Utah led us about 20 miles into the back country of Glen Canyon National Recreation Area (Glen Canyon NRA).
The Glen Canyon NRA was established in 1972 to provide a recreation area around Lake Powell and surrounding areas. The area is over a million acres in size and is primarily operated by the National Park Service.
We had made a few stops on the lake to see how much the lake had risen following the rainy spring and early summer. The increase in the water level was impressive as covered in the Post From the Road in the Aug. 20, 2023, Los Alamos Daily Post (link).
We were not planning to stay near Lake Powell for the evening so we moved on toward Kanab, Utah. However, a few miles into Utah we decided to explore some back country within the Glen Canyon NRA.
We turned off of Highway 89 at Big Water, Utah and began our journey down a dirt and rocky road. We enjoyed this detour because we are normally traveling in our RV and cannot travel the back dirt or gravel roads unless they are well maintained.
We traveled a little over 20 miles into the back country and found the landscape to be beautiful and barren at the same time. In the beginning I would call the landscape a beautiful “high desert” landscape similar to much of Northern New Mexico. As we drove farther the landscape changed to a rocky, sandy, barren landscape with almost no vegetation but it was beautiful. Not a place I would want to be stranded but a beautiful detour from the highway travel.
When we turned off of the highway, we didn’t know if we were going to be traveling two miles or 20 miles into the back country. We were just exploring and seeing some new and different scenery. We saw and experienced some stunning and different sites on the detour during the two hour detour.
We enjoy traveling in this manner. We had a general idea that we would probably stop in Kanab for the evening and that was our only parameter. After driving a little more than 20 miles and the dirt and rocky road was becoming less passable for our SUV and we knew it was time to turn around and return to Highway 89.
We back tracked the 20 miles of dirt and rocky road, got on Highway 89 and had time to enjoy the scenery to Kanab and stop for the evening. Just another day on the road as we traverse our beautiful country.
Editor’s note: Longtime Los Alamos photographer Gary Warren and his wife Marilyn are traveling around the country, and he shares his photographs, which appear in the “Posts from the Road” series published in the Sunday edition of the Los Alamos Daily Post.
Barren and Beautiful: Just a short distance farther into the back country we noticed a change in the landscape. Almost all vegetation had disappeared and the area became more barren. The colors of the rocks and layers of soil created a dramatic scene where the only sign of life was the tire tracks of an all-terrain vehicle, ATV, across the area. Photo by Gary Warren/ladailypost.com
Layers: The layers of rock and soil over thousands of years have created this geological wonder of scenery in the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area in Southern Utah. Seen are several layers of different rock and soil as well as the charcoal colored soil at the base of the hillside. Photo by Gary Warren/ladailypost.com
Glen Canyon NRA: The Glen Canyon National Recreation Area was established in 1972 as a public recreational area around Lake Powell which is located on the Utah and Arizona border. The majority of the over one million acres of the area falls within Utah. Photo by Gary Warren/ladailypost.com