Utah Highway 12 is a road I never tire of.

Sure, it scares me, especially the hogback section that elicits the same sphincter-tightening reaction every time.

But hey, I can do this.

***

I leave Tropic and push eastward, toward Esaclante, 40 miles away. Escalante is a small ranching town with about 800 full-time residents. It’s named after Silvestre Velez de Escalante, a Franciscan missionary and a member of the first European expedition into southern Utah.

Escalante sits at about 5,820 feet. It feels hot and dry, almost desert-ish. Annual precipitation averages only about 10 inches. Hard to believe I’m almost at 6,000 feet.

After Escalante, the road begins to climb, steeply in places, on its way to more than 9,600 feet. Fourteen miles up the road, by the Kiva Koffeehouse, I cross the Escalante River on the way to the hogback.

The Kiva Koffeehouse & Kiva Kottage, open May through November is at mile marker 73.86 on Highway 12. It offers a place to stop, view Escalante Canyon, and even stay for the night if you have an overwhelming aversion to hogbacks.

A kiva, if you must know, is a large circular structure, used by Pueblo Indians for religious rituals and political meetings. Or, today, for koffee konsumption.

This kiva is an architectural gem, seemingly in the middle of nowhere. As the brainchild of artist Bradshaw Bowman, it was a labor of love. Bowman (no relation to Dave) was the founder of Bowmanite concrete stamping and is considered the father of decorative concrete. He seemed to make a point of leaving concrete out of the Kiva.

The circular building, which took five years to build, is crafted from wood, stone and glass. Bowman, who studied engineering at Stanford, learned as he went along to be an architect and builder.

It took him two years to collect the 13 Ponderosa Pine perimeter logs that serve as support columns. Each of the log columns is more than 40 inches in diameter. The smaller interior logs and rafters are Spruce. The sandstone walls were quarried from an onsite quarry that the family has owned since homesteading it in the 1860s.

Bowman completed the building at age 87. He died two years later, on Christmas Eve in 2000.

***

The hogback is about halfway between the Kiva Koffeehouse and Boulder, about 14 miles away. For the uninitiated, a hogback is a long narrow ridge or series of hills with a narrow crest and steep slopes with nearly equal inclines on both sides. As you might guess, the name refers to its resemblance to the back of a hog.

Boulder, a town of about 200, takes its name from nearby Boulder Mountain, a vast timbered plateau of the Dixie National Forest that rises to 11,316 feet.

The 30-mile long portion of the highway that ascends and descends Boulder Mountain is known as the Boulder Mountain Highway. It climbs to an elevation of more than 9,600 feet, and winds through a huge aspen grove, before descending into the town of Torrey – gateway to Capitol Reef National Park.

The town of Boulder, with two world-class restaurants, sits at 6,700 feet. You can eat at Hell’s Backbone Grill, a James Beard Award semifinalist the past two years – and voted Best Restaurant of the Rockies by Elevation Outdoors magazine in 2017. Or, you can try the Burr Trail Grill, known for its pickled beets and gingerberry pie. Both eateries offer amazing food, especially when you consider their remote location and minimal population.

From Boulder, it’s about 36 miles, over the heavily forested mountain, beyond the tree line, past beautiful Aspen groves, to the town of Torrey. Torrey sits at 6,830 feet, at the northeastern terminus of Highway 12.

The town was established – you guessed it – by Mormon settlers. It was initially known as Youngtown, after John Willard Young. Mormon fun fact: Young is one of the few individuals to have been an apostle of the Mormon Church without ever having been a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.

Today, the town of Torrey is named after one of Theodore Roosevelt’s Rough Riders, Col. Jay Torrey. Torrey – the town, not the Colonel – is considered the gateway to Capitol Reef National Park, only 10 miles to the east.

***

Capitol Reef National Park has 241,904 acres of colorful canyons, ridges, cliffs, towers, arches, buttes and monoliths.  The area is named for a line of white domes and cliffs of Navajo Sandstone, each of which looks a bit like the US Capitol building.

To get there from Torrey, you simply head east on Utah Highway 24. Because the highway is a main east-west route across Utah, there’s no toll or fee to ride through most of the park. As I journey through Capitol Reef, the town of Fruita is ahead. It had been long abandoned in 1955, when the National Park Service purchased Fruita to be included in Capitol Reef National Park. Today, few buildings remain, except for a restored one-room schoolhouse.

Fruita’s orchards are thriving, under the ownership of the National Park Service. Visitors to the park are welcome to consume ripe fruit from any unlocked orchard – including cherry, apricot, peach, pear, apple, plum and mulberry.

It’s about 37 miles east from the Capitol Reef visitor center to the town of Hanksville, located at the junction of Utah Highways 24 and 95. You’ll find this hard to believe, but the town was named after Ebenezer Hanks, leader of a group of Mormon pioneers who established a small settlement here in 1985.

***

I turn south on Highway 95.

In 26 miles, there’s a turnoff onto Utah Highway 276, which could take me to Bullfrog. Bullfrog is a popular place on the northern shores of Lake Powell, attracting tourists, fishermen, boaters and outdoor enthusiasts.

The Bullfrog marina offers a jumping-off point to begin vacationing on Lake Powell. Bullfrog is 96 river miles upstream from the main Lake Powell visitor hub at Page, Arizona. Lake Powell is considered America’s houseboating mecca. It’s home to 96 major canyons and nearly 2,000 miles of shoreline.

At the turnoff to Highway 276, I choose not to make that turn. Instead, I continue on Highway 95, rolling through Leprechaun Canyon, one of Utah’s famed slot canyons. There’s a trailhead to hike this canyon, just east of mile marker 28.

Soon, the road crisscrosses the Colorado River and winds its way to Fry Canyon, a uranium boom town during the 1950s. It’s a ghost town today.

From Fry Canyon, it’s only a few miles south on Highway 95 to Natural Bridges National Monument, Utah’s first National Monument. It features one of the largest natural bridges in the world, carved over thousands of years from the white Permian sandstone that gives the nearby White Canyon its name.

Sipapu Bridge is the largest of the three natural bridges in the park and the second largest in the United States. Sipapu, Hopi for place of emergence, has a 268-foot span. Natural bridges are formed through erosion by water flowing in the stream bed of the canyon.

Given its remote location, it’s no wonder the park has some of the world’s least light-polluted night skies. The International Dark Sky Association named Natural Bridges the world’s first International Dark Sky Park.

It’s a sanctuary of natural darkness.

***

I follow Utah Highway 95 for another half-hour, until it runs into US Highway 191. Here, I turn left and in five miles, I arrive in Blanding.

Blanding is a cultural blender. It mixes cowboy culture, Native American culture, and Mormon culture.

For years, Blanding has been one of America’s last remaining “dry” communities, with a prohibition on alcohol sales. Two years ago, in a city-wide referendum, voters in Blanding overwhelmingly decided to keep the long-standing alcohol ban. Proponents of keeping Blanding dry said prohibition is the key to the city’s character. They won.

Blanding, dry since the 1930s, will continue that way.

Most of the other dry counties in the US are in the Bible belt. Kentucky has the most with 39 dry counties; Arkansas is a shot glass behind, with 38. Other states with multiple dry counties, in order of dryness, are Tennessee, Kansas, Mississippi, Texas and Georgia. Apparently, the 21st century is slow to arrive some places.

Not all of San Juan County, where Blanding is located, is dry. If you want a beer, glass of wine, or whatever, continue north on Highway 191 for 20 miles to Monticello, the county seat of San Juan County. Settled in 1887 by Mormon pioneers (really?), Monticello was named in honor of Thomas Jefferson’s Virginia estate.

Along with much of San Juan County, Monticello grew significantly during the uranium boom from the late 1940s to the early 1960s. A golf course called The Hideout, was built in 2000 near the reclaimed site of the area’s uranium mill, using Department of Energy cleanup funding. The Hideout, with views of the Abajo Mountains, includes a three-hole course for juniors, and is ranked as the number two public golf course in Utah.

In Monticello, you can also visit the Canyon Country Discovery Center, the Frontier Museum, and Church Rock – all highly ranked by Trip Advisor. And, you can get all the alcohol you want. Cheers!

It’s nice there’s so much to do here.

My only goal is to park the Harley, have dinner and a good night’s sleep before tomorrow’s final push to Carbondale. Looking forward to returning to Colorado.

I’m coming home, Sarah! 

***

Day Twenty-Two Summary: Kiva Koffeehouse, bullfrogs and bridges.

Click here to see today’s complete route from Tropic, Utah, to Monticello, Utah.

I’m on my way home, eh?

Vroom, vroom.

***

Today’s Canada Fun Fact, eh?  Canada is the world’s largest source of the rare element Cesium. It is found at Bernic Lake, Manitoba. Cesium is a soft, silvery-golden alkali metal with a melting point of 83.3 °F, which makes it one of only five elemental metals that are liquid at or near room temperature.