Southwest 2025-12. Arizona: Vermillion Cliffs, Marble Canyon, Lee's Ferry, Page. Utah: Glen Canyon Dam, Pareah, Kanab.

 May 26, 2025

    We headed south from the North Rim of the Grand Canyon to other areas we love: Vermillion Cliffs National Monument and Lees Ferry. The road descended from cool weather at 8,800 feet to very warm weather at 3,100 feet.

Descending from 8,800 feet at North Rim of Grand Canyon to 3,100 feet along Vermillion Cliffs National Monument.

Vermillion Cliffs.

    Vermillion Cliffs is 280,000 acres of wilderness with no paved roads. If you have 4WD, you can explore, hike, backpack—our wonderful Promaster van from VanWorks in Fort Collins CO can go a lot of places but not on true 4WD roads. The monument is home to California Condors which have been hatched and bred in captivity before release.

No trip along the Vermillion Cliffs is complete without stopping in Marble Canyon for photos of our latest van with the gigantic balancing boulders.

Blanche & Bill Russell's home.

    The story goes that in the 1920s, Blanche Russell, a former Ziegfield Follies dancer, and her husband, Bill, headed west for a dryer climate for Bill's tuberculosis. Their car broke down at Marble Canyon. Lacking money for car repairs, they stayed and created a home beneath the gigantic boulders. A sandwich shop, gas station, and trading post to serve passing motorists followed, until their departure in 1943.

Russell home interior.

Next stop was Lees Ferry, where rafts put in for a 250-mile trip down the Colorado River.

Driving Lees Ferry Rd.

Along Lees Ferry Rd.

Lees Ferry Rd follows the Colorado River's meandering.

Paria River "flowing" into the Colorado.

    It was in 1864 that a group of Mormons made a raft to cross the Colorado at the mouth of the Paria, their goal to expand into into Navajo land. In 1870, John D. Lee, head of the little-known Mormon Meadows Massacre, was sent to establish an official ferry crossing. In 1873, Mormon colonists began crossing the Colorado in real ferry boats at Lees Ferry. 

It was hot! Marilyn couldn't resist joining others & taking a dip in the Colorado.

Raft putting in at Boat Beach.

Lees Ferry.

In July, ash from the Dragon Bravo Fire, which burned the lodge & surrounding buildings at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon,  would fall on Lees Ferry & coat the river with a thin film (Adrian Skabelund, KNAU).

Driving back out Lees Ferry Rd.

Crossing the Colorado at Marble Canyon on Navajo Bridge.

  

Typical Native American stalls for selling their art. Few were open as it was not yet high tourist season. On the right a typical hogan.

It's a 4-mile, steep, curvy climb to Page AZ.

    We would have liked to stop at Horseshoe Bend, but the parking lot was jammed. And we again forgot about the area near Page that is touted as an alternative to The Wave, which can only be hiked with a permit won in a lottery. Next time...

    Page, Arizona on the east side of the Colorado came to be in 1957 with the construction of a government camp for Glen Canyon Dam workers and their families. 

    We'd been at the northern end of Glen Canyon NRA a week earlier when we camped along Burr Trail Rd outside Boulder UT and celebrated Marilyn’s birthday. Now we were at its raison d'etre: the Glen Canyon Dam.

Crossing the Colorado again, now on the Glen Canyon Dam Bridge.

Glen Canyon Dam Bridge, completed in 1959, is a mere 700 feet above the Colorado.

We stopped at the Visitor Center to get a "closer" look at Glen Canyon Dam.

Glen Canyon Dam. 

    Construction of Glen Canyon Dam began in 1956 with the first dynamite blast. It took until mid-1960 to completely divert the Colorado River via a temporary coffer dam and tunnels constructed on either bank and to excavate to bedrock. 

710-foot-tall Glen Canyon Dam. Construction lasted from mid-1960 to fall 1963. 

    Glen Canyon Dam created Lake Powell and provided hydroelectric power.

 

 In fall 1964 the first hydroelectric power was generated. 

It would take 18 years, until the mid-1980, for Lake Powell to reach full capacity at an elevation of 3,700 feet. 

Lake Powell is currently at 27% of full pool, with inflows at 62% of average & outflows exceeding inflows. It has not been full since 1983. 

   The 1,450-mile-long Colorado River flows from its headwaters in the Rocky Mountains to the Mexican states of Baja California Norte and Sonora. Glen Canyon is 1 of 15 dams have been constructed on the river, with hundreds of dams on the tributaries that feed it. The 1922 Colorado River Compact divided the Colorado River system into the Upper and Lower River Basins at Lees Ferry. Although the river is supposed to provide water and power to 7 US states and 2 Mexican states, it now rarely reaches the Sea of Cortés.

Colorado River & tributaries, Upper & Lower Colorado River Basins.

     Tomes have been written on the Colorado and the use of its water. Two that we would recommend are Cadillac Desert, by Marc Reisner, and Where the Water Goes, by David Owen. These two books help explain the complicated topic in layman's terms. Another excellent book on the history of the Colorado River, going down it in a dory, and the calamity of the first time Lake Powell filled, is Kevin Fedarko’s The Emerald Mile.

From Glen Canyon Dam we made our way back west toward Kanab.

Does it get any more spectacular?

Blue sky...

...puffy white clouds...

...amazing formations...

...& colors.

Soon we found a favorite dirt road and off we went...

... back into Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument...

...& down the 6-mile-long road—with its interesting curves, dips, & bumps—to the old Paria Town Site. 

  

It's amazing how plants not only thrive but bloom in such harsh surroundings.

Dirt road to Paria.

We'd also visited Paria (originally "Pahreah") on a previous trip.

    Mormon settlers established Paria in 1865 as part of their expansion into Native American lands. The soil produced good crops, but yearly flooding in the 1880s led to the town's demise. 

Numerous early Westerns were filmed at the old Paria town site.

We had to be careful on the town's roads as the ground was very soft from recent rains. While the van's 2WD does very well, it is definitely not meant for real 4WD conditions.

Pareah is an absolutely stunning location.

En route back to the highway, we had to revisit the site of Doug's mighty 2021 ascent of a small but steep hill on top of which he'd once campn his VW Westy. We didn't attempt the climb this time.

2021: Doug proved our Promaster van could climb the steep hill where he'd once camped in his VW Westy.

Marilyn had the pleasure of videoing the van's descent as it started to hail. 

Heading back to Kanab.

We ended the day back at the Hitch-n-Post RV Park in Kanab for a final clean-up before turning west toward home—regretfully, as always.

North Rim Grand Canyon, Marble Canyon, Lees Ferry, Glen Canyon Dam AZ—Paria, Kanab UT: 1 day/235 mi

Southwest 2025 trip: 6.5 weeks/6,274 mi.

Southwest 2025: 6-1/2 weeks. 6,273.5 miles. (1) Visalia CA-Green River UT. (2) Green River-Ship Rock NM. (3) Ship Rock-Aldo Leopold Wilderness. (4) Leopold-Carrizozo. (5) Carrizozo-Taos. (6) Taos-Grand Villa CO. (7) Grand Villa-Green River UT. (8) Green River-Kanab. (9) Kanab-Kanab. (10) Kanab-Bridgeport CA. (11) Bridgeport-Visalia.