What you’re looking at: the “backside” of the test lab. These are the badlands southwest of St. George looking toward the Paiute Wilderness Area of Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument. If you’ve ever heard of the Arizona Strip — the portion of northwest Arizona “cut off” from the rest of the state by the Grand Canyon — well, this is part of that. The prominent features in the distance are a hint of the Virgin River Gorge and, beyond that, Mt. Bangs.
The Paiute Wilderness is a bit of an oddity. On the one hand, it gets almost no direct visitation (less than about 1,000 recreational user days/year according to the BLM). On the other hand, I-15 bisects the wilderness area where it passes through the Virgin River Gorge, so it gets hundreds of thousands of “indirect visitors” each year. If you ever drive through the Gorge — between St. George and Mesquite, NV — look for Bighorn Sheep among the cliffs on either side of the freeway.
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Oh how I’d love to be there right now!