For more photos of the park in slide show format, click here.
-Jenni
My first thought on this place was, "WHY is this not a national park?" Clearly, some congressman did not lobby hard enough. Or perhaps they are all too busy to get out here and see for themselves the desert wonderland that sits just a forty-five minute drive from Las Vegas. You could blow a lot of money and time in a casino OR you could stand and be amazed at the earth. I know which one gets our vote. sunset from our campsite We camped at the Atlatl (not a typo) Campground. Even without the great view, this was a wonderful spot, one of the cleanest and most spacious we have found. That's saying something when you are used to cramming a rig the size of an oceanic shipping freighter into a normal site. We actually had room leftover to fit the truck beside the trailer and completely out of the way. bunny love It was great to get up in the morning and enjoy a perch on a big rock with a bird-s eye view of the desert coming to life. Okay, so most of it comes to life well before I have slugged down enough coffee to be semi-coherent, but I still got to enjoy the little desert cottontail bunnies and ground squirrels scurrying around in search of breakfast. There were also a LOT of jack rabbits close by and they were not very wary of us. They never let me get closer than about thirty yards, but that was close enough with my 200mm lens. On our second day the kids discovered a really cool, really big lizard. They bolted back to the trailer to fetch me and the camera for some pics. While we watched, this lizard and his pal staked out a ground squirrel den. A baby squirrel came out all fierce and butch-like, defending his home. Lizard and rodent were roughly the same size and we were a bit afraid we might be about to witness the kind of National Geographic moment that doesn't end well for the furry guy, but it seemed the lizards just wanted to know what real estate might be on the market and were not necessarily ready to make an offer. Everyone went their own ways after a tense five or ten minutes. This stuff is precisely the sort of homeschool lesson we came out here for. In addition to zoology credit, the kids earned some serious physical education points for scrambling up the rocks. "Rocks" is a misnomer. These were huge monoliths. Imagine Joshua Tree NP painted red (and minus the Joshua Trees) and you have some idea of what kinds of natural jungle gyms were at our disposal. Check out Collared Boar's blog to see one of the climbing adventures. This was our last desert stop before we head into the Sierra Nevada range and up the coast of California. I will miss my favorite environment on the planet, but Valley of Fire was a great way to wrap it up. For more photos of the park in slide show format, click here. -Jenni
Steve Brown
5/13/2013 12:50:00 am
More good stuff... thanks for sharing! Comments are closed.
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