It’s been hailed as the most scenic road in America. “A journey through time” is the description on one travel website. People put it on their bucket lists. Motorcycle clubs treat it like it’s the holy grail.
Tracy Sidwell has another name for Utah’s fabled Highway 12.
He calls it his mail route.
For the last 30 years, not long after Escalante High School gave him his diploma and sent him out into the world to find his way, Tracy looked at the highway and there it was, right out his front door.
He went to work as a contract carrier for the United States Postal Service, a job that entailed picking up the mail bags early in the morning where Highway 12 starts (and ends) in Panguitch and dropping them off at the post offices in Bryce Canyon City, Tropic, Cannonville, Henrieville and Escalante — before a final stop at the little mountain town of Boulder some 94 miles away.
Then he’d pick up more bags and do the same thing on his way back to Panguitch.
Two hundred miles round trip when you throw in the Bryce Canyon jog.