Las Vegas; Saturday, 08 April, 2023

I had originally been due to go on a tour out into the Mojave desert on the Californian side and visit some of the sites there, but due to low booking numbers it turned out I was the only person on the tour so the previous evening the organisers had cancelled the tour, but instead transferred me onto a slightly different tour heading into the Nevada part of the Mojave desert to visit the Valley of Fire.

After being picked up from the hotel we headed out into the desert that surrounds the city and on into the Valley of Fire. The area gets its name from the colour of the sandstone rocks which contain significant amounts of Iron ore within them that give them a deep red hue. Some of the rocks also contain manganese which makes some of them purple as well, with – in some locations – stripped rocks with the yellow sandstone, red iron ore and purple manganese all visible at once.

The first stop of the morning in the Valley of Fire State Park was the Elephant Rock, a rock feature that does look exactly like an Elephant with it’s trunk down in front of it. We spent quite a bit of time here taking in both the rock formations and the wider views over the valley. At the same time our tour guide told us some of the history of the area.

From Elephant Rock we headed a bit further back into the park to visit the Historic Cabins, these are stone buildings which were built at the time the area became a state park in the 1930s and were in use right up until the 1960s, as well as being home to a number of petroglyphs that the Native Americans that lived in this part of the country carved into the rock in the past.

The next stop on the tour was the visitors centre where we stopped for both a toilet break and to take in the exhibition on the history of the site and some of flora and fauna in the area before heading further into the park along the road that was weaved between two mountains and up to the north of the park to visit the Fire Waves.

The Fire Waves are areas of rock that were shaped by the water when this area was a sea bed and its created strange rock formations that look almost like layered pastry. The rocks also sit up high above the valley floor and from here there were excellent views out over the valley and the surrounding land.

The next stop on the tour was the Fire Canyon where once again the geology of the area was on show with rock changing colour part way through with almost perfect straight lines that if you saw it in a photo you’d assume it was a photoshop job.

The final stop on the tour was the turtle rock – named as it does look remarkably like a turtle with it’s head sticking out of it’s shell. Near here there is a sloping rock that you can climb up quite easily for stunning views over the area, until you realise quite how high up you are, that there are sheer drops on both sides and that the slope on the way down feels much steeper that on the way up.

From Turtle rock we drove back to Las Vegas and I was dropped off at the hotel where I had time to freshen up before heading out for a relatively early dinner and an early night as I had a very early start the following day.