Valley of Fire - Nevada State Park

If you are ever near Las Vegas you should stop by the Valley of Fire State Park. It is about 50 miles north east of Las Vegas on the north side of Lake Mead and is about 46,000 acres in size with lots of fascinating things to see and many trails to hike. It is a beautiful area of red sandstone and other rocks formations jutting out of the desert.

This was the view out the front of our campsite. The sun is just coming up in this picture.

This is one view of the campground where we stayed for a couple of nights. You can see the RVs nestled among the rocks. There are two campgrounds in the park and we stayed at Atlatil Rock Campground. It was pretty much full the two nights we were there and the volunteer host said it had been full for several weeks. The snowbirds are coming.

Here is one of the rock structures in the campground. The winds of time have eroded parts of the structure. You can see the hole that is eroded and in later pictures we will see lots of evidence of this erosion.

This formation is called the "seven Sisters". There are seven individual rock formations. You can walk down among them and there are picnic tables and walking trails. As you can see they just jut up out of the desert.

This is a formation named Elephant Rock. You cannot clearly see the Elephant from this view as some tourists were climbing all over the rocks and taking selfies. They had to walk directly past the "Do not Climb On" sign to get to where they were. Guess the sign didn't mean them. Fascinating formation nonetheless.

There are a myriad of colors in the various rocks. This shows a blending of color. It is an interesting pattern.

Here we see the mountain blended with a variety of colors. Layers of different colors.

This looks like layers in the rock. The hole shows the erosion, the layers are all through the rock as can be seen in the back of the hole.

Some the fascination about the valley of fire is the scale of things to look at and experience. Some are small and some on a much larger scale. Fascinating views all of them.

While walking up to the visitor center we passed these holes in the rock. They kind of look like a face,maybe something of a contorted scream.

Be sure and spend some time in the visitor center. It is really well done and will give you a good perspective on the history of the park, the geology, animal and plant life that can be found here and the native people that lived here many years ago.

Earlier we had seen a larger hole in the rocks. Here we see a horizontal row of holes in the layers. The signs of erosion are everywhere.

The many holes on a larger scale.

Here parts of a rock were eroded away. Maybe once they were holes that collapsed in on each other. The wind and little rain and lots of time certainly make a lot of changes.

This is just another of the many examples of red rock formations that can be seen everywhere in the park.

A view from back a little gives you a different perspective of the rocks and how they just seem to rise up out of the desert environment.

Speaking of scale here we can see tracks in the sand. Small rodents, birds,lizards. The myriad of dwellers in the desert.

This sign was on the road to the visitor center in The Valley of Fire. We did not see a desert tortise but the signs warned us to be aware of their presence.

One day we took a short ride over towards Lake Mead which was close by. As we turned down into a place called Echo Bay we noticed these fences. You can see it in the center of the photo. They were on both sides of the road but only about 2 feet high. They are designed to keep the tortise off the highway. We thought they were a little short for livestock fencing but maybe the tortise is considered livestock.

I am convinced that this feeble attempt to show you the Valley of Fire has not succeeded very well. You really need to experience the place and immerse yourself among the beauty. Great place, be sure and visit if you are ever in the area. Also you can google Valley of Fire and look at Images. There are some great pictures out on the internet that show the wave and many other formations not mentioned here. We will go back.