A Week in the Mojave Desert

Beauty and Bedlam, Bighorns and Burros

We are just back from a week-long foray to the Mojave Desert with Las Vegas as our starting and ending point. The timing in the third week of February was not accidental. Besides the week fitting into our schedule, we hoped for reasonable weather to transit our local airport without snow, ice, or ice fog delay. And going to the hottest place in the U.S. is a trip for the winter. Moreover, it seemed fitting somehow to celebrate my February birthday somewhere other than snowy and icy Bend, to soak in some sun.

Most of our Time was Spent in Nevada
But Also in Arizona and California

On this trip, we visited both the adjacent states of Arizona and California as we explored the amazingly harsh landscapes that are at the same time both similar to ours in Central Oregon, yet also starkly dissimilar. Our deserts differ in flora, fauna, and most notably in geology. We come from a land of young volcanism; the area around Vegas contains amazingly mangled and uplifted sedimentary features sculpted by eons of erosion. Our desert contains large pockets of Western Juniper; other than scattered shrub-sized Joshua Trees and a few Honey Mesquites here and there, the Mojave is treeless.

The raison d’être for this trip was Ann’s desire to see “O” by Cirque du Soleil at the Bellagio on the Strip. We built a week stay around this show, flying in to Vegas, spending a day exploring Valley of Fire State Park, staying two days in Death Valley, returning to Vegas for the show, then driving to and over Hoover Dam and along the north shore of Lake Mead, and finally flying back home.

"O" by Cirque du Soleil was Spectacular
Expensive as Hell and Worth Every Penny

This was Ann’s first (and likely last unless there’s a specific show we cannot see elsewhere) trip to Vegas. I have been twice before, once as a young man on an extended road trip from San Francisco that included the Napa Valley, Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Hoover Dam, Vegas, Los Angeles, and the Central Coast. The second visit used the Vegas airport, then called McCarran, as a hub for an excursion to and from Death Valley. Both trips were long ago before the Strip was the Strip that everyone knows today.

Back then, the Strip was not super crowded. Food was cheap and plentiful, at times free as a lure to visit a particular casino. Rooms were cheap too, no doubt loss leaders for the casino operations. This was before themed luxury casinos became the rage, though clearly Caesar’s and Circus Circus were exceptions. And this was long before Vegas was marketed as an adult playground, “what happens in Vegas,….” Long gone are the old school landmark venues such as The Dunes and The Sands.

The New Vegas is Not Our Jam

The current Vegas is not the kind of place that appeals to us. The Strip has become a luxury-priced corporate theme park jammed with throngs of noisy tourists, all looking for Instagram and TikTok experiences. When not posing for innumerable selfies or recording narrated videos, they block the teeming sidewalks, faces buried in their phones. They are too busy recording their experiences or checking that their followers are appropriately adoring their content to be present and live their experiences.

I am surprised at the highly international crowd; I heard dozens of languages, more than I heard in polyglot Firenze. Vegas as gambling Mecca attracts all types from crazy rich Asians, arms full of Prada and Gucci shopping bags and determined to be seen spending vast sums, to equally many down-on-their-luck Middle Americans drinking Bud Light while listlessly and vacantly pushing buttons on video poker machines. One thing has not changed: Vegas is still a place where average Americans come for a once-in-a-lifetime dream vacation. It is, sadly, not our dream.

With the throngs crowding the Strip like Bourbon Street at Mardi Gras, automobile traffic is accordingly miserable. At each intersection, three or four cars in each lane run a light after it has changed to red, no doubt because the red lights seem interminably long. Pedestrian travel is equally tough, slowed by waiting for the same traffic lights to change.

Outside the confines of the artificially luxurious Strip, the reality is that the Las Vegas area is a tad shabby, flat, smoggy, and architecturally boring with uninspired strip mall after wart of brutally unhandsome tract homes. In contrast to the natural wonders we visited elsewhere in the Mojave, Vegas away from the Strip, in a word, is ugly. Sorry Vegas, not sorry.

Seeing this uninspired place in the desert with no water caused me to seek the rationale for settling a town here. The name, las vegas, roughly “the meadows” in English, is certainly misleading in today’s world. Historically, however, this was the site of a cienega, a seep or marshy wet meadow area that served as a water source in an arid land. The water table has since dropped and the cienega was ruined. The massive metroplex endures.

Without question, water is a huge factor in this region that sees about four inches of rain per year. From the extremely low level in Lake Mead to miles of road ripped up by devastating flash floods in Death Valley, the effects of both ends of the water spectrum are plain to see. Also, the nasty tasting tap water makes us thankful to live on the banks of the Deschutes with our amazingly good tap water. We bought many liters of water to combat the conditions that we found arid, despite living in an area of low humidity.

Amazing Sandstone Formations at Valley of Fire State Park

Valley of Fire State Park east of Vegas is a gem of a park with beautiful red rock formations among other types of sandstone and limestone. It, like everywhere in the Mojave, exposed and hot, is best seen in winter. In fact, many trails are closed May-September because of heat danger. In addition to the gorgeous sandstone, we saw a great many Bighorn Sheep, four different herds in different locations and that alone was worth the $15 non-resident admission price.

One of Many Dozens of Bighorns

In driving to the park, although we never intended to drive east to Lake Mead and then take Northshore Drive to arrive at the park from the east, it proved a wonderful turn of events. Even though it is a bit of a long trip, Northshore Drive is not to be missed if you like scenic drives and desert landscapes. We love both.

Stunning Views Along Northshore Drive

West of Vegas and primarily located in California, Death Valley is, despite its brutal weather, a most spectacularly gorgeous place. The geology of Death Valley is a marvel in itself, showcasing salt flats, sand dunes, highly incised canyons, and volcanic craters. Everywhere I looked, I saw something that reminded me how pitiful my knowledge of geology is. It also reminded me of how small I am when compared to the stark loneliness of the vast basin surrounded by spectacularly rugged mountains.

Otherworldly Landscapes in Death Valley

We spent two nights in Beatty NV, the closest town to Death Valley National Park. We found it a very small town full of friendly and helpful locals. Outnumbering the humans in Beatty are wild burros, a protected species whose population is increasing to the point of becoming a nuisance. These are the offspring of animals that were brought to haul cargo primarily for mining operations and either escaped or were turned out when operations ceased.

Burros Run Rampant in Beatty NV

Whereas nature trumps all other things in Death Valley to the west, to the east on the border with Arizona, Hoover Dam and the new Hoover Dam Bypass Bridge are both marvels of human engineering, of man triumphing over nature, at least in the present human timescale. No doubt nature will have the last laugh.

Hoover Dam Has to be Seen to be Fully Appreciated

Backed up behind the dam, Lake Mead is at the lowest I have ever seen it, an alarming state. Though our visit to the Lake Mead Visitor Center was worth the stop, we did not find a lot of value in traversing Lakeshore Drive before returning to town and getting ready to depart for home.

Here then is the story of our trip:

Wednesday February 19: Las Vegas Day 1

Thursday February 20: Valley of Fire State Park

Friday February 21: Death Valley Day 1

Saturday February 22: Death Valley Day 2

Sunday February 23: "O" at Cirque du Soleil

Monday February 24: Hoover Dam and Lake Mead