Week in the Desert, part 5

Where were we? Ah, yes. Halloween afternoon. I was wearing the socks with the glow-in-the-dark "BOO!" printed all over them. We had seen the Liberace Museum, picked up my brother-in-law, and headed for

The Valley of Fire.

It's a bit of a drive up the interstate from Las Vegas... but Interstate HWY 15 is smooth and clear, once you leave Las Vegas city limits, and it's really only about an hour, at most -- less than a third, I think, of the journey required to reach Zion National Park (we didn't have the time for that, this trip).

Basically, from North Las Vegas to Nellis AFB, I15 was relatively clear, and then beyond that, cars were few and far between. It was early afternoon, so we were heading out after the noon rush and before the big evening rush hour(s). The desert scenery looks pretty soft,

click any image for larger view

but even there, it's unforgiving (and they'll tell you so, in the tv shows set in Lost Wages). And the geologic uplift appears fairly gentle and orderly, until

you head eastward-ish, on the Valley of Fire Highway, past those rolling, gently erose hills and tumble into the sharp-and-pointyland which marks the edge of Valley of Fire State Park.

The VoF Highway was freshly paved and so smooth I think even grocery carts wouldn't shimmy on it. It was the only smooth thing for miles.

The brush is prickly, the sand is rocky, and the hills... well, the hills are

crisp, to say the least.

As we approached the park, we passed at least six stretch limousines and one standard limo, all exiting the park. We asked later at the park's visitor center what the story was, and the woman at the counter said "Halloween Wedding." I'm thinking it was an awesome place to hold a party, but by the look of things, these folks had more money than sense. Nonetheless, they (and we) weren't the only people coming through the park that afternoon. I had to wait a long, long time to get pictures of some of these places without a couple of cars smack dab in the center of the scenic vistas... In particular, the Beehives had one jack.... um... oblivious soul park right next to the biggest outcropping take a few pictures, and then stand outside his car talking first to somebody on his cell phone, and then with somebody in a car which stopped on the highway directly in front of him.

These stones, "the Beehives," stand between one and two stories high. I didn't get a chance at the bigger ones, though (see above).

Still near the Beehives, just looking south-ish.

Same general vicinity.

We went from there to Atlatl Rock, where my camera batteries quit working. So I depend upon my seester's camera for evidence that I thumbed my nose at (a) my fear of heights and (b) my fear of pain coming down stairs, and climbed the steps to the observation platform. I'm thinking it was about 50-60 feet up (in the range of 15-18 m.). My imagination may have altered dimensions, but I don't think too substantially.

One [expletive deleted] strode right past the "PLEASE DO NOT CLIMB" sign and went up the rock face to where the petroglyphs were, and then had to climb the fence to get onto the platform where his wife and tween-aged daughter waited for him. Lovely addition to the erosion of the site and its artifacts... Guess what? He spoke French.

Anyway, another couple of people showed up, obeyed the rules regarding stair usage, and even very kindly took a picture of my seester and me at the landing, midpoint on my climb back down, while I was resting my [insert swear-word here] knee.

From Atlatl Rock, it was off to the Visitor Center, so I could buy batteries and... post cards.

Outside the center, the desert was in bloom:

We took advantage of the clean facilities (wondering why they didn't have those water-saving commodes) then left the center, headed down to Seven Sisters. Here are two of them, with one seester.

one seester in the shadow of a Sister...

And the Sister which cast that shadow on the seester.

Soon after, exhaustion set in. Heck, we'd been on our feet since 6 a.m. local time, and it was fast approaching 5 p.m., with only a light lunch. So we headed in the direction of

Lake Mead Drive (or is it Road -- or Boulevard?)

and then back down to the city of sin, for supper around Fremont Street, in time to catch the Experience, complete with VIVA VISION (they spell it with all caps). I bought myself some postcards (surprise!) and a tacky little glitter-globe magnet for Mom, since she collects magnets.

We didn't misbehave too badly during the show or at the "Lucky 7" $7.77 buffet in whichever casino/hotel we wandered into (by then I was too tired to tell one casino from the next). But I did have some soft-serve frozen dairy product, in a cone, for dessert, with insufficient lactase tablets to counter its effects. Don't tell anybody. I only regretted it a little, in the wee hours.

We got back to our rooms in Primm around 10 p.m. local time. We had to be up and moving the next morning by 5:30, for more steak-and-eggs breakfast and more car stuff, at NACE.