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| Stripes of colored rock |
Imagine trudging through the vast, dry, unwelcoming Mojave Desert,
blinded by the sun and the endless brown dirt and grey-green desert plants. You cross over hills and mountains (yes, the
Mojave Desert has mountains) with oddly shaped Joshua Trees as the only other
things punctuating the horizon. Suddenly
you come across an area where the stones are bright red. Some of them are all red, and some of them are
striped with beige stone. Moreover,
there are stone reservoirs where rain water has collected. Animals live here. You might think this was a pretty special
place. 2,500 years ago, early people did,
and left drawings behind on some of the cliffs.
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| They call this Balancing Rock |
Later, Euro-Americans thought the same thing and made it
Nevada’s first state park. We learned
about Valley of Fire State Park from a neighbor camper while we were at Big
Bend National Park in Texas. He had
camped at Valley of Fire and recommended that we visit it should we ever be in
the Las Vegas area. Our trip from
Yosemite to Zion National Parks took us through Las Vegas, so we thought we would
stop in.
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| Wowzer! |
Various geologic events over millennia created these
eye-popping rocks and formations. Layers
of red and beige rock some in blocks and some swirled in thin layers have been exposed
and eroded by wind and time. The ground
underfoot is a fine red sand.
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| Our rig in the Mojave Desert, as viewed from the Visitors Center |
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| The Desert was in bloom |
This is a very popular state park, and we were there during
Easter Break so many families were taking a day trip from Las Vegas about 40
miles away. Moreover, it had rained the
day before (we had been driving in it) and others had come out to see the
desert in bloom. Then there were the
buses of tourists on day tours from Las Vegas.
There was no place to park our rig of motor home and car in the lot at the Visitors Center, so we stopped
at a pullout on the side of the road and hiked in. Yes, they said, this is their high visitation
time before it gets too hot, starting in June.
Convinced that we wanted to see more, we unhooked our car, loaded Tiki
in with us (dogs are allowed on the trails) and took off to explore this
remarkable place.
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| Black "desert varnish' on a cliff with petroglyphs |
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| Some of those drawings up close |
We hiked the Mouse’s Tank Trail down Petroglyph Canyon. Many of the red cliffs have a shiny black
coating that they call ‘desert varnish’. Early people scratched pictures into the
black, so that the red rock beneath shows through. Pictures of people, hands, mountain goats,
geometric designs. There are other symbols
that could have spiritual references.
They were fascinating and placed along the cliffsides as we walked. Some
of them are so high up that we wondered how the artists got to them to create
the drawings.
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| More petroglyphs - we wonder what they represent |
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| The green pool at the bottom of the picture is a 'tank' of water |
At the end of the hike is a tank, or natural stone cistern
full of rain water. Legend says that this is
one of several tanks known by a renegade Paiute named Little Mouse who hid in these
canyons and used the water to survive.
After hiking, we drove along one of the park roads to see
more of this remarkable landscape. With
3 more hours to drive to our destination for the night, we had to cut our visit
short, hook the car back up, and return to the dull, brown desert to continue
on our way.
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| A happy threesome |
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