Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument

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After getting our permit for The Wave, we stopped for lunch at the Paria Scenic Viewpoint and then drove a dangerous, rutted, unpaved road down toward the Paria Ghost Town. The road got far too steep and treacherous and we were worried we wouldn’t make it back up, so we stopped the car at a pull off and continued down on foot.

The area, in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, is amazingly beautiful.  The clay and sandstone of the Banded Cliffs are pastel shades of purple, green and peach, created during the triassic period. It looks like a like a painting of sunset even in the middle of the day. We hiked all the way into the wash until it became too muddy to continue.

Originally the town was settled by mormons in the 1800s, but the yearly flooding of the Paria River made the town unsustainable.  In the mid-1900s the area was discovered by Hollywood and for decades was the backdrop to many Westerns including The Outlaw Josey Wales.

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