On our last day in Cedar City we decided to drive out to Cedar Breaks National Monument, it is not too far from Cedar City and was on one of the highways that our GPS had suggested for driving to our next location. Based on signs we had seen on the road about it not being recommended for semis we thought we might want to check it out. Glad we did, it is not the way to take a big RV so we went with the alternate route which was a little longer but not as much mountain driving.
Cedar Breaks is similar to Bryce Canyon in terms of what you see, but not near as big an area. We of course took off from the RV park in shorts thinking it would be warmer today since it was not raining and the sky was very clear. We were wrong, it was in the upper 40’s by the time we got to the higher elevations.
One of things I really liked at Cedar Breaks was all how they clearly marked all the view points and gave you the elevation of where you were standing. They did not have near as many view points as gong to Bryce but there were enough that you could see the entire area.
When we got to the top view point they had workers out putting up road markers so that you can still see the side of the road when it starts snowing. These are tall but the ones at Glacier National Park are even higher.
When we got to the end of Cedar Breaks you go back out into the Dixie National Forest. There was a turnoff you could take that would take you to a Vista Point up to Brian Head Peak. Bruce of course decided to check it out as he could see a few cars pulled off the side of the road like they were watching animals.
We saw lots of animals, there was a flock of sheep grazing on the meadow. Unfortunately these were not big horn sheep, they were some farmers flock.
There was one very close to the road so I could get a close up, they don’t really have pretty faces.
While we were watching the sheep the herder came up on his horse with his dogs and they started moving the sheep further down in the meadow.
After watching for awhile we headed on up to Brian’s Head Peak. It is not the place to drive if you don’t have a 4wheel drive vehicle with high clearance. It looks like they just graded a path on the side of the mountain that is barely room for one vehicle with no shoulders. There were a few spots where cars could pull over slightly when cars were coming from the opposite direction. Fortunately that only happened once.
When we got to the top there was a little building and a sign that explained about it.
We went up to the building and walked around but did not stay too long as the temperature had really dropped and it was very windy. We met a couple that were up there walking around, he was in long pants and she was in shorts. He made a remark about how he could not believe other people had come in shorts, his wife said she was fine. We talked for awhile comparing our travels then I rushed back to the truck.
We did look at the view before we left but we had no way of tell which stay we were seeing, we new we were still in Utah.
From the top you could see the road we had drove on before heading to the top.
After leaving the peak we headed back to the RV park enjoying the fall scenery.
