Valley of Fire State Park, NV

What a beautiful park!  It is still desert but so much more vegetation than Death Valley.  Valley of Fire is mostly a red rock park with various other colors thrown in.  The visitor center is nice with informative placards on how the area was formed.  There are several roads through the park that lead to varying different vistas and hikes.  It was unfortunately very windy for a couple of days, so I drove through part of the park one day, then spent another full day doing short hikes that were showcased some extraordinary landscapes.  Two separate days had 20-30 mph winds with gusts to 40-50 mph.  The gust speed is really hard on the RV slide & slide awning, so I had to pull in the slide during those periods.  My bed is in the slide and when pulled in the bed folds.  I end up sleeping diagonally in the bed when the slide is pulled in.  Not optimal but it works!

On my day of hiking I chose two short hikes.  The first was Rainbow Vista at 1 mile roundtrip.  This was a pretty trail around and through varying red rock formations.  The hard part of this trail was the deep red sand.  It was like walking on sand dunes for a mile.  I tell myself it was a good workout!  The better of the two hikes was my second one called Fire Wave trail.  The majority of this trail was over hard rock with trail markers every so often.  The mineral makeup and erosion from wind and weather caused the rock to have striations of color in a wave pattern.  Some striations were red and cream colored.  Some had a light turquoise color to them.  Once I was out where the wave pattern was in full sight, the views were beautiful too.  It reminded me a lot of Canyonlands and Arches Nat’l Parks in Utah. 

After my ‘hikes’, I drove down the road to see several campgrounds within the park.  They were OK but the surroundings were gorgeous.  Each campsite was surrounded by big red rocks – very unique to the southwest.  In seeking out the campgrounds I happened upon a whole other section of the state park, and I’m so glad I did.  I took a scenic dirt/gravel drive that winds further back through more rock outcroppings that were cream and red in color with super neat rock formations.  The best part was seeing 3 Bighorn Sheep Rams grazing in the bushes.  Two of them were fairly large and both had a massive set of horns.  It’s less common to see the Rams than Ewes, so it was fun to see them.  This drive was definitely worth the extra time.

This is a short blog post since I only got a couple of days within the park (due to wind).  There is a lot to see and do here, especially if you are in better shape than me!