It took us three days of lottery entries at the BLM Visitor Contact Station, but we got a permit to hike into The Wave in the Vermilion Cliffs Wilderness on the border between Utah and Arizona. The Trailhead is in Utah, and The Wave and environs are in Arizona.
Bob and Claire Rogers' lunch spot high overlooking The Wave
We had to drive our motorhome, Turtle about nine miles on a rough road, an adventure to tell at a later time. We leveled up and had wonderful evening light a great dinner and all the comforts of home; another million dollar view, for free.
The morning of our permit we awoke in darkness, ate a quick breakfast, were on the trail at first light, and had hiked two of the three miles to The Wave by sunrise, with lots of stops along the way for photos.
Chasm near The Wave
We spend most of the day scrambling all over the drainage that contains The Wave, which is itself quite small, and added another couple of tough steep miles. There is a small arch high on a cliff above The Wave, and we determined to get to it for our lunch spot. After a few dicey moves and an hour or more of climbing, and pausing for photos, we made it. The view of The Wave from the arch was spectacular. It appeared to get little use because of the difficulty in getting there. We took a second, slightly easier route back that led us to the Second Wave, and a spectacular chasm, nither of which most permit holders find, but we were able to pinpoint them from our raven’s roost high in the arch.
Claire on Steep Slickrock Backwards!
Strange Mars Like Formations Near The Wave
On the hike out in mid afternoon, we took a difficult slickrock side canyon high to some amazing fragile sandstone formations. I don’t have a name for them now, but will before I do the full post of this adventure in or new Turtle Chronicles, in the works.
How old is this tree?
No Motorhome Road!
These posts are meant to keep our readers informed of our travels, but of necessity must be short; we have been a week without Internet or cell signal. For each adventure you see here there have been three we haven’t been able to share yet.
Stay tuned.