Day 2 - Las Vegas to Zion National Park

Saturday, May 5, 2018

Weather: 105 degrees in Lake Mead at 2:00 p.m. and 95 degrees in Valley of Fire

Steps: Shaun: 15,848 (we think Shaun’s Fitbit had trouble adjusting time zones), Shannon: 10,655

Shaun woke up too early at 6:30 a.m. (which, in her defense, was 9:30 in Detroit, which she NEVER sleeps to). We reconnoitered the luggage, ate at a breakfast place called Griddlecakes (which was very nice) and then stopped at Target for supplies. $400 later, we got ice and started on our way, but soon had to stop again because Shaun spilled her root beer all over herself and the car. When she stopped, two of the cans of Fresca fell out of the car, ruptured, and proceeded to spew soda all over the parking lot, so she was not having good luck with the pop. We found a lonely patch of shade under a tiny little tree where something had died nearby (which we knew because we could smell it!) and proceeded to completely rearrange the car and our Target haul. It was quite a feat of engineering to get everything in the car so that the mirrors were clear, but we were up to the challenge.

Our first stop was Lake Mead where we used our America the Beautiful pass for the first time, even though we had purchased it in July last year. The ranger at the entry station laughed at us and walked us through the process we would use for the rest of the trip (which was to hand over Shaun’s license and the pass each time we entered anything national). Shannon had also purchased a Utah State Park pass, and we made mad use of both of them. We definitely saved money on the national side, and we probably just broke even on the state side, but it was much less hassle to use the pass, for sure!




We stopped at a place called Red Rocks and saw our first geological formations and got a taste of how very hot it was. Luckily, we were smart enough to put on our sunscreen and hats at this point, because the day continued to be sunny and blazing, with temperatures in the low 100s.

We also stopped at Echo Bay, which was upstream of Lake Mead in the Overton Arm. We didn’t drive all the way down to the bay, but we got some cool pictures of the water just the same.

Our first real stop was at the Valley of Fire State Park (which was recommended to us by Alex Struble—thanks, Alex!), and it was indeed a great way to start the trip. We ended up having to bypass Elephant Rock because some crazy tourists had stopped in the middle of the road to take pictures of it and blocked it for everyone else. Oh well, that won’t be the last crazy tourist we experience, so we just drove on to the Visitor’s Center, which was very cleverly built in such a way that it blended in with the environment.

Despite the fact that the place was closing, we had time to check out some short trails in the back where we saw our first critters: Shannon saw a kangaroo rat and Shaun saw a bunch of weird birds with a curvy thing coming out of their heads. We figured out it was a Gambel quail because we heard a very weird noise that we thought was a mammal-type creature, but we used our brand new Audubon app to check out pictures and listen to the Gambel quail’s different sounds, and discovered one of them was our mystery non-mammal chirp!

               

We also got to see a rock display that gave us our first real education on the rocks we were going to see, and we got to touch them and everything. They had stuffed animals (yuck), but we got to see a big horned sheep and a kit fox (which was really little...about the size of a cat). There was a tarantula and a couple kinds of snakes on display as well (live ones, not stuffed), and also a blooming prickly pear cactus (which we would see over and over again on the trip in various states of bloomage).

Once we arrived in the Valley of Fire proper, we drove up White Dome Road and hiked our first time at a place called the Mousetrap. We saw a ton of petroglyphs along the way and a hummingbird flitting among the flowers. Shaun was stupid because she decided not to change out of her sandals, and the sand really rubbed her feet raw along the 1.5-mile trail. There were apparently a couple of pools of water at the end of the trail (the mousetraps), but we opted not to climb into the slot canyon and traverse a rock wall to see them. I know...we’re lame, but it was our first hike, so we had to work our way up to that.

Next we drove to Rainbow Vista where Shaun changed shoes and we tried out our trekking poles. They were actually really cool since we felt more stable walking with them, but they gave our arms much more of a workout than they would normally get. They’ll definitely take some getting used to, but we think we like them.

As a special added bonus bingo, there was a wedding being held right at the pull-out for Rainbow Vista, just beyond the parking lot. It was really cool to watch, but a little weird for a couple of reasons: first, because the bride just let her dress drag through the red dirt, and second, because the wedding party made a nuisance of themselves by standing behind all the cars and wouldn’t move out of the way. It was a little weird, what can I say? The Vista was really colorful with a ton of purple places, so Shaun loved it.

We drove to the end of the road where the White Domes were, and then we turned around and headed out so that we could make it somewhere for dinner.




We ended up in a town called Mesquite where we stopped for Thai (a portent of many similar meals to come) at 8:15. This meant we didn’t make it to the Novel House Inn outside Zion National Park until after midnight since we lost an hour going from Nevada to Utah. We had to schlepp our luggage upstairs since the inn was very pretty but had no elevator, and we had to do it really quietly to boot, so it was quite a challenge. The room was called The Brontë Room after Charlotte Brontë, who wrote Jane Eyre, Shannon’s favorite book, and it reflected the decorations of the era in which the book was set. It was really pretty, and we slept like babies until 8:30 the next morning.