"Wild and Wonderful" Grand Staircase - Escalante National Monument by Toughluck

Before this location was available, there was Escalante, the town named for the river, named for the Spanish Jesuit. There, you'll find my travelogue with additional pictures.

Within Utah, components of the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM’s) National Landscape Conservation System (NLCS) involve approximately 4,204,700 million acres, which is approximately 18 percent of all BLM-managed public lands in Utah.

The Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument (GSENM), which was created by presidential proclamation in 1996, is the first National Monument to be managed by BLM, and the largest at 1,870,800 acres.

Utah BLM manages one entire wilderness, Cedar Mountain (100,000 acres), and portions of three wildernesses – Paria-Vermillion Cliffs (20,000 acres) and Beaver Dam Mountains (2,600 acres) that border Arizona, and Black Ridge Canyons ( 5,100 acres) that borders Colorado.

Taken from the BLM site. It was blown away by the numbers.

• Pros:Open spaces, tall cliffs, soaring arches
• Cons:No food, no service.
• In a nutshell:A majical world to explore - come prepared