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| the campground nestled among the red rocks. |
In addition to the history of the area, Valley of Fire is all about the hiking and the rock formations. Hiking in a desert can be different, and has some unique challenges. Paying attention to water consumption is critical and we always turn back when half our water is gone. Also, many hikes actually have no official trail.
Much of the logical path to follow in a desert is on either hard packed desert soil, or soft dry riverbed . One day we followed “Prospector’s Trail” but it ended up being an old road and we were more interested in hiking up and down the rock formations, so we quickly moved off in our own direction, As we climbed up and down the boulders and hills, it was easy to lose depth perception and at times became difficult to figure out if we could continue the way we were going, or if we were going to come to a dead end and have to turn around. After a while, all the rock formations start to look the same. Of course, we have a GPS with us (two, actually) so we wouldn’t get lost, but we could spend a lot more time getting someplace than we had planned on.
That’s where Cairns come into play. Cairns are trail markers, many times unofficial and left by previous hikers. Hikers will make a small pile of rocks indicating a turn in the path they took. Sometimes there will even be an arrow made of rocks, or a line of rocks blocking a pathway, indicating that we shouldn’t go that way. We came across quite a few rock cairns on our hike, which helped us make choices as to which way to go.
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| Easter Egg Canyon |
Intermingled with all the red sandstone were some areas with a high mineral content that created beautiful colors. I dubbed this particular area Easter Egg Canyon, because it literally looked like someone had taken the dye for Easter eggs and painted the rocks with it.
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| Lake Mead |
Once we’d had enough hiking for a while, we took a day trip to nearby Lake Mead. I have never seen Lake Mead before but of course I’d heard of it. It was a beautiful warm day and we brought our swimsuits, just in case. It turns out that Lake Mead is a great boating lake, but there isn’t a lot of access to the lake without a boat.
Our visit to this park was made more fun by the people we met. There were 3 Canadian couples traveling together that we became friendly with. Each night we had social hour with them, and a campfire on the nights that didn’t have 40 mph winds. Lately we’ve met some really great people- this group and the people we met in Death Valley are some of them. Hopefully we’ll get a chance to meet up with them again at some point!
After extending our visit twice, we finally left the park today. The weather, although dry, has been extremely windy at times and tomorrow the winds are supposed to be 40-60 mph so we started heading towards Fresno. Our last day there we spent climbing the rocks that surround the campground. It was almost like being a kid again, climbing as high as we could up the rock formations and then finding a way down the other side. Great fun.
