At first glance the coffee-colored pavement we had entered after a late afternoon of driving through Bryce Canyon National Park seemed just what we needed. A straight shot up to I-70 and our hope of entering our third National Park in two days. Then we crossed the first cattle guard, which brought a smile and comment from Roberta. A mile or so later we crossed another, and another. One cattle guard after another and not one sighting of a beef animal. Not one.

We were in a corner of the Great American Desert. If not for the distant mountains, bluish with a hint of reddish hue, we could have as well been in the Australian outback. Reddish soil. Roundish scrub as far as one could see. If a kangaroo had suddenly hopped into view I wouldn’t have been surprised. It’s a lonely stretch of a long, straight highway that has apparently grasped different colloquial names, yet only one appeased me: the Black River Canyon Road. 

As dusk began to settle in around us we entered gentle switchbacks into a valley …  into the actual Black River Canyon! Two colorful Gambel’s quail crept along the foliage. Long-tailed Magpies did near poetic air sprints across the highway. Mule deer grazed along the roadside, and a pair of antelope barely moved as we sped by.

Indeed, it wasn’t until we returned home that we finally realized that the Black River Canyon Road had been a wrong turn! That would have been our second of a very long travel day that had begun in Las Vegas earlier that morning. 

Our first was discovered at the trail’s end of Zion National Park hours earlier. We had stopped at a ranger’s station for a bathroom and sandwich break when I began comparing place names we had passed with a huge map of Zion. My goal had been to follow the Virgin River up to the Narrows, where Roberta had already firmly stated she had no interest in investing in a hike. Me? I was holding onto a final decision.

Imagine my surprise when I realized that after leaving the main park entrance we had veered off toward the eastern entrance of the park and was nowhere near the Virgin River watershed. Not that it wasn’t breathtakingly beautiful, for it was. Not that we would have eventually been on this very road, for this was the route we needed to traverse toward Bryce Canyon National Park.

Apparently our “confusion” happened at Canyon Junction. Had we been more aware we would have immediately realized the challenging switchbacks were on the Zion Mt. Carmel Highway. Perhaps in time we can make it back to Zion, and if so, make the hike up the Virgin River into the Narrows. Yet, two wrong turns in a day? 

Back to Bryce, which would have been a photographer’s joy early in the morning. Back when we realized our wrong turn at Zion we also noticed radically worn rear tires. Treadless tires! So our drive from Zion to Bryce was heart thumping, for we had only seen a single tire shop in a small village. Also, the crowds and overflow parking at Zion was nowhere near what we were seeing. The tire guy in a small village was hopeful we could make it to Tropic, Utah, where he said we would find an actual tire shop. We needed both rear tires, which was before the Tropic tire guy pointed to an outward appearing appendage protruding from one of the front tires. 

“This one is the bad news,” he said. “This tire is actually more dangerous than your rear tires.” We now have four black rubber souvenirs from our trip.

On that Black River Canyon Road we felt suddenly secure. So off we went on the loop toward Torrey and what would be our third park in two days, with an afternoon date with the Arches National Park. It was in Torrey just before the evening news that we ran into our first of two wonderful curry joints, and this one actually served curry pizzas … basically across the highway from a motel where we awakened the owner to rent a room once we convinced him we weren’t traveling with Joe Pye, our ever hopeful “whatever blood” rescue.

Early the next morning after a thoroughly regrettable breakfast we were off to Capitol Reef with its cool abandoned orchards and petroglyphs, not to mention more red sandstone. 

Oh, about that second missed turn? This wasn’t discovered until we were home and scrolling across Facebook when a meme appeared describing one of the ten most beautiful highway trips in the world. Get this: not just in the States, but the world, a highway traversing land between Tropic and Torrey. The “All American Road,” 124 miles of canyonland bliss.

Here is a published poem of explanation: “The way the road connects with the land, feels somehow a part of the landscape, embedded in the slickrock, even though it was once an intrusion into the space. Like the way a lightning strike can ignite a fire in a forest and sweep out gnarly, dense undergrowth competing for sunlight, there is a period of adaptation and recovery. It virtually becomes part of the ecosystem.”

So, within just a few hours our two wrong turns took us away from the Virgin River Valley at Zion and the All American Road between national parks in the Utah desert. Yet, you don’t know what you missed until you realize in the end it made absolutely no difference; that even “wrong turns” can be so exceptionally beautiful.