2012/05 Western USA trip - Valley of Fire |
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Thursday June 7th
It was a cool night but the sun came up like a hammer; it was going to be a scorcher. We drove south on an empty road to Baker and joined I-15, the freeway that connects Los Angeles to Las Vegas (and it goes all the way to Alberta). The freeway was very busy, a mass of traffic hurtling through the empty Mohave Desert. There are few intermediate towns. We crossed into Nevada at State Line, a wall of casinos, hotels, and bars, and home of the Sin City Kitties. They are obviously hoping to attract Californians who can’t wait until they get to Vegas.
We pulled off at Goodsprings, a similar place, for coffee and then we were into Las Vegas traffic, which is as insane as you might expect. We were driving at over the speed limit but Porsches and Mercedes and buses were passing us on both sides.
We were looking for a nice spot to stop for lunch and I suggested we try the Valley of Fire, a park between Vegas and Lake Mead. This ended up costing us about three hours! The park protects an area of heavily eroded red rock and some very good petroglyphs. We walked
some trails, climbed up to look at the drawings, and spent a while in the museum. It was very hot, mid 90s, so the walking was quite slow. We had some more comments on the Little Guy from a real little guy “Mom, do they keep their dogs in there?”
As we dropped down from there we came to the junction for Lake Mead; the reservoir formed on the Colorado River by the Hoover Dam. We’d camped there with Mum back in 1979. We were tempted but I wanted to get into Zion national park that evening, a Thursday, as arriving at any popular spot on a Friday or Saturday can be a problem.
We made our way back to the I-15 freeway and briefly found ourselves in the northwestern corner of Arizona. Then we entered the Virgin River Canyon, with its spectacular views and a very twisty section of freeway. We came out into Utah at St George, the town mostly famous for being in the fallout from the “Dirty Harry” atomic bomb test back in the fifties.
From there it was a short run to Springdale, on the edge of Zion national park. We were planning to visit a half-dozen parks in Utah, so this is a convenient spot to end Part Two of this trip journal.