About 17 miles down Hole-in-the-Rock Road is a small area of interesting rocks known as Devil’s Garden. Now, if you are wondering where Hole-in-the-Rock road is located, it is just east of the town of Escalante along the famous Utah Highway 12, so often mentioned here before…and goes 62 miles south the northern shores of Lake Powell.
The road is well known to backpackers and photographers, but not to many other people. It is not a well traveled road as all 62 miles of it are unpaved and a bit rough. Lots of washboard spots for drainage and lots of mud after a rain. Of course, it is covered in snow during the winter.
If you wonder where it got its name, you will find that answer down at the end…a hole in the rock that looks out over the lake. The road was built by Mormon settlers in the area. It originally went down into Glen Canyon, but since Lake Powell now occupies that space, the last 300 feet of the road are underwater. The road itself has little scenery to recommend it to most folks, but there are a few spectacular places along the route that make it worth doing.
My friend and fellow photographer Dave Forster and I headed down that road on our last trip to southern Utah. Our destination was Dance Hall Rock, about 40 miles down the road. We were about halfway there when we ran into a ranger. He told us we would never make it all the way as there was lots of mud ahead because of a rain and snow storm two days earlier. He suggested a stop at Devil’s Garden on our way back to Highway 12.
Dave had been there once before, but it was new to me. So we headed back and took the side road into Devil’s Garden. It is an interesting collection of large eroded rocks, quite similar to Goblin Valley with fewer formations on a bigger scale. There is a picnic area, a short loop path and two interesting arches. The photo above is one of them. That is Dave in the photo to help give scale to the size of the rock formations…and yes, that is snow on the ground and on top of the arch.
It was an interesting place and I have a few more photos of the area I will share in future. We didn’t spent much time there as we decided to head back west along Highway 12 in order to be in Zion National Park by sunset.
And while I was glad to see this Devil’s Garden (there is another place by that name in Arches National Park, shared here before), we both were disappointed we did not get to make it to Dancehall Rock. There was a special photo opportunity there we both badly wanted to make. Hopefully one day in the future.
(To see a larger version of this photo, just click on the image)
To see more of my work, both in photography and digital painting, please visit my website, www.corkrum.com.
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