The Last Hurrah: El Fin

The Grand Staircase-Escalante

Sunday morning was lazy: lounging in bed, watching cable TV, grabbing snacks from the free continental breakfast. Christian left us to return to SLC for Father's Day celebrating. The rest of us took the Highway 12 Scenic Byway and headed to Boulder for brunch at Hell's Backbone Grill. And like Cafe Diablo, it's one of the 1,000 places you're supposed to visit before you die. HBG also seems to receive a lot more word-of-mouth press than Diablo and despite my really good eggs and oatmeal toast with homemade jam, my vote is still with Diablo. Still, HBG was pretty dang good, too.

Besides eating, our plan for the day was to hike to Lower Calf Creek Falls. The day had started out rather cool with lots of rain, but for our hike, nature decided to spit a little rain on us before changing to bright blue skies.

And after seeing the Grand Staircase-Escalante area from above, it was nice to delve into one of her canyons.

I love that the bird made the upper-left portion of this shot.

The view heading back out of the canyon.

It really is quite amazing how much cooler it feels once you reach the falls. Two bros spent their time at the falls acting like doofuses, kicking a soccer ball around, ninja fighting, and posing for pictures for their mom.

That drive on the scenic byway is like nothing I have ever seen before. We probably stopped at every single turn-out and overlook to take pictures and it was worth it every single time.

And lucky for me, the aspens put on a good show as well.