Valley of Fire, NV

One of the places outside of Las Vegas that I wanted to see was Valley of Fire. It was a short drive and sounded intriguing.

I did not expect it to be so big and beautiful!

This was the location for some of the Mars shots in the movie, Total Recall, and also Capt. Kirk's death scene in Star Trek Generations.

It's 42,000 acres of color, desert, neat rock formations, hiking and about 17 miles worth of driving trails.

It's so hard to select pictures that will do it justice and not bore you with "another rock photo."

But darn, it was one of my favorite places to see!

I thought we'd just drive out there, have a look around, grab some lunch on the way back -- all in the space of about 3 hours.

So if you ever go, allow yourself an entire day to really soak in the beauty. I would love to see this at sunset.

Chemtrails, if you believe in that sort of thing, between two rock formations.

My husband climbed halfway up this one below. He said there was absolute silence. He just sat there for the longest time enjoying it.

 

Right there in the center - my footprints among dozens of others who visited that day.

We saw pictures of this Arch Rock in various publications, postcards, etc. I was expecting something humongous! Just a little disappointed.

If you ever visit Nevada, you've got to make a day trip of VoF!

Red Rock Canyon

Red Rock Canyon is just a few miles outside of the Vegas suburbs. At first sight, it's a breathtaking contrast to The Strip!

The natural beauty was so unexpected. I thought Nevada was Vegas, Reno and flat desert everywhere else. If I learned anything different in geography class, that was so long ago, I'd forgotten.

 When my family moved there, they started texting me pictures of their mountain view and fantastic sunsets. I was so looking forward to seeing the sunsets, but we were there in winter. And yes - there is a winter season!

It's not really cold & snow, but it's chilly and can be windy. The sun goes down early and is not as spectacular.

You might be thinking, "There's a rock. There's another rock. Boring post!" so I'll throw in an artsy shot here & there.

This is a hiker's kind of place, but I'm not venturing more than a few feet away from the road. Because. Desert creatures.

There's all kinds of geological information about how these formations came about and why they're different colors, but you can look that up on your own if interested.

Below you can see people walking all over. Look closely in other pictures and you'll notice people climbing all over the place. I mean, All. Over.

I was actually standing at the pull-out observation spot & looking down on the group above. Don't want to mislead you into thinking I climbed high for this shot :) Along with desert creatures, I avoid uphill hikes as much as possible. I learned that lesson in TN photographing waterfalls!

There was a very nice education center with some interesting sculpture.

Not rock formations. Just something at the education center I thought made an interesting composition.

And that concludes my little tour of Red Rock Canyon, NV.

Next up, Valley of Fire.

Holiday Pix - part 3

If you're not bored, here's my last grouping of phone pix from Las Vegas. The next set will be outside the city. This is the view about mid-morning on Christmas Day from the walking bridge over Las Vegas Blvd.

The MGM lion.

Window displays at an art gallery next to our hotel.

The "Eiffel Tower" outside the Paris hotel.

The fountains of Bellagio. In the evening they were set to O Holy Night. It was powerful!

Biker Santa on a little shopping mall outside Bally's.

The Greek mythology show inside Caesar's Palace. It's the same one we saw 12 years ago. You'd think they would upgrade the animatronics by now, but it's still fun to see. The Cheesecake Factory is in the background. We discovered it here all those years ago. We had no idea what it was, but soon found out it was ah-mazing! We were so excited when they finally built one here, and now we hardly ever go (kinda expensive).

A night view of Rio from our hotel window.

An upshot of the tram. There are 2 different free trams. One runs between Bellagio & Aria. Another runs between Excalibur & Mandalay Bay. There's also a monorail on the other side of the street. It has a fee & I'm not sure of the route. But here's a hint: by the time you trek all thru the hotels to get on the tram, you could've just walked to your destination.

The Hershey's store. Lotsa chocolate here :)

It's not Drogon (GoT) but I had to take a pic.

Fun seeing The Blue Man Group!

Above & below - inside the Luxor where we caught Criss Angel's show. They have a mannequin of him depicting his levitation trick over Luxor.

This sounds gross, but I caught one of the paper wads Criss was spit/blowing out to the audience. If it had a special mark on it, you would get to assist in one of the illusions. If you've ever seen a certain episode of the Big Bang Theory, you would get why I saved this. But never mind... there was another great moment where he disappeared onstage & appeared on the chair in front of me. Such a fun night!

A wide shot of New York New York. Roller Coaster in the foreground. The coaster starts inside NYNY and circles all around. It was cold, but people were still riding it!

The next three are from a park between hotels. So pretty!

The next two stores are pretty evident.

A view of MGM's casino.

This was just half of the Strip. We didn't have time (and honestly, I didn't have the energy) to explore the other half. We'll just save that for the next time we visit family (and catch Lady Gaga's new show!)

Pretty Excalibur at night. The funny thing LV is, everything looks close and you think "oh, we can just walk over there." Not so. What looks like one block is really several miles. Remember you're in the desert. It's all a mirage.

And finally, resting our tired feet at a good, old fashioned movie. We took the family to see Star Wars one evening.

Certainly not your typical Christmas vacation, but we aren't your typical family :):)
Next up -- Red Rock Canyon.