USA - Utah, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, Devil’s Garden

Devil’s Garden - or officially Devil’s Garden Outstanding Natural Area - is a rather small part of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. It is a real hidden gem, only accessible via a quite bad gravel road and not very well signposted. This has the advantage that there are not so many tourists like in the more well known parks in Utah (during our visit we were just the two of us).

Devil’s Garden consists of a collection of irregularly shaped sandstone rock sculptures, which are the result of wind and water erosion over the centuries. There are three different sandstone layers and one can see very well that the erosive forces on each layer have had a different effect. The bottom layer forms a kind of pedestal, on which are short hoodoos that consist of a narrow dark layer with a wider hood above it that is much lighter colored. Besides the hoodoos you can see many other small rock formations and some arches.