The other road we wanted to drive was the Rock House Valley primitive road into Vermillion Cliffs NM (BLM Run). One of our bucket list trails, Buckskin Gulch (longest slot canyon in the world), is accessed off this road. Reviews also showed this road is impassible when wet and based on the ruts we had to deal with, we could believe it. The road from US89 to Buckskin Gulch trail head was in good shape. After looking at the information for Buckskin Gulch trail, we headed on down to the Wire Pass trailhead. When we do hike Buckskin Gulch, we will probably do it from the Wire Pass trailhead since it cuts a couple of miles of open desert hiking. The parking area at both trailheads are very large. The Wire Pass trailhead is also where you access the Wave from. We tried to win the lottery for The Wave permits 12 times with no success. We decided to put off hiking Wire Pass to give Leslie’s ankle more time to heal as it is getting better every day. We stayed on Rock House Valley Road until it intersects US89A. Since we were pretty close to where our next campground was, we headed west on US89A to Jacob Lake where US67 and followed it down to the campground before turning around and heading toward Lee’s Ferry. We are going to have a 4500 foot climb from Lee’s Ferry to Jacob Lake with the Wanderer on Monday, so the Behemoth is going to get a workout. At Lee’s Ferry, we went down to the Colorado river and explored the historical area. Lee’s ferry is part of Glen Canyon National Recreation Area but when you walked down to the river, you enter Grand Canyon National Park. We then headed back to Page. The Vermillion Cliffs are incredibly rugged, colorful and spread out further than we expected. Awesome in the late afternoon sunlight!
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| Rock House Valley Road |
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| Entrance Sign |
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| Colorado River at Lee's Ferry |
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| Lee's Ferry |
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| Colorado River and Vermillion Cliffs |
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| Balanced Boulder |
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| Extra Large balanced rock |
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