Valley of Fire State Park - Nevada

On our way from Zion down towards Las Vegas, we stopped off in Valley of Fire State Park for a few nights. We had been to the park twice before; the first time passing through the park on our way up to Zion at the start of our RV trip in the spring of 2005, and the second time as a day trip up from Las Vegas in February 2007 with some high school classmates with whom we had gotten together in Las Vegas for a mini-reunion. On both occasions we were thrilled by the beauty of this small group of red rock hills clustered together in the midst of the Nevada dessert. Although our prior visits were short, we were hoping to extend our time in Valley of Fire by staying in the campsite there for two nights. Although most of the campsites in the park were too small for an RV the size of our Big Sky, one of the few sizable sights was still available and proved adequate in size to handle our Big Sky. There were no utility hookups available at the campsite, but we had showers available to us in the nearby bathrooms. As there was no electric hookup available, we used our generator for the first time to supplement the batteries in the RV. It proved sufficient to run the generator for an hour in the morning and hour in the evening to keep the RV batteries recharged and to provide 110 volt power for Jo’s coffee pot in the morning and for recharging our computers and camera battery. That gave us a good feeling to know that we could do dry camping or “boon docking” for a least short periods of time without needing RV hookups.

Just as Zion National Park had given us the feeling of being more intimate and personal than the Grand Canyon, Valley of Fire proved to be an even more intimate and personal experience than Zion NP. The red rock formations literally surrounded our small campsite and it was fun to simply go climbing over the red rocks, sitting on top of outcroppings and feeling one with these beautiful rock formations. It was also easy to feel that we were alone with the rock formations since there were so very few people in the campground and a five minute walk was sufficient to be all by ourselves among the rock formations. The feeling of being alone with nature extended into the evenings as we sat outside looking up at the stars which were spread out across the sky thanks to the lack of nearby city lights to obscure the stars. The Milky Way shown forth as a beautiful white belt of stars across the sky.

One of the highlights of our next day in Valley of Fire was the hike from the White Dome Trailhead. The park handbook had simply described this as a pretty landscape of contrasting red and white rock. Our modest expectations were greatly exceeded when the trail took us through many colorful layers of rock strata exposed in this area by water and erosion over the centuries. We also had a delightful walk when the trail took us through a very narrow slot canyon in a dry wash. It brought back memories both of our hike through the narrows in Zion Canyon as well as our hike through Grand Wash in Capitol Reef National Park. Perhaps due to the failure of the park brochure to adequately describe the beauty of this walk we had the delightful benefit of having the walk virtually to ourselves. That sense of being alone with nature added considerable enjoyment to this hike, and we pledged to try to make it back here again next year.