Leaving Las Vegas Part 1

We did a great job at sparing you all a night of not reading the drab garbage that Greg writes, but your luck has run out suckers. I'm back and ready to spin some yarn.

Yesterday morning started pretty rough, because it started at midnight. It actually never stopped from the previous night, but that was yesterday. The asshats in the residence above us were having a good time. It felt like they may be running a graveyard crossfit gym that included tire flipping and stairs. They were on the 3rd floor so in all honesty they were exercising their best attributes if this was the case. They had 3 flights of external stairs to their floors but unfortunately for us it sounded like someone playing the bongos at our window all night long. We didn't get much sleep and made note that we WILL NOT book another home in a multistory complex. Start to our rough day!

Later that morning, we grabbed breakfast at Squeeze In, a local breakfast place. Krystal and I have a thing about trying out bloody marys as I wrote about before. These were just ok. Nothing too exciting, a good comparison would be the bloody marys at Elmers back home, but with less good stuff (pepperoncinis, cheese, or asparagus). We ate up and headed to Valley of Fire.

I ca Valley of Fire was established as a state park in 1935 and its name was conceived by an article written prior to this by a traveler associated with the AAA Auto Club that was passing through. Not only does it have a significant amount of ancient history, geological and cultural, but it also has a lot of recent film history. In the valley you will find wind carved canyons with petroglyphs from ancient inhabitants. The rocks themselves are remnants of the Jurassic Period and formed from a red sandstone giving the park its name and appearance. It was fun to think about who it was carving the images of goats, deer, and stick figures. Why were they carving them. Were they teenagers told to go out and forage or perhaps search for goats? I thought it was interesting that all the drawings were gender neutral. Not one of those stick figures was drawn one way or the other, maybe these were drawn by younger kids, preteen... who knows. I can tell you I saw a couple of these mountain goats waiting to pay my 10 bucks admission and I they were such good looking animals I might actually have one carved into my steering wheel horn pad right now. There is an estimated 10k of these goats in existence in Nevada, and I got to see 2 of them, who wouldn't. By comparison there are 500k-600k black tail deer in Oregon and I only see these on I5, so pretty fortunate sight on our part.

Much of the development in the park was done by the Civilian Conservation Corps. There are 3 cabins still preserved that were built by them along with all the original hiking trails. This is a program I think of often. Many will say this is a form of communism. Though I didn't work for the conservation corps I have family that did towards the end of the program and I am still a strong supporter of a program like this that provides an opportunity for people to learn job skills and for some to learn leadership skills. I'm thankful for the work they did prior to the dissolution of the CCC.

The film history I mentioned earlier can be seen in the film Viva Las Vegas with Elvis Presley as well as the scenes in Total Recall where Arnold Schwarzenegger is on the Planet Mars. There was also some filming done for a Star Trek Generations episode as well where it was called "Veridian III". It really felt like another planet at times and I would recommend a visit if you are ever in the area. Valley of Fire is about an hour of of Vegas, 30 minutes of that is on the Highway with the other 30 being on narrow 2 lane roads with speed limits of 35 and 45mph most the way.

Since we would be traveling to Phoenix the following day we came home after a few hours at the park, packed some stuff up and spent a little time in front of the TV. The folks upstairs must have been taking a rest day because we got a full nights rest and packed up the car the next morning destined for Phoenix.