The Surreal Surroundings of the Southwest
Kanab, Utah is a busy place for a tiny town. Resting on the border with Arizona, it’s a convenient place to fuel up and wind down in between day trips throughout remote southern Utah and northern Arizona.
Except Sundays.
Most of downtown closes up for the sabbath, and I’m assuming special dispensation is given to those who must work at one of the few hotels or restaurants that cater to us non-Mormons. We were warned the place shuts down on Sundays, but fortunately for us we found a restaurant that not only was open, but served caffeinated beverages (and even alcohol!). Hallelujah.
I’m not going to kid you: Living in a multicultural, big city, I wasn’t accustomed to the homogeneity. Not only was everyone white and blond, but most eateries had huge tables filled with sister wives managing a large brood. We were in polygamy country, but we also were surrounded by some of the most beautiful landscape I’d ever seen. The only non-white, non-blond employee I ever saw was at a service station; he appeared to be Native American and I left his counter without my wallet, which proved a big inconvenience later.
I’d come for a girls’ getaway with my friend Jeanette, who loves to hike and is a great travel mate. We drove her Honda Element from San Diego to Kanab, stopping for a couple of hours outside Vegas at the Valley of Fire State Park. It was the perfect preview for the sandstone towers and slot canyons to follow. It was a mid-October weekend in 2017 and crowded, but we always found parking when we needed it.
Our primary mission was to try for The Wave, the famous sandstone landmark in North Coyote Buttes that is near-impossible to see now. We’d tried online and failed, but we did secure two of the 20 day permits to South Coyote Buttes—which turned out to be an awesome consolation as we left permit-less following The Wave in-person lottery at the ranger station.
That first full day we met up with a hike master, Gary, whom Jeanette saw regularly at her local Starbucks back in La Mesa, Calif. Gary knew these areas well (even if he was a little rusty on how to get to them by car) and recommended Willis Creek in Grand Escalante National Park. It was cold when we arrived…like, freezing. The water running through the slots was frozen and so we gingerly crisscrossed a fragile ice path until we were out of the slots and in the full sun. We watched the stream thaw, debated the origins of muddy handprints Gary was convinced were petroglyphs, and headed back trying to dodge the water--with one of us not succeeding. I can’t thank Gary enough for giving us that day. Perfect is an overused word, but it is the only way to describe that trip.
Then came the next day, when “perfect” got just a little more so during a series of day hikes through South Coyote Butte and then White Pocket, the latter of which doesn’t require a permit but is difficult to find without good navigation and 4WD. Given the Honda’s limitations, we’d signed up for a tour and had great companions for the day. And what a day it was! Weather could not have been better and in both locations, we pretty much had the place to ourselves. We saw dinosaur fossils, surreal sandstone formations, car-blocking bovine, wild elk on the loose and very few other people.
Jeanette went back with some girlfriends the next year and reported the place was packed. White Pocket had been discovered.
Our only other hike was in Kanab itself, when we decided to venture to the top of a butte to watch the sun set. Then we cut it short after agreeing continuing down a perilous cliff portion and one tricky switchback on tired legs and in the dark was not in our best interests.
We had one more day of discovery scheduled, but I failed to note our hotel reservation ended a day early and all rooms were booked. I made a last-minute reservation for another place in town, then lay in the dark mulling it over. It took very little to convince Jeanette to go home a day early. We both knew nothing could top the last three days. We’d seen enough.
