Kodachrome Basin State Park, UT

In 1949, the National Geographic Society got consent from Kodak to name this park Kodachrome Basin. You can see why the minute you get to the entrance. It’s just south of Cannonville, Utah, about 25 miles from Bryce Canyon. Going down the road to the campground, there is one photo op after another.

It is a beautiful campground, with the sites being very private and all having magnificent views. There are no hookups, but we are getting plenty of sun for the solar panels. There is also no cell phone service, so no internet, and of course no TV or radio reception. We are enjoying the isolation. After being in national parks for the past 2 weeks, it is nice to be in a less crowded place.

We hiked a couple trails yesterday, and got great views of the unique rock formations in the park.

That is the campground in the basin off in the distance.

We spotted this Unimog from up on the trail, and he was still in the parking lot when we got done. Jim had to go over and talk to the owner, who was German. Quite an interesting fellow. They are traveling around the world in it, and have been on the road since January, 2004. He’s been through Africa, South America, Mexico, and part of the US., and heading to Canada, then Russia. Said it will take at least another 3 years.

We haven’t had a chance to look it up, but here is his website, which he had painted on the back. www.Reckfilm.de

I imagine it is in German and will need to be translated, but there are probably some great photos. He told us to look at the ones from Cameroon, so I guess they are really good.

He is apparently a filmmaker, and he showed us an article from a German newspaper about someplace in Africa where they traveled only 2 kilometers a day, due to the mud. There was a photo of some local kids helping to dig his wheels out of the “road”, if you could call it that. Talk about an adventurous lifestyle. Makes what we’re doing seem like luxury travel.

Today we hiked another trail, which we had to access from a 2 mile dirt road. The trail led to Shakespeare’s Arch, the only arch in the park. I have a feeling Utah’s arches are going to be right up there with geysers and petroglyphs, as far as how many will we be able to see before we don’t care about seeing another? I think Jim is already there, and we’ve only seen a couple.

The light was wrong for viewing and photographing this one, but he took a shot anyway. The rest of the trail rises and affords great views of Kodachrome Basin and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, which borders the park.

We would definitely come back here, but then, so far we haven’t found anyplace in Utah we wouldn’t like to come back to.