May 23rd was my 38th birthday! You know you have a great life when you can't decide what to do for your birthday ....Grand Canyon? Hoover dam? Valley of Fire? Zion National Park? Las Vegas Strip?
In the end, Valley of Fire won!
Driving there was an adventure in itself. Once you are off the main highway, you are all of sudden in the middle of nowhere. On a two-lane road. No cell service. Nothing around. Very, very remote. My momma's heart would panic for a split second thinking about what we would do in case of emergency. What if we broke down? What if son suffered allergic reaction? What if son suffered asthma attack? What if son breaks his arm? But as soon as those thoughts would enter my mind, I would push them out saying, "I write my own story. All is good right now. Look around at all the beauty."
And there was tons of beauty to look at!
Entrance = $10.00/car
Inside the Visitor's Center
As you can see, we had perfect weather for some desert hiking.
Thankfully we didn't see any of these guys out on the trails!
They loved the playground made of rocks!
Before we set off on our first hike, we ate our picnic lunch on top of a rock with amazing views!
It was located right above the parking lot so we didn't have to walk far lugging all our stuff.
Notice the 4 bottles of water laying there in the sun.
I froze them the night before to use as a ice
packs for our cooler instead of buying a bag of ice.
The ice would eventually melt so that we
could drink ice cold water!
Look at our view!
I shamelessly did quite a few selfies because I couldn't believe I was there and because I'm the one who carries and takes all the pictures...I want proof that I was actually there!
My new favorite picture of us.
The hat I'm wearing Sage gave to me
that morning for my birthday.
Sage is wearing my sunglasses because
his broke that morning.
We were super lucky that this day was not super hot.
It did get up to about 81 degrees, and whew....81 degrees in the desert is really hot, but nothing compared to triple digits!
The first trail we hiked was the 'Fire Wave'.
I knew that this was the longest trail so I thought it would make sense to get the longest one out of the way first while we were not exhausted, thirsty, or hungry.
We sought the shade out whenever we could.
He drew hearts on the rock using a smaller rock.
Can you see his heart?
If you saw these wooden posts with yellow on them, you knew you were going the right way.
So blessed with a husband who
goes along with me and my ideas!
My boys like to collect 'treasures' from our travels.
We came home this day with TONS of 'treasures'.
This yellow flower stands out in the sea of brown desert.
This may look like dirt or sand that we are
walking on, but it's all rock!
Henry asked me if I wanted to climb this rock, and I instantly said yes. The boys instantly said they wanted to also, and before I knew it we were all 3 climbing the rock before my brain could tell me 'NO!'
So as soon as we get to the top,
this man comes right behind us.
I thought it was so rude to do that since everyone else was patiently waiting at the bottom so people could get their pictures taken at the top...without strangers in the pictures.
I see him as soon as I turn around, and say, "Well, hello Uncle Joe." And he goes, "I asked that couple if it was okay to come up here with you guys, and they said they didn't care." Well....they didn't care because they weren't with us.
So we waited until he went back down to get some pictures with just us in them. By the way, the guy was super nice...he just thought we were a bunch of kids up there.
As the boys and I were making our way down the rock, his wife was coming up saying, "Boys, listen to your sister. Take your time." Ha! I said, "Um, mother."
She was shocked to learn that I was their mom.
I proudly told them that it was my 38th birthday that day, and that my oldest son was 10.
She said, "Well, we came to see some natural wonders, but you are the biggest wonder we have seen!"
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!
Then it was Henry's turn to go up the rock.
Scott went back up with him.
You can see why this is called the 'Wave of Fire'.
They took a selfie on top of the rock.
I have scoliosis, and this picture shows it greatly.
(See the hump in my back).
The boys played in this little cave for
a while pretending it was their home.
Sage pretending to sleep in his bed.
See Henry and the boys walking?
Lots of holes like this one.
Had to tell the boys,
"Do not put your hand in any hole you see!"
Here's another cave that the boys pretended was our home.
We were joking with them that on June 8th we just may have to come back to this cave and live since we will have nowhere to go on June 8th. (Totally joking with them...we do have a place to go on June 8th).
Old tin can
The first part of the trail is made of sand.
Someone said, "This is like the beach."
And I said, "Yeah, without the water."
After sitting in the truck in the air conditioner and eating some snacks, the next trail we did was 'Canyon Trail'.
I wanted to do this one to see all the petroglyphs.
Family of Four?
(This is also the picture on the magnet
that we bought from the gift shop).
It's one thing to read about petroglyphs in text books,
but it's a completely cool experience
to see REAL ones in person!
This poor guy was baked too death in the sun.
Anything that wasn't brown,
stood out in the desert.
While on the Canyon Trail,
Scott suffered an injury to his finger.
He was banging two rocks together,
and smashed his finger.
We had to abort our trail and head back to the truck.
He screamed/cried the whole way back.
Daddy to the rescue!
Poured water on the boo-boo
and put a band-aid on it.
Instant relief.
After the finger injury incident, the boys were exhausted.
I, however, wanted to see what the 'Elephant Rock' was...I love elephants! Henry stayed in the truck with the boys while I went out to explore a bit.
So I got out, walked a bit, but I don't think
I saw an elephant rock.
We decided that since Lake Mead was so close to the Valley of Fire that we would stop by there.
Ha!
There is no 'stopping by'.
First of all, it's a 'National Recreation Area' which is awesome because that means we got in free with our National Park Pass.
It would have been $10/car without the pass.
We asked the park ranger how far the lake was from the gate.
She said that we would 'start to see it in 4 miles'.
Well, we did start see it in 4 miles, but it was so far from the road. We drove and drove and drove, but never got close to the lake. We did take a road to what we thought would take us to the lake, but it didn't. It took us to a campground, but the actual road down to the lake was closed. By this time, Scott was sound asleep, it was about 5:45 pm, and we were out of food. So we decided to just drive 'home.'
This was as close as we got to the lake.
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