Private campsites & glamping in Escalante, UT

Escalante is a town of a few hundred people sitting on Scenic Byway 12 — one of the great American drives — inside Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. It's the launch point for slot canyons (Peek-a-Boo, Spooky, Zebra), the Hole-in-the-Rock Road's backcountry, and the Escalante River's canyon country. Bryce Canyon is about an hour west; Capitol Reef is about an hour and a half east. The monument is enormous, remote, and deliberately undeveloped — there are no entrance gates, and the backcountry is the attraction.

The stays here are the monument's front porch. Yonder Escalante is a 20-acre Americana-styled glampground on the grounds of an old drive-in theater — renovated vintage Airstreams, custom cabins, RV and tent sites, a drive-in movie theater with classic cars, and a resort pool. Ofland Escalante does the retro-modern version: private cabins and vintage Airstreams, spa-quality bathhouses with open-air rainfall showers, a heated pool and oversized hot tub, a private fire pit at every cabin, and its own drive-in theater. Just outside town toward Bryce, Clear Sky Resorts Bryce Canyon scatters 62 glass stargazing domes across a private 80-acre canyon off Byway 12 with floor-to-ceiling windows and stargazing tours, and Under Canvas Bryce Canyon sets safari tents on 700-plus acres of juniper forest at Widtsoe, a quarter hour from the rim. The honest warnings: this is remote — gas up in town, carry water, and don't trust your cell signal in the canyons. Slot canyons flash-flood; check the weather before you enter one, because the sky ten miles away is what matters, not the sky above you.

2 stays in Escalante