Sunday, November 17, 2013 (Las Vegas, NV)

We woke to blue skies and sunshine again today, I’m loving it. We went and did our workout at the gym and actually had two other people using the gym with us this morning. As we were leaving, one of the gentlman made a comment about the marathon in town today…..hmmm that makes sense on why we’ve seen some signs along the strip talking about traffic delays today.  It also might account for all the crowds we saw along the strip yesterday.  We got back to the 5er and did a little more research on the marathon and found out it doesn’t start until 4:30 this afternoon and part of the route is down Las Vegas Blvd. Good, it shouldn’t interfere with our plans to visit the Valley of Fire State Park today.

After breakfast, instead of attending a local church, we decided to check out Westside’s online service that we heard about when we were visiting a couple of weeks ago. It was pretty cool to be able to attend our home church online. I think we mostly will still try and visit local churches in the area we are visiting, but it will be a nice option if we can’t find one we’d like to try.

We got on the road about 11:30 and headed north to our destination which was approximately 40 miles away. It was a beautiful day for an adventure, though it was a bit hazy, maybe from all the wind yesterday? The scenery north of Las Vegas is pretty boring and not all that scenic, lots of quarries and power lines, so it was nice to leave the freeway and head toward the state park.

We had a delightful day taking in the sights and taking a couple scenic hikes. Luckily we could take Gracie on these hikes, so she got to get out and get some exercise also. We are very lucky that she likes to hike with us since she is so small, but she is quite the trooper and loves to go. Some of the areas we stopped at were the:

Beehives which are unusual sandstone formations weathered by the eroding forces of wind and water.

The Visitor’s Center had the usual displays and information on the park. Mouse’s Tank which was a ½ mile round trip hike. Mouse’s tank is a natural basin in the rock where water collects after rainfalls, sometimes remaining for months. There are also numerous examples of prehistoric petroglyphs.

Look at that blue sky and the red rock - beautiful

The sand was pink



first sightings of the petroglyphs



A close up of a section of petroglyphs

The end of the trail

The trough of water at the end of the trail - the story goes that a renegade hid out from the law for months in this area and survived using the water that had collected in this trough.  Do you see the heart shape???

Some more of the interesting rock formations and there was a bit more vegetation growing in this area

Rainbow Vista where we just stopped to take some photos.

The colors were much more vibrant in person

White Domes are sandstone formations with brilliant contrasting colors and a 1.25 scenic trail.

Beautiful white colored rock, we are now walking on white sand

Beautiful contrasting rock colors

More beautiful contrasting rock colors

A slot canyon we walked through

We stopped at Atlati Rock and saw some more ancient Indian rock art

more petroglyphs, if you look close you can also see some graffitti which is too bad, now they have a plastic shield over the rock

Stairs and viewing platform to get to Atlati Rock and the petroglyphs

and then Arch Rock.

The arch is in the center, it kind of blends in with the other rocks

By this time we were losing the sun, so decided it was time to head back home to our rv.

What a great way to spend the day with beautiful scenery and some nice hiking. I’m glad we made the trip. Driving back through Las Vegas, we saw tons of traffic backed up on the streets they had closed for the marathon, good thing we didn’t have to go down or across Las Vegas Blvd to get home. I feel sorry for all those people stuck in their cars for who knows how long….yuck.

We had an easy dinner, talked to my mom on the phone and did some laundry and called it a day. We are heading for Lake Havasu City in the morning.