After leaving Water Holes Slot Canyon, we wanted to get over to White Pocket, in the Vermillion Cliffs Wilderness Area. It should be a two-hour drive, and we wanted to get there before sunset to set up camp. We would be spending two nights there.
The 40-mile drive on Highway 89 to our first turnoff in northern Arizona was uneventful, and we kept in touch with Brother who was ahead of us via portable, two-way radios.
Once we turned south on House Rock Road it was fine for a couple of miles, but soon degraded into a bumpy, sharp-gravel road with many dips and rises. Suddenly, I got a low tire pressure warning indicator on the dashbord of our rental vehicle. Turns out that there was a rather large gash in the center of the right passenger tire. Who knows when it happened -- looked like it was caused by a sharp metal object rather than a loose piece of gravel.
We stopped and spent some time determining what was our next course of action.
Brother had a can of Fix-a-flat, and we tried this, which required driving another two miles immediately after filling the tire with the noxious fluid. It didn't work - it was still leaking. So we tried to pump up the tire up using Brother's electric, portable tire pump. It was slow, but the tire was gaining pressure. At about 20 pounds of pressure (we needed a minimum of 34 pounds), the pressure just stopped increasing. I got into the car to check on the connection to the 12 volt power converter, and it was smoking like crazy! Obviously, it was not made to run such a piece of equipment. So we unplugged it and decide to go for the spare.
After some precious time spent fumbling around, we finally figured out how to lower the spare (keeping our fingers crossed that it had sufficient pressure), and figured out how to remove the tire jack from the secure place it was hiding it the back of the vehicle.
After changing the tire, we noticed that it was getting to be late afternoon, and we still had ten miles or so to go to our final destination -- much of the "road" (I use that term loosely) would be quite difficult -- very sandy and loaded with boulders.
When we finally turned off House Rock Road, I was a bit incredulous when I saw the condition of the road. Barely a two-track that looked like it went off directly into the desert!
Did I say sandy? I had to use low 4-wheel drive most of the way, which means that we were driving at around twenty miles per hour or less much of the time.
Eventually we made it to a place called Poverty Flats which had one old barn and what looked like an old water well. That was it. That's when Brother said, "It gets really interesting from this point on."!!! We still had 5 more miles to go!
We finally made it to the trail head for White Pocket, but it was dark, and we had to unpack and set up the tent in the dark, missing the beautiful sunset shots. Quite an interesting turn of events in our fabulous southwestern vacation...
These twelve shots were all taken the next morning shortly after sunrise.
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