Utah,
on Route 12 to Bryce Canyon
From Torrey heading southwest, Route 12 to Bryce Canyon snatches the Routard an exclamation: "What a wonder this road ...!".
Its diversity is indeed remarkable, but our circuit has so far been so rich in sumptuous and diverse panoramas that these new and different ones do not arouse the same enthusiasm, despite very nice surprises, always present.
The 12 first crosses large pastures where horses graze peacefully behind their white fences, and further cattle.
The cows, mainly heifers, seem to belong here to only one race, small, black or dark, nervous. Their modest udder does not a priori compare them to milkmaids ; rather beef cows, despite a morphology without very thick muscles.
Elsewhere, a herd, perhaps escaped from an enclosure, crosses our road without haste.
Route 12 rises quickly through wide hairpin bends towards wooded mountain heights (the "Dixie National Forest") where coniferous trees of the spruce type predominate, and many birch trees whose very tall white trunks bristle as they stretch above other small conifers.
We also meet again a small group of antelopes, or rather deer, which, from a distance, graze without fear.
But higher in the mountain, a few cars must have met other larger groups during the night. : we see, staggered over a few kilometers, three dead deer along the road.
Preferred area of a few families traveling in their huge camper van, the vast spaces offer everyone the guarantee of finding beautiful, well-isolated sites set back from our road on the protective edge of forests.
We also meet again a small group of antelopes, or rather deer, which, from a distance, graze without fear.
But higher in the mountain, a few cars must have met other larger groups during the night : we see, staggered over a few kilometers, three dead deer along the road.
From a belvedere, the gaze captures the entire panorama of the plateau-valley towards the east, whose veiled ocher of the rock recalls the semi-desert character.
A little further, the altitude rises again to exceed at its peak 2900m.
The vegetation is becoming rarer and the forest is made up of tenacious shrubs without however the landscape becoming mineral.
A few scattered farms nestle at the foot of cliffs.
To the left of the road (we go south), a valley hollows out in eroded limestone reliefs with very rounded semi-desert peaks, often leveled, also announcing a small canyon whose vertical walls gradually regain the ocher of the greater region.
This region is that of the "Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument" more to the south, through which we will not make a detour.
Thin and very regular strata run like contour lines, emphasizing the outlines enhanced by the play of light.
Then the canyon deepens, branches out, grows larger, exposing higher polished cliffs.
Beyond the plateau it cuts through, other softer reliefs majestically frame a green valley, that of Boulder, in the distance to the northeast.
The Escalante River, this river which winds and digs deeper into the canyon on the left, gives its name to the entire region. It's heading to the Colorado River more than 100 km downstream.
Information signs mention the charm of the greenery that both here and in Torrey provide local poplars (cottonwood) and willows, whenever water is present.
The road follows an arid valley in very wide bends, climbs up a worn rocky ridge.
Further on, the switchbacks are more nervous in an impressive passage of two miles in narrow crest between two precipitous canyons of a wild splendor at 1900 meters of altitude, halfway between Boulder and Escalante.
The 12 cascades over several folds, where the rock forms fine millefeuille.
Then, in superb and vast laces, we cross the Escalante river without seeing it.
Finally it winds in long, playful laces, as in a gigantic theme park, to descend after a few straight lines towards the village of Escalante, its neat houses spaced from each other and farms away of the road.
Even if the plateau where the village is located seems isolated, almost desolate, with no other attraction than a certain research in the decoration of the houses, of the Post Office, it emanates a particular charm, stripped, almost austere, a real lost village to the harshness of which the wind which sweeps contributes without obstacle.
In March 1879, it was from this site, not yet a village, that starts the expedition called "Hole-in-the Rock Trail " , which was to end on the other side of the Colorado river with the foundation of the village of Bluff.
But it is indeed to the Escalante river and its innumerable meanders that the village and its valley owe the immense grassy plateaus with pastures.
Further south, a more chaotic relief seems to be made of white limestone, with long intact ridges.
We enter the region of "Kaiparowits Formation", an inexhaustible vein of fossil animals whose inventory is still far from being completed by paleontologists.
The Kaiparowits Formation
It is a sedimentary layer 850 meters thick, formed between 76.6 and 74.5 Ma in the Upper Cretaceous, consisting of sandstone from river deposits, and alluvial deposits from flooding in the plains.
Information panels concisely indicate that this site contains an incredible concentration of fossils, which results from the perfect match of favorable circumstances : in the Upper Cretaceous, the region is a lush coastal plain-swamp west of one of the island-continents which in plate tectonics will form North America (the island "Laramidia").
In a subtropical climate, the diversity and the quantity of animals constituting the fauna are considerable.
Then huge masses of sand and mud from abundant rivers and coastal storms bury some of these animals mainly in the upper layer of these sediments.
The plate movements finally enhance these sediments to form the current plateau whose altitude is around 2000 meters.
We discover a wide variety of dinosaurs in particular, imprisoned there around 10 Ma before their extinction.
These are then Henrieville, a village that takes advantage of Henrieville Creek, and a few miles further Cannonville and Tropic, along the "Paria River", three villages lost on the 12 whose agriculture is based on the irrigation of the meadows.
It's from there that remarkable and original geological concretions begin to appear on the flanks and at the crest of the rocky masses, which become more and more frequent after passing Tropic.
They are tall, narrow, horizontally striated columns, often isolated, but sometimes gathered like a ruined medieval dungeon, elsewhere forming a random succession of tapered pyramids.
Between the pure sky where the clouds play and the few green and perfectly straight pines which grow at the foot of these natural buildings or in the narrow defiles which separate them, the spectacle is superb and already bewitching.
We know it foreshadows what awaits us soon in Bryce Canyon.
Then a few moments later, a wink ; our biblical fascination is diverted by a lively squirrel which seems to pose for us on a branch.