This past February when I was visiting my son in Las Vegas, we went for a drive in the desert one afternoon. We drove for the better part of an hour through a monochromatic landscape. At one point, he pointed to a distant spot that appeared to be a dark red or brown and said that was where we were headed. We turned off the main highway and twisted and turned through a landscape of desert and low hills before suddenly coming around a bend that brought us face to face with massive amounts of deep red rock in a myriad of shapes and sizes.
WOW! No other word is adequate to describe the piles, stacks, cliffs and beehives all in a luminous shade of red.
A small mountain of the red sandstone.
The Valley of Fire is Nevada’s oldest state park. Its use by nomadic tribes dates back to about 300 B.C. Because of the lack of water sources, their visits were probably fairly brief. The red rocks are a form of sandstone.
This picture shows the contrast between the muted landscape and the startling sandstone formations.
This picture shows the results of ages of erosion.
These green plants testify to the persistent efforts of life to grow in arid, eroded locations like this cliff side.
We got a late start so our visit was all too brief but the Valley of Fire is at the top of my places to revisit the next time I am in the Las Vegas area.
Following are more of the pictures I took at the time. Enjoy.
Sandstone formation.
Sign explaining the beehive formations.
A beehive formation. One of these would be impressive but there lots of them.
