East Canyon

Visited: June 2018

I ran at Jeremy Ranch road today to Mormon Flat, which is also owned by this state park! Mormon Flat was a place the Mormons camped before heading up towards Big Mountain Pass. The Large Springs group campsite is also owned by the state park. Some boy scouts were camping there this morning. And Mormon Flat mostly had fisherman. There is a trailhead to go up to the pass from this spot. My husband started running up it and said it wasn't in great shape though. Marshy and hard to follow.

Afterwards, I was way too hot for it not even being 10 in the morning, and headed a few minutes down the road to East Canyon State Park to cool off. I was ready to show my pass to the gate attendant and was surprised no one was in the booth on a Sunday morning in June. I displayed my pass on my car anyway and there's a sign stating there's a $130 citation for not paying the fee so!! always do that.

I just soaked my lower legs in the cold, blue water and watched people out on their slow boats and some fishermen on the shore. It was very pleasant and I could have hung out there for quite a while. When I got back to the car, I noticed quite a bit of trash in the day use picnic area! The shore was ok, just some lures that I noticed there, but the picnic area was TRASHED. I spent a few minutes filling a grocery bag but the wind had picked up and was making my task exceedingly difficult so I didn't get as much as I would have liked. Sheesh people walk the 50 feet to the dumpster!! People had used the campfire rings at each picnic table as trash cans and a lot of it had blown out. Gross.

The park is pretty though with the water being a very deep blue and some red cliffs off on the horizon. I also like that the shore was left rocky and they didn't try to bring sand in, I feel like rocky shores are just cleaner and I don't like sand getting everywhere!

Mormon Flat

Mormon Flat

East Canyon Reservoir

This is the Place

Visited: May 2018

This park has two parts- a free part for the public about the Mormon expedition, and a village replicating pioneer life. I did not pay to go into the village as it seems to be geared towards kids and not like something I would enjoy on my own.

When you first come into the park, you can stop by a giant memorial to the Mormon Batallion and wander down the path to statues and replicas of the Pony Express.

When you continue to the visitor center, there is a giant memorial covered in statues of people important to Mormon and Utah history with lots of historical information. It's nice to wander around to all of them and look at the flowers in the spring.

The visitor center has a small museum in the basement and some paintings in the 'attic' but it is mostly a gift shop which surprised me! It's mostly kitschy stuff like "Live Laugh Love" type home decor, but I got a nice Utah magnet and of course a patch for the collection.

It was worth stopping here and reading some of the history on a rainy day.

Pony Express statue

The big memorial you can see from Sunnyside Ave

Loved the daisies here

How it got its name

Wat

Mormons...............

Kodachrome Basin

Visited: April 2018

I can't say enough about this park. From 2 year old me being pumped as heck to see some rocks and breaking down when I got tired and hungry and cranky, crying that "I don't want to be in the middle of nowhere, I want to be in the middle of SOMEwhere!"; to a 25 year old adult who was so relieved to finally be in the middle of nowhere, and took up running again to make sure I would have time to do all the trails before I had to leave Tropic, it's just made me so happy that it exists.

It's named "Kodachrome" because the deep hues of the rocks reminded people of the color film prints by Kodachrome Film. National Geographic suggested the name and ok'd it with Kodachrome. The "Basin" part comes from the fact that it's a geologic basin- it's a place where water flows in to (though you won't see much, if any, while you are here).

As I said, I did every trail here over 2 afternoon visits, though I didn't do the FULL loop at Shakespeare Arch. Only so much daylight! I would suggest this arch, the Angel's Palace Trail, and Panorame Point if you don't have time for all of them. I also got a Junior Ranger badge here. I liked hanging out with the seasonal rangers- I think we were both desperate for human interaction with people our own age, not retirees, children, or teachers. I got to drop some knowledge about the state parks system when people were asking the entrance booth, like passing notes for the answers lol. They were cool.

This park's claim to fame is the stone spires that tower seemingly impossibly out of the ground. There's a few theories about how these formed, and I'll let you choose your favorite when you visit! Make sure you visit the small museum attached to the entrance booth to get some great geologic diagrams.

One of the spires

The Angel's Palace

It me

Shakespeare Arch

The Sentinel

Always read the plaque- even if it's seen better days

My Jeep

Junior Ranger!

Me in 2016

Me and my daddy in 1994
(Yes that bright yellow thing is a leash. I was a leash baby. It was the reason I survived and I'm not mad about it in the slightest)

Ran this trail so I would have time for all of them!

Not sure what this was about. No plaque!

Edge of the Cedars

Visited: April 2018

This park is a museum that surprised me with how big and detailed it was. I'm friends with a lot of Native American history buffs and I haven't had this museum mentioned to me before. I stopped on my way down to Natural Bridges with my brother.

This might sound bad for some reason but I don't mean it to be. But I've worked at several sites with Native American history and culture, so sometimes museums and parks dedicated to it can be boring to me. Like, I know how an arrowhead is made. I've probably handled a more impressive one than any in the display case. I know how pottery is made. I've seen and found so much for myself. I know what they ate, what they hunted, farming techniques, trading, a lot of tribes' rituals, etc I've heard so much of it. It's hard for me to come upon new information, so I really seek out individual stories about individual events to stay interested. This museum provided some of that, as well as types of artifacts I hadn't seen as much as. So I do recommend giving it a visit!

!!!!!!!!

I'd never seen pottery like this before

Or like this

Kokopelli in his full glory

My brother at the pueblo at "the edge of the cedars"

obligatory ladder into an underground kiva

This was neat. It was an astrological structure that helps tracks the constellations

A true relic

Escalante Petrified Forest

Visited: April 2018

I had a quick visit to this park in the morning before I taught at the elementary school in Escalante (adorable, by the way). I didn't have to be there until 9:30, late for me, so I got to the park around 8 so I could have a quick jaunt on the trails. What I didn't expect was for a state park to be serious when they said a trail was steep and strenuous, so I was slightly sweaty when I arrived to the school. My bad.

The Petrified Forest Trail is a 1 mile loop that will show you a few pieces of petrified wood, and get you on top of the mesa where you can see the lake below, and great views into the distance among some lava rock. It was eerily similar to every single trail I ran on in my hometown of White Rock, NM. Aside from the petrified wood. It is very unique to have both lava rock (basalt) and petrified wood in the same place naturally!

I decided to add on the Sleeping Rainbow trail, a 0.75 mile extension to the loop that was described as steep and rocky. I worked for the park service and they tend to over exaggerate the difficulty of things, as people tend to overestimate their abilities. But they were notttt kidding. I fell on my butt a couple times because it was so steep on the loose rock. HOWEVER, if you want to see petrified wood, you MUST add on this trail. You only see like 4 logs on the main trail. Just don't do it in a time crunch for you job. Which for 99.9% of people this shouldn't be an issue lol. There were hundreds of pieces of so many colors along the trail. DO NOT TAKE ANY. If you want some petrified wood, stop at the Escalante Rock Shop which you pass on the way to the park. It is in a small yellow building and the very nice man there sells local petrified wood that he obtained legally on private easements.

Something growled at me in the woods, I didn't get a good look at it before it scurried away. I'd say it was either a huge bobcat or small coyote, probably the latter.

This is a seriously underrated park and I would love to go back! If you love geology you should definitely go here.

Looks SO much like the Tsankawi section of Bandelier from the top

One of the logs you'll see on the main trail

The Sleeping Rainbow trail is LITTERED with petrified logs

You'll see this canyon on the Sleeping Rainbow trail

This is every trail I ran in high school

The lake

A super well preserved log

Some of the small pieces you will see (I left it)

The rock shop where you can legally and cheaply buy petrified wood!

Fun fact: I was trying to figure out if petrified wood was sedimentary (deposited in a sedimentary process) or metamorphic (changing from one thing to another), but since it's organic material changing into a rock, it's actually considered a fossil.