Valley of Fire State Park

The day did not start well. Exciting, but not well. After several days with my folks at Bryce Canyon and Zion national parks, we said goodbye at McCarran Airport and I drove 22 miles to Las Vegas Bay Campground in Lake Mead National Recreation Area. It was well after dark when I arrived, and I accidentally set up camp in an already-taken site because I didn’t see the reservation tag pinned to the post. I tore down the tent and moved, then set up again in the dark, this time to the hum of nearby generators (why just one tent-only loop? why?).

All was fine until about 12:30am, when I woke to loud raindrops hitting the rainfly. I looked at my phone and holy crap, major thunderstorms heading directly toward me. Quarter-size hail (“it will damage cars,” the National Weather Service ominously warned) and 60 mph wind gusts. Suddenly my tent seemed rather exposed, especially since the campground sits atop a bluff above Las Vegas Creek.

Thunder and lightning

I thought about packing up but there really isn’t anywhere else to go from there–either I’d be driving into the storm or it would be chasing me. My boxy, Kermit-green Kia Soul rental car suddenly looked like a reasonable place to crash. I threw my gear into the car and dashed to the restroom, where I found two RV campers from Alabama taking shelter.

They knew lightning storms, their house having been struck before. “The bolt came in through a roof vent, traveled across the attic, and went out a window, we think,” the man told me. “Ever since then we don’t mess around when there’s lightning close by.” The woman showed me how to add the “lightning strikes” layer to the Weather Channel app on my phone and bam, there they were, bolts a quarter-mile away. The concrete-block restroom felt like the safest place to be, so I stayed there for the next four hours with my new friends, watching as the storms inched past on the phone screen while lightning flashed and thunder boomed all around outside.

Finally, at about 4:45am, it was pretty much over. I crawled into the car and went to sleep, only to wake at 6:45am. Ungh. My eyes felt full of sand and my vision was bleary. Time for breakfast.

Lake Mead north shore

If I hadn’t been so zonked from lack of sleep, I’d have liked to explore Boulder City (“the city that built Hoover Dam”) more. I made it to the small-but-informative museum inside the historic Boulder City hotel and enjoyed the short movie about the dam’s construction, but that was it.

Two loads of laundry and a grocery store run later, I was back on the road to Callville Bay Marina for a shower. It was barely 11am and I felt like I’d been awake for days. Clean, semi-refreshed, and well supplied, I drove along the north shore of the starkly lovely Lake Mead National Recreation Area, where vividly colored mineral outcroppings on both sides of the road reminded me of Death Valley. I spotted two wild horses grazing in the folds of the hills, then ten miles further down the road two National Park Service trucks raced past, lights flashing. At every low point on the highway, debris and sand had washed across during the night, and standing water puddled in normally dry washes. I imagine the rangers were busy that morning.

Valley of Fire State Park

Forty miles later, I left the national recreation area and turned immediately into Valley of Fire State Park. Two cars in front of me, an RV suddenly stopped and a woman leaped out of the passenger side. She ran in front of the vehicle and scooped up a desert tortoise, carrying it quickly across the road. Two years ago, Mr. Adventure and I kept our eyes peeled for rare and secretive desert tortoises in Mojave National Preserve, to no avail. I pulled over and hopped out to get a closer look, relying on my camera’s zoom lens rather than stressing the animal by walking up to it. Even from 15 feet I could tell the tortoise did not like having me there. It pulled its head and legs partially into its shell as if preparing for an attack. I snapped a photo and rapidly backed away.

I stopped in the Visitor Center to ask about camping possibilities, and a remarkably unhelpful ranger smirked that everything was full but I could, you know, drive around and check. Gee, thanks. Luckily, though, a quick ride to the campground and, score! my camping juju was restored. I snagged the last walk-in site, up a small, quiet canyon and well away from the RV loop. My phone forecast more thunderstorms, and there were clouds aplenty on the horizon, but I was there for the duration. Besides, this time my tent was tucked into the canyon, on a raised gravel platform.

Back in the car, I veered around a tarantula crossing the road (those 35 mph speed limit signs are there for a reason) and although I couldn’t pull over, I felt gratified to log two wildlife sightings in my first hour at the park.

Sunset exploring

Much like Zion, Valley of Fire has a main road that goes through the park and a scenic road that dead-ends after 5.5 miles. I stopped first at Mouse’s Tank, a short hike to a natural basin that supposedly served as a hideout for a 19th-century outlaw named Mouse. Not the fiercest nickname for a fugitive, but the hike was wonderful. A rain-firmed sand trail and petroglyphs everywhere!

The sun was sinking fast, so I drove on to the White Domes, hoping to see bighorn sheep in one of their usual hangout spots. No sheep, but the trail was fun, at least until it ended under a deep pool of water left over from the previous night’s rain. That was my turnaround point.

On the way back, I glimpsed another desert tortoise as it slipped into the brush alongside the road. The setting sun turned the valley into a glowing jewel. I stopped to take a photo and…there they were! Ten bighorn sheep delicately picking their way down a rock face, kicking a stone loose every now and then.

Desert bighorns are everywhere around here: painted on overpasses, silhouetted on warning signs, printed on interpretive signs and decals and postcards and t-shirts, sculpted from artistically rusting metal along the airport drive. Live ones are harder to find. Encroached out of their historic range, remaining bands stay far back in the desert mountains or find their way to aquifer-green golf courses, where they ingest chemicals along with the water and eventually weaken, becoming susceptible to disease. But there are about 60 sheep in Valley of Fire and more in the Lake Mead National Recreation Area. And here were ten of them.

The day had started with a bang, literally, and was ending on a grace note. Ellen Meloy wrote, “Desert bighorns may bring you to places where they live, but they may not show themselves to you. This does not matter. What matters is this: Look.” Seeing the sheep felt like a benediction. The bighorns disappeared into the stone and the shadows, and I drove back to the campground, eyeing the ominously beautiful storm clouds on the horizon.

A dark and stormy night

And right on cue, at 12:15am, BOOM – CRASH – BOOM. I lay awake, listening to thunder and squinching my eyes shut as bolt after lightning bolt flashed across the sky. According to the old “one, one thousand” timing method, the storm came within a mile of the campground. But on my tent platform and tucked in, I didn’t feel too afraid. Fatalistic, maybe, but not actively afraid. I drifted off after the main event, then woke for a shorter encore at around 4am. I fell asleep listening to the sound of water rushing down the canyon and around the tent platform.

The morning dawned grey and weirdly humid. A quick survey found that both my lighters and my waterproof matches had drowned in the storm. Rookie mistake, leaving them out by the camp stove. Luckily the guy in the next campsite was happy to light my camp stove, because, you know, coffee. I left the tent to dry out and went to finish more hikes.

First up, and a short walk from the campground, Atlatl Rock, named for the ancient spear-throwing implement depicted in petroglyphs on a boulder so large you have to climb stairs to see the art.

From there, on to Rainbow Vista, named for the many-hued sandstone visible along the trail and a “wow” overlook into Fire Canyon. But first I spent an hour on a rock shelf above the trailhead parking lot, watching two bighorn ewes hunkered down. Busload after busload after busload of tourists stopped, debarked, and crowded in for photos. The ewes weren’t fussed. One of them even tucked her head under her front leg for a snooze.

Riding the Fire Wave

The day was getting warm, and I needed to allow at least an hour to drive to Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area, where I wanted to find a campsite well before dark. But before I left, I wanted to hike the Fire Wave, perhaps the most iconic formation in Valley of Fire. Although the roadside trailhead doesn’t seem promising, following the trail down and around several rock formations led to the spectacular sandstone wave.

Hike complete, I reluctantly climbed into my car and headed out. My tent was completely dry when I returned to the campsite and I was ready to see what other natural wonders Nevada held in store.