Valley of Fire

Right after Thanksgiving we spent a week in Southern Nevada and did some exploring. Our biggest day included visiting Hoover Dam and then driving along Lake Mead to Valley of Fire State Park. You can see the Hoover Dam story here in my earlier post...  
And here's link to the map of our route that day....

We could have spent the entire day here, but we didn't actually make here until late in the after noon. We spent more time at the dam than we planned and then took our time driving up along Lake Mead. We just barely made it through the park before it got dark.

As you can see from the map of our journey we did the trip as a big circle. You can find more information about the park at their official website, or at the Wikipedia article. I won't take the time here to give all facts & figures here since they are easily found on the linked pages.

 These pictures show probably the best part of our drive through. It was towards the end of the day and the sun was headed towards the horizon. We had taken a bumpy side road to see Arch Rock. After getting a good photo of it, we loaded back up in the car and headed towards the park exit. We came around a corner, and this guy was on the rock dead ahead of us.

We did a little freak out... I'm yelling "look, get a picture", Christy is trying to get out of the car to take the picture, but I've neglected to actually stop the car because I'm too busy telling her to get a picture.

We finally got stopped and got out of the car and a second one showed up. These are big horn sheep. We watched them for about 5 minutes before the went over the other side of the rock.

 This is the Arch Rock we had taken the side road to see. The rock formations in this park were impressive.

 Some of the wonders in the park are man made. These petroglyphs, or rock art, where made by Native Americans around 1,500 years ago. A great discussion on these fascinating markings can be found here...

To reach the petroglyphs you had to climb up an extensive set of stairs. These are a more recent addition. They were a nice replacement for the narrow steep steps that had been carved into the rocks at some point.

From here, I'm going to let the pictures speak for themselves...

 I love the contrasting colors in this picture. Christy takes amazing photos.