Valley of Fire

Leaving Lake Havasu, we spent a few days in Las Vegas to clean up, get some chores done and (unexpectedly) replace the brakes on the truck.  On the good side, we visited with my neice and some of her kids and THEIR kids.  Very nice to catch up after a long time.

So we were finally headed to Utah, where we planned to spend nearly two months visiting all the national parks, many state parks and more family.  After living nearly our whole lives in California and visiting Utah several times for family visits, we had never been to Zion, Bryce Canyon or any of the iconic Utah parks.  That is about to change!

One stop we planned before Utah was Valley of Fire state park outside of Vegas.  Highly recommended by people we met in Death Valley, it seemed like a great resting point to keep us under the LeBlanc 200-mile daily driving limit.  What a great idea that turned out to be!

Nevada's first and largest state park, Valley of Fire is like a little piece of Utah in Nevada.  It is still a relatively little-known spot compared to the national parks like Zion and Bryce and it certainly doesn't match their scenery, but for a small park, it has an amazing array of rock formations and absolutely incredible colors.  The pictures don't really do it justice.  We spent nearly a week camping here and had a great time hiking and bouldering. If you ever find yourself in Las Vegas with a day to kill, drive out to Valley of Fire. You can take much of it in in a day with short hikes to many beautiful places. I can't post all the pics here, so if you like what you see below, check out the complete album on Google+ : https://plus.google.com/photos/102201298868233959049/albums/6132408606745626225