Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument

My friend Jim and I visited the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument in late May. It's a huge desert area between Bryce Canyon and Arches national parks. It's quite a diverse set of environments, from mountains to slot canyons. We spent about four days there and did a bit of driving and hiking. The great thing about this area is that it is full of world class scenery, yet very few people go there. So, unlike the national parks, you'll usually only see a few other people at any given time. And yet, Escalante has pretty good spots for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. 

The first day, we spent about a half hour wandering around at Hole in the Rocks, just west of the tiny town of Escalante, which served as our base. 

 

After walking around the Hole in the Rock rock formations, we headed over to the Spooky Gulch and Peekaboo Canyon trailhead. The approach hike was really a great hike in and of itself.

I loved the colors and wear patterns formed on the walls over thousands of years of periodic flash flooding. 

The light filtered down into the canyon and highlighted the many layers of sandstone deposits. These are on the vertical walls of the canyon, but they were the horizontal bottom of a sea tens of millions of years ago, then seismic forces crushed the entire area and upended the sea floor onto its side. Now the sedimentary stone is being worn away by floods over the intervening years.

This section is barely considered a slot canyon, as it's fairly wide in most places, so you don't have to squeeze sideways and take off your backpack. On the other hand, the very bottom of the canyon was not even as wide as my boot sole in some places. You can see how narrow it is at the bottom of this photo. Notice the sandy area that is the bottom. 

I had a great time doing the first part of the Spooky Gulch slot canyon hike, but I didn't take photos. My friend Jim waited for me to try a bit of it, then I bailed out after twenty minutes to rejoin him. It was really crazy to get started. You had to climb up a twelve-foot vertical rock face with only a couple of smooth dents in it for footholds. It was only because of my experience with indoor rock climbing with my brother that I had the skill and confidence to get started on it. Once I got started, the rest was not much easier. Almost every step was uphill, with four- or five-foot-high steps in many places. It was so much fun. After fifteen minutes it got so narrow you would have to turn sideways to get through, and it was following a serpentine shape - with ridiculously sharp turns every few feet. It looked amazing. 

The next day, we hiked to Lower Calf Creek Falls. In late May, the temperatures tend to be in the mid-80's, instead of 90's and above later in the summer. The hike is mostly flat and about three miles one way. 

This is the view of the canyon from the road that passes by above. The hike follows Lower Calf Creek, which waters all that greenery you can see along the bottom of the canyon in this photo. 

Once at the bottom of the canyon, you're looking up at impressive rock formations.

The walls of the canyons were hundreds of feet high, with amazing patterns of wear formed by a combination of rain, wind, bacterial, and geological forces, over thousands, even millions, of years. At times, it looked like an alien planet. 

I enjoy this image as if it were an abstract painting, with different styles and moods in different areas. Even though this is a stone cliff face hundreds of feet high, it is nearly perfectly smooth in some places, whereas other areas look scraped, gouged, flaked, and scalloped. At the same time, there is vertical striping, diagonal patches of ochre and orange, and textured horizontal layers crosscutting all of it. I imagine all the forces of nature as the artist composing the scene. A painting that took millions of years to create. 

Every good hike ends with a payoff view, and this was a good one. What an impressive waterfall, here in the middle of a desert, with a lovely pool that people were swimming in. Again, nature has "decorated" the orange and white stone with lime green, yellow, and blackish moss and lichen. The pattern of water on the rocks changed over time, depending on the flow of the water and wind. I specifically waited until the water had this beautiful cascading effect on the right side. At other times, there was no water at all on the right, so you had to notice this and take advantage of it.

On our final exploration of the area, we drove down East Burr Trail Road to Singing Canyon and beyond. The scenery along this section of road was spectacular, and yet there were only a few other people there. 

We learned that the different colors of stone making up the mountains and valleys of the area are the reason for the name Grand Staircase. Each layer is a different color, from the whites you see in the photo below, to the bright oranges in the subsequent photos, with a more tan sandy color for other areas. Each of these represents a deep layer formed over tens of millions of years and exposed by tectonic activity and wear and tear of the weather. In the photo below, I like all the etched patterns of layers of rock, which represent a story of various happenings in geologic time. Seas forming, earthquakes, floods, deposits, etc. 

This next two photos are from Singing Canyon. 

The funny thing is we didn't realize we were in Singing Canyon, but there was a guy there singing with his ukelele. The acoustics were fantastic. 

This entire canyon was just beautiful in all directions. This was just across from the Singing Canyon. 

This is another spot along the road with amazing patterns in the rock formed by so many different processes, from flaking of many layers of rock in the upper left, to microbes of different colors forming the vertical stripes following the flow of water running down the sheer rock face on the left, to fractures between distinct layers of rock in the lower portion of the photo. Astounding how there can be so many colors in a dry, stony, desert canyon. 

At the end of the canyon, we were treated to the view towards Capitol Reef National Park. 

I think there is much more to see in the area, so I'd like to go back someday soon. I recommend going before the secret is out! 

Abu Dhabi Grand Mosque Visit

We visited the beautiful, and huge, white marble Abu Dhabi Grand Mosque in November 2025. The best advice we got was to visit around sunset, as you'll get to see the mosque in daylight, and then see the spectacular lighting that they designed for the mosque at night also. 

[I always want to point out that these photos look far better on a TV, computer, or tablet screen than a phone screen, even though it's inevitable in today's world that most people will view them on a phone. :( ] 

To visit the mosque as a "Non-Worshipper", you must enter via the giant glass eggs at the far edge of the stadium-sized parking lots, descending by escalator into a white marble underground shopping mall, with all sorts of food, clothing, and souvenir shops. Within this mall, you can get your tickets at digital kiosks that ask where you're from and how often you visit. Then you can proceed through a long underground passage to the start of the tour. For those who can't walk that far (about a quarter mile), there are electric carts like the ones in airports to carry you, though I got the impression you have to pay for that service. Also, there is a wait going back, as there are only so many carts, and a lot of visitors. 

The visit starts outside the giant central courtyard, in front of this arched entryway. I love how these arches curl inward at their lowest point. As you can see, they really went all out on providing lighting designed to perfectly highlight the shapes and textures.

On either side of this giant archway, there were two large reflecting pools in front of colonnades of arches. 

This was just about when the sun was setting. You can see reflections of the domes and minarets in the water. The pool has a checkerboard pattern of light and dark blue tiles on the bottom.

Looking along the facade of the main entrance up to one of the minarets.  I carefully timed to photo to capture the jet passing across the sky just between the minaret and the building. LOL.

A closeup of the floral relief carvings on the central entry. 

The view from inside the central entrance dome. The large white dome in the background (framed by the arch in the lower portion of the photo) is the main dome of the mosque. It's way across the main white marble courtyard. This gives you an idea of the size of the main courtyard. The floral designs seen above and below could be attributed to the influence of the Taj Mahal in Agra, India. There are floral designs of inlaid stone in many parts of the Taj Mahal. 

The view looking sideways down one of the front colonnades. This is inside the area just behind the blue pools in the photos above. 

Another view across the central courtyard to the main dome, surrounded by other domes and flanked by a minaret. The minarets all have speakers mounted on them facing in all directions to broadcast the call to prayer. We heard the evening call to prayer, and the voice was quite good. I imagine the best in the country are invited to be the "muezzin" (singers of the call to prayer) here. 

Looking straight up under one of the small side domes. It looks a little psychedelic here, and it looked even more so in person, like it was somehow a view into the infinite - as if it were floating in space. Pretty amazing lighting effect. 

View down the side colonnade. The people on the other side of the rope are on the "Worshippers' " path, which is separate from the path we were on. The ropes separate the two paths. The Worshippers' path leads to an area where a service was in progress. As you can see, they were dressed appropriately. Notice the colorful floral patterns on the lower portions of the columns. These are almost identical to patterns found in the Taj Mahal. 

A spectacular combination of dome, chandelier, and archway. All custom-designed for this mosque. The pentagonal shapes may refer to the five pillars of Islam. One of the five pillars that most non-Muslims are familiar with is the "Hajj" - a pilgrimage to Mecca. Devout Muslims are expected to complete all five pillars over the course of their lifetime. The others include a declaration of faith in Allah, fasting during Ramadan, giving alms to the poor, and praying five times per day. 

Finally, a view of another of the reflecting pools about an hour later, when the sun is fully set. The strange blue lighting is coming from spotlights mounted in the fully integrated white marble light towers that the architects designed as a part of the mosque from the beginning. 

The reflecting pools are reminiscent of the pools at the Alhambra in Granada, Spain. Clearly the Alhambra was one of the key inspirations for this mosque. 

I hope these photos convey some of the spectacular beauty you can find at the Sheik Zayed Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi. Like the great Catholic cathedrals, it impresses with its opulence, symmetry, grandeur, and artistic cohesion. Anyone who visits Abu Dhabi should make time to go see this place in person. Timing your visit for sunset will make it even more amazing.