Valley of Fire & Prime Rib on Fremont St

Started out the day again at the South Point Casino, good as always. Then we headed out to the Valley of Fire State Park just north of Vegas.  We took the strip out as the last time that Brenda was in Vegas there really was not a strip. 

The Valley of Fire is about a one and half hours North East of Vegas. It is only $15 for Non-Nevada residents and it is for the entire vehicle. This park was created in 1935 with 9,000 people visiting the first year. It is the largest state park in Nevada. The park derived its name from the way its red sandstone formations, once sand dunes during the age of the dinosaurs over 150 million years ago, seem to glow as if they are on fire in an hour just before sunset. When you see the pictures you will see why.

This is the view as you approach the fee booth

We started off with a circle tour around the one of the campgrounds. There are two campgrounds with 72 sites available. It is definitely on bucket list to go camping here. The first campground has all these amazing rocks creating an atmosphere of staying in a box canyon just like in an old western movie. It is also far away enough from the city that the nights are pitch black and the stars are bright and plentiful. The first campground is mainly for smaller trailers and tents. The second had room for longer trailers and motor homes. Most had water, a few had electricity and there is a dump site available. All the sites were full so it is very popular. 

The next stop was arch rock

Next was Atlatl Rock, an atltal is a throwing stick or dart thrower used by ancient tribes to give more force to their darts or spears. 

This is the steps to climb up to see the petroglyphs and pictographs.  Pictographs are paintings and petroglyphs are etchings in the stone.

Pictograph

Petroglyph 

These are the originals steps beside the newer, safer steps.

This is some of the erosion over the years from the wind and sun

We then visited the visitor centre. There are many cubby holes and small hidey holes that animals hide in during the warm weather. The temperatures in the summer can get up to 120 F/49 C. 

Not an animals but sure looks like one

I decided to give one of the cubbies a try

The next stop was north to the Rainbow Vista. This area has a large amount of silica that solidified, with some having the iron minerals that turn the rock red.

The colour of the rocks in this area looked more pastel and blended in their colour

The end of the road brought us to the White Domes

Back on to the main road brought us a set of cabins that had been built by the Civillian Conservation Corps soon as the park was opened in 1935. They are constructed out of the local sandstone and were used for many years by campers and travellers visiting the park. 

In some areas, living microorganisms like Cyanobacteria, fungi and algae take hold in the sand, creating a dark crust on the surface. The natives like to use this type of rock to do their petroglyphs because they stood out mor.

At the east entrance of the park you find a rock that has eroded to look like an elephant.

To get back to Vegas we headed back to the west entrance where we saw some rocks that they called the Beehives. I will just show you the picture and you can decide if they got it right

The vegetation in the area is very sparse, lot of little shrubs, bushes and cacti. The desert plants are very good a going dormant, appearing dead until a small amount of rainfall allow them to once again sprout leaves and flowers. The area up by the rainbow vista had some rainfall recently because the datura and cacti were in full bloom

We spent about 6 hours at the park and after lots of sun and sand we headed to downtown Vegas and Fremont street.  Fremont street was the original strip in Vegas. The casinos are a lot smaller than the ones on the main strip but the atmosphere down here is much different. They have live music, dj’s and lots of street performers. They have put a large canopy over about 6 blocks that have digital show overhead. It is loud and lots of bachelor and bachelorette parties going on.  We went to Tony Roma’s to have their $8.99 prime rib dinner which was really good. We walked up and down the area a couple of times, seeing some old Vegas neon lights. Couldn’t convince Brenda and Len to do the Slotzilla which is a zip line that takes you down the entire length of the area.