Written March 2019
Day 2
Sun!!! Thank goodness…we get to play outside and see come pretty rocks!! The only question was whether we should go to Red Rocks Canyon, Valley of Fire, or another hiking spot. We decided to rule our Red Rocks since it looked like it was super windy out there. I wasn’t sure about Valley of Fire, because the weather forecast showed some clouds out there… but I also didn’t want to take a chance of it being even worse one of the next 2 days… so decided to just go for it. And we’re sure glad that we did, because it wound up being a beautiful day out there!
So after another tasty avocado toast breakfast, we made our way out to Valley of Fire State Park, which is a little over an hr drive, northeast of the Vegas Strip. As we got closer and closer, the landscape and views were getting better and better…it was going to be a nice day!
Driving in
Our first stop in the park was an area called “Beehives”…although I think it should’ve been called Rabbit Rock. We could’ve easily spent at least an hour here just scrambling up different different rocks here and there…and just playing around… but it was just our first stop, and wasn’t even on our long list of must-sees in the park, so we kept our visit here relatively short. It was a cool spot though, and a good sign of things to come!
Beehives
From here, we drove out to the 1 turnoff, and out to the end of that road to the White Domes area. The hike here was about 1.3 miles, but it wasn’t super easy because of the sandy terrain we had to go through in some areas. There was also one spot we had to go through ankle deep water because of the rain from the previous day… we opted to take our shoes and socks off through here, so we didn’t have to worry about wet socks the rest of the day. It was a beautiful area though…really cool to see the landscape change from ‘white’ to red rocks at the blink of an eye.
White Domes Loop
After exploring the White Domes, we were getting pretty hungry, so we drove back down the road a couple miles to the trailhead of our next hike, and split our giant Italian sub while looking out into the beautiful landscape. It was delicious, and just the thing we needed to fuel us for the rest of the day! But for now, it was time to see the FIREWAVES…which was the highlight of the park! The hike was short and pretty flat…maybe 1.5 miles total…but we spent a lot of time here just looking around and taking picture after picture…trying to capture as much of the beauty through our phones, and placing them ever so carefully on various rocks to get pictures of ourselves. It was definitely a cool area to explore and see different parts of the park!
Firewave!
After we had our fill of the Firewave, we made our way over to our next hike, the Rainbow Vista trail. We made a quick stop at a small turnoff for a viewpoint though where you could see a nice intersection of the white and red rocks. The Rainbow Vista trail was an out and back, of a little over a mile – this was a pretty easy one compared to the others. Nice landscape views along the way, leading up to a great spot to see down into the Fire Canyon, as the sun was starting to come down some.
Silica Dome Viewpoint
Rainbow Vista Trail
Next up was the Mouse Tank Trail, named after some thief back in the day who was said to hide out in this area. This area was filled with petroglyphs on the rock walls, dating far back in the past. Another 1 miler out and back, but this one just led to a dead end.
Mouse Tank Trail
Our last short hike of the day was Elephant Rock, all the way at the other end of the park. This one was a little confusing to get to, and had a short little climb up some rocks, but was probably just over a half mile total. It takes a little imagination, but I would say it looks enough like an elephant to call it that!
Elephant Rock
As we made our way back up the road to the entrance to head back into the city, we made a few more quick stops along the road. First were the Seven Sisters, which were just 7 large rock formations right off of the road where you could picnic at. Then was arch rock…located in the middle of the campground area. And lastly, just as we were about to leave the park, we were lucky enough to see some bighorn sheep grazing along the side of the road! Overall, it was a really great day out at the Valley of Fire…just fantastic!
Seven Sisters
Arch Rock
Bighorn Sheep
As we got back into the city, we decided to stop at Jollibee again for dinner – this time we got a bucket of fried chicken to share! It was absolutely delicious! Mm-mmm good! After we got ready and started some laundry, we made our way back out to Planet Hollywood to see the Mentalist show.
We got there just a tad bit late because of some travel mishaps on my part, and didn’t get a change to write any of our thoughts on paper for him to magically “read”. The show was really entertaining and impressive – leaving us wondering after each of our tricks… “how did he do that?!?!” Afterwards though, I think we had some ideas about how he was doing it all…but still, it was a really fun show to watch. I almost wanted to buy his book and video afterwards!
After the show, we made our way out to the Bellagio to see the water fountain show, but unfortunately, the winds were too high so they weren’t going that night. So we just headed back to the hotel, had some robot-made froyo, and called it an early night since we were in for a long day the next day. Day 2 was definitely a success though!!
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The Dating Life of Norina and Jonathan 