![]() The highway follows Pine Creek Canyon, twisting past domes like Checkerboard Mesa. Starting in Kanab, it’s only a 20 minute drive via US 89 to Mount Carmel Junction, where you can head west on Utah Highway 9 toward Zion. The 60-mile Zion Park Scenic Byway, following Utah Highway 9 from Mount Carmel Junction to Hurricane, offers dramatic scenery with soaring cliffs and deep canyons in iconic Zion National Park. After driving Highway 12, you’ll agree with a Mormon homesteader who described the wrinkled land in 1875: "It’s a hell of a place to lose a cow!" 2. A good side-trip for high-clearance vehicles is the 57-mile drive down rough Hole-in-the-Rock Road to a staggering view of Lake Powell. Besides the national parks, other scenic treasures include Calf Creek Falls, Hell’s Backbone, Escalante Petrified Forest, and alpine woodlands on Boulder Mountain. While it takes just three hours to drive the byway, you would need years to explore the Kaiparowits Plateau south of the highway and its network of back roads, campgrounds, and trails. It passes the wonderland of Bryce Canyon National Park and Kodachrome Basin State Park, and edges along the northern boundary of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, an immense swathe of sandstone wilderness, before ending on the west side of Capitol Reef National Park. The paved road traverses a rugged landscape of red rock domes, slickrock canyons, wooded mountains, and real western towns like Tropic, Escalante, and Boulder. The Highway 12 Scenic Byway, running 124 miles from US 89 to Torrey, is simply one of Utah’s best scenic drives. Highway 12 Scenic Byway: Red Canyon to Torrey Red Canyon along Highway 12 Scenic Byway. How do you best explore the area? Here are five scenic drives that offer the best that southern Utah has to offer. The town offers plenty of hotels and restaurants, as well as nearby campgrounds. Kanab’s landscape once attracted every major film studio that wanted to shoot a western picture, but it now draws adventurers, tourists, hikers, and scenic drivers to its historic streets. ![]() ![]() The Old West town of Kanab sits smack in the middle of southern Utah’s red rock country, making it an ideal base camp to discover the region’s natural wonders. Southern Utah’s scenic byways and highways are your passport to explore these richly pigmented landscapes, twisting past sand dunes and canyons, over slickrock bluffs and forested mountains, and through historic towns and Hollywood movie sets. The region boasts the wonders of Zion and Bryce Canyon National Parks, the immense Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, the pocket-sized Cedar Breaks National Monument, and Glen Canyon National Recreation Area. Southern Utah is the size of Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts put together. Below Utah’s turquoise sky, the sprawling landscape spreads to clear horizons. The dramatic and colorful lands of southern Utah are filled with cliff-lined gorges, forested plateaus, twisting slot canyons, and rainbow-tinted badlands. ![]()
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