Valle of Fire State Park is 55 miles northeast of Las Vegas, an interstate ride, and then a switch to 2-lane roads. The wind was howling, pushing my car around as I sped down I-15, a road with a speed limit of 75 miles per hour. As I fought to keep the car heading straight, I watched the trucks snake their way down the road. Unlike at home where trucks have only a single cargo trailer, most of the trucks that I was today were triples. Triples, moving at or above the speed limit, waving, snaking in the strong winds.
I only shared the road with these very long trucks for a short while. As soon as I turned off on the two-lane road leading into the park and then on to Lake Mead, I was totally alone. Alone, driving down an arrow-straight two-lane road, a road that then started to twist, to climb, turning, scenery changing. The decorations went from low scrub on shallow hills to red rock outcroppings, turning, climbing, dropping. It wasn't until I was almost to the park boundary that I started to see other cars.
It was probably a good thing that the 5-mile long road leading from the visitor center to White Domes had a limited number of pull-outs and explicit warnings to stay on the road. There were no shoulders, and very soft ground along the edges of the pavement. It was a good thing because if I'd been able to stop at will, I might not have reached the end of the road before dark.
I stopped at every pull-out, sometimes just to stand and absorb the wonder, sometimes to wander closer to a formation, to the colors painted on the rocks, red, yellow, white, orange. And of course I spent time hiking too. My first hiking stop was Mouse's Tank, a natural basin where water collects after rainfalls. Where did the name come from? Mouse was apparently a Paiute who was hid out in this area in the 1890s, using the tank as a fresh water source.
The White Domes loop led me down a set of steps in the rock, down, around a loop wandering through sandstone formations in brilliant colors, along a wash, through a narrow slot canyon.
And then... I spent some time wandering at Rainbow Vista. There was a trail through red sand, with occasional trail markers. It was surprisingly hard walking through the soft sand, sand that held faint tracks. Even though I did an out-and-back jaunt, it seemed as though the footsteps I laid down had started to disappear as I returned, smoothed by the strong wind. This was truly a magic place, with cactus and low scrub decorating the red sand, between rock formations.
The petroglyphs at Atlatl Rock were high on the rock, accessed by climbing a tall metal staircase. As I climbed, I could see older very narrow stone steps, now closed to footsteps. I have to admit that I wonder how the artists placed the glyphs so high on the rock. Were there steps leading up to the picture palette of the rock. Or?
Ah, an end to a first visit to this beautiful place... I headed down the road, 18 miles back to I-15. I was still under a brilliant blue sky decorated with many clouds. Ahead, I saw an edge of deep blue, dark clouds clearly spreading water. Rain, heavy rain.
Valley of Fire is truly a magic place.
