Thursday, July 20th we headed out on UT 12 towards Cedar Breaks National Monument. First we have to pass through Red Canyon. We had passed through the canyon on the way into Bryce Canyon but did not stop to take any photos....
Red Canyon is just minutes from Bryce and offers a dramatic landscape of sandstone hoodoos, right off the road. The canyon is popular for hiking and mountain biking. ATV's are permitted on designated trails.
We then headed up US 89 to the town of Panguitch where we turned on to UT 143 toward Cedar Breaks National Monument. Along the way we encountered a traffic jam!!! John only saw lunch on the hoof!!!
We soon came to Cedar Breaks National Monument, a miniature Bryce Canyon.
The monument is shaped like a huge coliseum, the amphitheater is over 2,000 feet deep and over three miles in diameter. Millions of years of deposition, uplift, and erosion carved this huge bow. in the steep west-facing side of the 10,000 foot high Markagunt Plateau. Stone spires stand like statues in a gallery alongside columns, arches, and canyons. Saturating the rock is a color scene as striking as any on the Colorado Plateau.
Among the region's original residents are the Southern Paiute, who called Cedar Breaks u-map-wich, " the
place where the rocks are sliding down all the time." Later settlers named it Cedar Breaks, misidentifying the area's juniper trees as cedars and using breaks to describe the steep, heavily eroded terrain.President Franklin D. Roosevelt established Cedar Breaks National Monument in 1933, calling nationwide attention to its spectacular amphitheater.
There are more things to see in the area.... stay tuned.
Love to all,
Candy and Johnny
