May 11th, 2021
Cannonville/Bryce Canyon KOA
Cannonville, Utah
To get to Cannonville, UT from Flagstaff, AZ you take 89N out of town. Not a bad drive because there is so much to see along the way. You go by the North Rim area of the Grand Canyon and past Navajo land. We saw the sign for Horseshoe Bend a little too late to make the stop and the hike to see it but decided on another trip we would make it a point to visit Page, Arizona. I think we knew it would be a long day...Google Maps said 5 hours but it would be more like 6 hours and that is a hard day for us. I don't drive the RV much on the open road so all the driving falls on Robert.
Once you get past Page, you can see the Glen Canyon Dam. It's a pretty impressive place and would love to spend some time camping there. Within a half an hour we were entering into Utah and how the terrain changed. It was still rocky, like the Grand Canyon area but the colors and rock formations became different in looks. I'm fascinated with the geology of the area and hope to one day get a book about that area but for now, pictures will have to be my reminders of what we experienced. It's also at the time that we officially entered the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument area. This is a vast area with three main regions...the Grand Staircase, the Kaiparowits, and the Canyons of the Escalante. Most of the acreage is managed by the Bureau of Land Management. You can find out more by going to Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.
At Kabab, we stopped to get gas and a Subway sandwich. It's at Kabab that you start heading north on 89 for quite a distance before you see the sign for Scenic 12. At that point, you make a right hand turn onto 12 and begin the journey through the Dixie Forest National Park, past the road that will take you into Bryce Canyon National Park and on into Tropic and finally into Cannonville, where we would stay for the next 9 nights. In reality, we would fly out of St. George, UT to come back to Texas for our daughter's graduation for her Master's Degree in Counseling.
The drive through the Dixie Forest was beautiful and once you got through Red Canyon, you could start seeing the unique red rock formations that Bryce is known for. It's about a 30 mile drive from Red Canyon to Cannonville, but it is really so beautiful. There is always construction on this road in the summer time due to the fact that spring and summer are when the roads can be repaired from the winter snows and frost heaves. Expect that you will be delayed every day of your visit so give yourself an extra 30 minutes to your drive time.
After getting settled in our spot that we had for one night (we would have to move to another spot the next day due to a clerical error), we ran into Tropic to have dinner at Showdowns. It's a pretty nice steakhouse with live entertainment and outdoor eating area. We found Tropic to be one of the places we would eat at a lot while in Cannonville, as it doesn't have a restaurant one open at this time.
I think I'll end this post here. We are about to have an incredible experience in Bryce Canyon and I think it needs it's own post! Thanks for joining us on this journey!