Mojave: Valley of Fire State Park

We planned to use Las Vegas as a transit point for visiting the Mojave Desert, so most of our activities were away from the hustle and bustle of town. On our first full day, we visited Valley of Fire State Park roughly northeast of Las Vegas. The pictures that we had seen seemed so reminiscent of Moab.

After getting our car back from the valet, we attempted to drive to a grocery store to get some lunch food and bottled water. We ended up buying a lot of water because after a night of drinking the crappy tap water in Vegas, we vowed never again. We had difficulty in trying to get to the store. After a lot of tortured screwing around, it became apparent that Apple Maps cannot navigate the maze of circular roads and ramps between Vdara, Aria, and The Cosmopolitan. I finally navigated out of the maze of suggested U-turn after U-turn by dead reckoning, picking out a landmark in our general direction and steering for it.

From the grocery store, our GPS sent us the southern route by Lake Mead coming into Valley of Fire from the east when I had intended to head north and enter from the west. I had not planned to enter federal property (Lake Mead National Recreation Area) so I left my park pass back at the hotel. We ended up having to pay the $25 fee. It’s for a good cause, I suppose. A bonus of taking this route is that we did get to drive the length of Northshore Drive and it is beautiful, a great drive.

Stunning Desert Views Along Northshore Drive

After a drive of over an hour out Northshore Drive, we finally arrived at the eastern end of Valley of Fire State Park. We would drive west through the park stopping at sights as we encountered them.

West Entrance to Valley of Fire State Park

Red Aztec Sandstone Formations

Just a bit further into the park sit the Seven Sisters, a series of seven large red sandstone boulders right on the highway. In walking about them, I was amazed at all the holes carved into the rock. These holes, called tafoni, are typically caused by water leaching into less well cemented sections of sandstone and dissolving the rock.

Seven Sisters

For Perspective, Ann is up on this Boulder

After walking around the Seven Sisters for a few minutes, we wanted to get up to the Fire Wave Trail before the sun got too much higher. All this area is totally exposed to the sun and even in February, is plenty hot. In fact, large sections of the park are closed from May to September to help prevent heat-related medical issues. The Fire Wave Trail starts off as a path through the desert, but once you are up on the fairly flat sandstone, there is very little trail to follow as you wander from multi-colored rock formation to formation. The sandstone in this part of the park has waves of red, white, and pink running through it in some pretty stunning patterns.

A Fearsome Cholla, Likely Cylindropuntia whipplei

Beavertail Prickly Pear, Opuntia basilaris
We Saw Some with Purple Paddles

As we were climbing back up to the car, dark shapes against the skyline caught my eye. Even with my poor eyesight from more than a hundred yards away, I could see the horns of a couple of Bighorn ewes against the horizon. As I watched, several more crested the ridge and started climbing the hill. Ultimately, I counted about eight ewes and lambs. I climbed another hill to better watch them for a few minutes before joining Ann who continued on to the car.

First of Many Bighorn Sheep of the Trip

I was interested next in checking out the slot canyon along the White Domes Trail and although you can walk there by continuing along the Fire Wave Trail, I decided to drive the short distance to the trailhead. Shortly after we parked, about 50 Harleys came rumbling into sight with a couple of police escorts. A couple of guys were camped out alongside the road filming them with expensive looking camera gear, but I have no idea why. The police closed the road as they came through. Again, I have no idea why.

As we parked to begin walking up the hill to the trailhead, a curious Rock Wren hopped about at my feet almost as if it were begging for food. After a hot slog through deep sand along the initial part of the trail, the path started descending steeply through what was little more than a rock scramble. I found this odd for a trail that is listed as flat. The heat and rock scramble were more than Ann wanted to bite off, so she went back to the AC in the car while I continued down the hill.

At the bottom, the trail veered 90 degrees to the left and entered the slot canyon. Granted, the canyon was narrow, but not super high and I was much less impressed by it than many others that I have walked. Through the narrow section, the trail seemed to peter out and I was left to my own devices to get back to the car. I forged my own path up a steep rock scramble that judging by almost no footprints and little visible track, is rarely used. I had the good fortune on this out of the way walk to come upon a beautiful purple-red barrel cactus, the only one that I saw the entire week.

As I scrambled over loose rock through an arroyo or ravine between two taller hills in the vague direction of the car, I finally topped out a couple hundred feet above the car. I had to pick a path down the steep rock to where Ann was waiting. We had to wait perhaps five minutes for the police to reopen the road before we could go on with our tour of the park. The AC felt great after the blistering afternoon sun.

Friendly Rock Wren Investigating Roadside

Ann (center of photo) Scrambling Back to Car

Slot Canyon: Short and Unimpressive

A Mormon Tea, Ephedra sp.

California Barrel Cactus, Ferocactus cylindraceus

Large Cholla Before Rock Scramble Back to Car

Business End of Cholla

The next stop was the Rainbow Vista Trail. Ann opted to stay in the car while I hiked to the end of the trail and back through bright red boulders and rocks with stunning views. When I got to the end of the trail overlooking some crazy and twisted rock formations, I heard a noise above and behind me to the right. And then I heard a clear bleat of a sheep.

I turned around to see perhaps 20 Bighorns working the bench just above me and about 30 yards away. This was another ewe herd with a few lambs from last year. They were aware I was there but they did not seem distressed, so I stood there and photographed them for about ten minutes. There seemed to be one ewe in charge of the group and she talked to the rest of the sheep at regular intervals. Where she moved, they followed.

I typically find bighorns by looking carefully for their white butts which are the only things to stand out in the desert. When standing still, they are nearly impossible to see without careful scanning. In both my encounters so far today, I had been lucky. First, I saw them silhouetted against the sky on a ridgeline and in this case, their buff color stood out in great contrast to the red Aztec Sandstone. I still had not been lucky enough to see any rams. Except during mating season, the rams and ewes stay apart in separate herds.

I am Much Taken by the Soft Rounded Rock, the Vibrant Red Sand,
and the Contrasting Gray of the Rounded Shrubs

Rainbow Vista Trail Ends at This Massive Boulder Jumble

The Lead Ewe

Curious but Not Alarmed

After I returned to the car, we made our way back to the main road through the park and headed west towards the western exit and I-15 back to Vegas. Tired and wiped out from the sun, we decided to skip the remainder of the sights of the park. We drove on without stopping again, except one final stop to look at a ram herd, five or six large Bighorn rams with their massive horns. There was another larger group of sheep just beyond the rams up on a bench above the highway, but we did not stop to see them. 

 

We drove back into town the old fashioned way, by following road signs, for there is no signal out in the desert, something that we would experience a lot over the next few days out in Death Valley. Once we hit I-15, the way into Vegas was obvious. On the northern outskirts of town, four F-35s came ripping off the runway at Nellis AFB one after another. Each hung a hard left off the runway, and came screaming over the highway. It is always impressive to see how fast these single seat fighters tear away from you and become lost over the horizon. The roar shook the car.

Back at the hotel, we opted for a nap, our energy sapped by the arid heat of the desert. Later on we ventured out to a tiny restaurant in a strip mall called Komex, a portmanteau of Korean and Mexican that serves a fusion of those two cuisines. We were mightily hungry after our adventures in the desert and the food did its job in refueling us. The owner is a super nice guy. The food, however, wasn't the fusion of Korean flavors with Mexican forms that I was expecting. With the exception of two of the three salsas that had some Korean flavors going on, there wasn't much else Korean happening. My spicy pork (daeji bulgogi) burrito was not spicy and was closer to a vanilla chorizo burrito. The food was tasty, but not what I was expecting. Ann's beef chimichanga was less good.

Komex: Pork Belly Taco

Beef Bulgogi Chimichanga

Pork Bulgogi Burrito

Back at the hotel, we went to bed early and slept over ten hours.

Mojave: Las Vegas Day 1

This is the lead-off post in a series of posts on our recent trip to the Mojave Desert, flying in and out of Las Vegas. Our trip to the airport started unusually in that I slept for 8 straight hours before our early morning flight. Go figure. I rarely sleep and never before a flight. Our airport shuttle arrived five minutes early on a gloomy morning. On the ground, it was a gray rainy day (apparently we got out just before a major deluge in the coming couple of days). We pulled up to a very quiet airport and got through security really quickly as usual.

On the short 40-minute hop we had plenty of sunshine above the clouds. Our full 737 took a big bounce on hitting the cloud layer on the descent into SEA and lurched drunkenly in a ten-degree roll to starboard. Then we rolled back past vertical ten degrees to port. Either the autopilot overcorrected the initial roll or the pilot gave too much input while the autopilot was correcting the roll. Our stomachs finally lurched back to upright, leaving us all feeling a bit queasy.

Our follow-on flight to Vegas was posted as delayed by 30 minutes initially, which was a good thing as we had a long hike to change terminals between flights and our original schedule was tight. The departure time was delayed well over an hour by the time we arrived at the gate. Ultimately, our plane did not arrive until after our original departure time and then it was on maintenance hold until after our scheduled arrival in Vegas. We could gripe about the delays, but if a pilot does not want to fly a plane until it is repaired, I have no interest in being on that plane. Though given that SEA is Alaska's primary hub, you might think that they might have a spare plane to swap in.

We had no fixed plans in Vegas in the afternoon, so no harm was done. We left slack in our schedule, at least a full day, because air travel out of Redmond in the winter is so hit and miss. After we pushed back from the gate and moved on to the taxiway more than two hours late, planes were lined up for taxi as far as I could see. I counted more than a dozen vertical stabilizers ahead of us, nose to tail like circus elephants. I noted that the Alaska 737-800s looked tiny in line with a lone Korean Air Cargo 747.

The weather system moving into the PNW caused us a bumpy flight out of SEA. Although it settled down after 30 minutes, halfway into the flight there was enough turbulence to have the cabin crew buckle up. Our arrival at LAS was uneventful and we retrieved our bags before going outside to catch a shuttle for the rental car center. Hundreds of people were on line for a shuttle and the shuttles were not moving very efficiently. We had to wait for the fourth shuttle on an overcast afternoon.

During all our delays, I looked for a brewpub where we could relax and perhaps grab some dinner before checking in to our room. After we got our car, still dripping from the carwash, we drove to Able Baker Brewing in the Arts District. While I paid at the kiosk for street parking, Ann wrangled two outside seats at a bar facing the inside of the building which has a cool Bend x Industrial vibe.

The brewery is named after the first two nuclear bombs detonated at the nearby Nevada Test Site; the interior motif is Atomic Age-inspired. The beers were very good and that is no mean feat given the area's crappy water quality. Also good was our food from the Arts District Kitchen, a separate business housed inside the brewery.

At Able Baker Brewing in the Arts District

Garbage Nachos, the Garbage being Pork Belly

Pork Belly Tacos

After dinner, we went to an ATM to get cash for valet tips and then we navigated to our room, a condo in the Vdara Hotel, an MGM property, right on the strip at Harmon Ave. Although we got through the convoluted maze of ramps and circular roads that join the Vdara, Aria, and the Cosmopolitan without too much issue, finding the valet at Vdara proved a bit more difficult as I pulled into the Uber/taxi line and not into the valet line tucked around the corner of the building. It appeared that to pull into the valet, we had to drive up on the sidewalk, and although I hesitated to do so, that is what the designer intended.

We Passed the Strat in Heading for our Room

At Able Baker, we met a frequent visitor from Nashville who told us about a hidden speakeasy right near our room. After we got settled, we went in search of said speakeasy which we were told was behind a closed door marked simply with a tiny image of a skier. We found the door easily enough and a tuxedoed staffer led us directly to two seats at the uncrowded bar. The place would fill up and there would be a longish line of folks waiting to get in when we left, but our arrival at 9pm or so is early by Vegas standards. But how secret is a place with a long line of people queued and waiting for entry?

Interior of Ski-Themed Ski Lodge Speakeasy

Sitting at the bar of the Ski Lodge we had a couple of cocktails. Welcome to the land of $25 cocktails! The drinks were good and well crafted and as we enjoyed them, we got to talking with Nick from Brooklyn at the bar. He seemed to have intimate knowledge of all the nearby speakeasies and proposed a speakeasy crawl. Our spur of the moment plan was to speak-hop with Nick, but suddenly my back crapped out, despite the anesthetic I had on board.

I had to call uncle after a longish travel day. It may not seem like a trip from Bend to Vegas is a lot, but the cumulative stresses of the day added up. We called it a night and walked back to our hotel and made our way up to our room on the 32nd floor, high above the Strip. We spent a few minutes gazing at all the lights that people have come to associate with Vegas.

Out Our Window: Bellagio, High Roller Ferris Wheel, The Sphere, Paris Las Vegas

One thing to love about Las Vegas is that the airport, formerly named McCarran and renamed for Harry Reid, is situated right in town. One thing not to love is the planes screaming in to land. Fortunately, they stopped at some point and we got to sleep, ending our travel day to Vegas.