Vermilion Cliffs Scenic Byway House Rock
— — the long red wall the road runs under.
Not only on a wall.
“The scenic byway from Bitter Springs to Jacob Lake runs forty-three miles along the base of the Vermilion Cliffs, with the wall on the right and the empty floor of House Rock Valley falling away on the left. The condor release pen sits halfway along, below the cliffs at Cliff Dwellers. Desert bighorn cross the asphalt. The light holds best between four and six.
Vermilion Cliffs Scenic Byway House Rock, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
U.S. Highway 89A traverses the southern foot of the Vermilion Cliffs through House Rock Valley in Coconino County, Arizona, running forty-three miles between Bitter Springs and Jacob Lake on the Kaibab Plateau. The road parallels the cliff base at elevations between 4,200 and 7,900 feet, climbing onto the plateau in the final ten miles. The Vermilion Cliffs National Monument, designated in 2000, covers 280,000 acres of cliff face and the Paria Plateau above. The byway provides the only paved access to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon from the east.
The cliffs face roughly southeast, so the strongest light comes early, in the first hour after sunrise, when the iron-oxide-stained sandstone reads almost incandescent against the still-shaded valley floor. By midmorning the light flattens. In the afternoon the cliffs fall into their own shadow, though the upper edge catches late sun and briefly turns peach before fading. House Rock Valley below the cliffs holds one of the darkest skies in the continental United States, and the Milky Way clears the cliff line by mid-evening in summer.
U.S. 89A is open year-round, though the Kaibab Plateau section above 7,000 feet can close briefly after winter storms. The California condor release site at the Vermilion Cliffs viewpoint, twenty miles west of Marble Canyon, hosts public release events most autumns; recent releases have added four to six birds at a time to the wild population. Cliff Dwellers Lodge, halfway along the byway, runs the only year-round food and fuel between Bitter Springs and Jacob Lake. The trailhead for White Pocket and the Coyote Buttes lies seven miles north up House Rock Valley Road.