If you were to be in Capitol Reef National Park with the idea of visiting Bryce National Park you could do this several ways. But if you are the adventurous type I think you might decide to do it by taking Hwy 12 which is a Utah Scenic byway. Now when I say adventurous I’m talking about the mild kind of adventure where your greatest danger is what happens if you don’t stay between the white lines on the road.

As you can see by the image above, that’s a long way down there and unless you had a huge amount of steam built up and careened way out into space, kind of like Thelma and Louise did, the ride down there would be very bumpy. I’m not certain even if HD off-road shocks and a tight seat belt would make it any better.

Hwy 12 runs westerly from Torrey, Utah off of Utah State route 24 about 122 miles down to the town of Panguitch and Hwy 89. The adventure part comes from seeing the most incredible patch of scenery stuck along any highway you might have traveled. It’s like they built the road to take advantage of the most spectacular views they could find, Oh wait, they did build it to take advantage of the most spectacular views they could find. And it was hard work building it. The CCC did most of it back in the day and you should drive on it and look at everything just to make those guys feel good.

The picture above is a panorama of thirty separate images stitched together using a very fine digital thread with the stitches so close together you can’t even see them, to show a complete picture of this remarkable canyon. I threw in the colored trees at the bottom as an extra bonus, just because I like you.

One of the locals that I talked to said they called this spot in the road ‘the Neck’ and it is the place that most of the acrophobics tend to toss their cookies, as there are virtually no shoulders on either side of the road and there was just enough space for those highway builders to put the road down. This is the view from that stretch of the road and it’s the same on either side. I really like it but then I like things that are over the top, so to speak, and this is over the top.

So if you’re a careful driver and can control your instinct to jump out and look at scenery around every corner you’ll like this road. And you’ll probably like looking down into the canyon. I heard one person say when asked if he was afraid of heights, that he didn’t even like being this tall, but he crawled over to the edge to look down anyway. You should too. See you at the Dramamine counter. Happy traveling.