We stayed four nights at the Slot Canyons Inn while exploring the EGSNM. The inn is located on a 160 acre property about five miles west of the town of Escalante, and is perfectly situated to watch both sunrise and sunset. While in residence at the inn we had the opportunity to hike on the property (what else!). There are four hiking cats that live on the property and three of them accompanied us on our hike as we looped the property. Â Joette-Marie Rex owns the inn and is an incredibly gracious host. Joette-Marie invited her friend Mary Kaye, a singer-songwriter in the western cowboy genre, to perform at the inn during our stay. She has a beautiful voice and provided a lot of history about the cowboy history of the local area.
We also had the opportunity to visit David Delthony’s studio while in Escalante. David is a custom furniture artist and built the two chairs in the Slot Canyons Inn (pictured below).
The Slot Canyons Inn was a great base for our stay in Escalante.
Thursday proved a most exciting and satisfying day as we spent the day canyoneering  with Escalante based guide Rick Green. Rick took us to Egypt 1 Canyon where we had the opportunity to work with him to better our canyoneering skills and also learn a great deal about the history and geology of the area. Rick showed us a number of friction techniques to allow us to make steep vertical descents where there are no hand or foot holds by wedging our bodies between the rock walls to descend via friction. Don’t where your best clothing for this activity. We also had our first opportunity to rapel down steep canyon walls. By the time we exited the canyon we were quite wet and muddy because several sections required us to rapel or slide down into knee deep water. A great day with a terrific guide. We are looking forward to our next opportunity to take on more challenging canyons.
ON THE ROAD with Maria + Stephen 