Oh the humanity. We’ve seen a bit of everything homo sapien.
We hiked for ages to ponder on petroglyphs dating back thousands of years, yet caught a young couple carving graffiti in a rock wall along the trail on our way back.
During another Valley of Fire outing, as we enjoyed a picnic, a couple of young women hiked over the DANGER sign to grab a better selfie along the cliff edge…
We’ve also gazed skyward as another young woman scurried like a mountain goat higher and higher while shouting to her rock-clinging, petrified friends, something like, “I was told I have an abnormal lack of fear of heights.”
We missed the rest of what she said out of the sheer terror we felt to hurry down the trail so as not to watch; here’s hoping she enjoyed the rest of her day off from Cirque du Soleil?
Even we lack immunity to the virus of stupidity. We shouldn’t have to be reminded that danger abounds in the desert.
Neither of us wore proper hiking shoes on our first trip. Hey come on it’s mostly flat, this desert, right?
Uh, no. Round sand granules coat the tops of rocks, and without proper treads, you can slip-n-slide faster than Shaun White in a half-pipe.
We will retell our fall story in the White Domes section.
But first, a few sections of our history with this magical place.
Tips on when and how to get to Valley of Fire
Between us, we’ve been to V of F at least a half dozen times from 2016-2019.
If you are considering a trip from Vegas, we advise heading east to see Lake Mead, then take the Lake Mead parkway North. The toll may be around $10 but comped to National Park pass holders.
Along the amazing desert vistas you can visit an oasis. (See also our post on stopping to picnic at Rogers Spring.) And just before you head into V of F, you can venture down a bumpy road to overlook the ghost of a town Lake Mead once submerged that since re-emerged because thirsty Vegas lowered the levels.
We first journeyed into Valley of Fire during Spring Break, and like beginners catching ace-king all night at blackjack, we lucked out thanks to some decent rains the day before.
The desert floor erupted with amazing color, and brightest bloomed the prickly pear:
Reminded us of our trip to the spectacular lodge at Mesa Verde, where we indulged in prickly pear margaritas. More on that National Park in another post some day.
The Elephant Rock, our first VoF hike and next tip: Hang a LEFT
Fortunately we experienced a cool spring day and could endure the lengthy hike to the Elephant Rock, at least 80% into the trail if you hang a RIGHT from the trailhead.
Take advantage of a break and enjoy a picnic 
Early point in the trail with a peek back toward mounts by Lake Mead. 
The loop trail winds around this formation. 
Globe mallow 
Some sort of sage or rosemary? 
Lots of shelter for wildlife. 
Possibly something like a morning glory taking its afternoon nap 
Looking back toward Lake Mead from the high point. 
Elephant eye 
Another one bites the lunch 
Felt like we hiked to Africa to finally see this thing.
We snapped a lot of pics of foliage when we arrived because we knew it was green, but it looked oddly blue after the fresh showers. Our eyes balked at the strange contrast of plant life against the reddish desert dirt.
The Elephant trail head parking area provides a self-pay station and doing so, you receive a pass to display.
Also, maps to the trails and displays about the trails:
More of the fun is getting there
Across the road, down from the Elephant, we checked out a trail of ruts still visible maybe from when Bugsy Segal first drove on to Vegas..
That early 1900s dirt superhighway known as Old Arrowhead road cuts through the park.
Next, we stopped at the Visitor Center and we recommend you stop there, too, when you go. We planned to do some serious exploring, so we bought a detailed trail map.
No matter what you think you are doing, what awaits you after the Visitor’s Center is wowza weird, and you won’t want to leave.
Therefore, you probably didn’t bring enough snacks and water, so stock up.
The Visitor’s Center also remains a good spot to return at dusk to look for goats or deer.
Valley of Fire traffic jam 
Digging dusk 
Bah 
AJ is taking a pic, hurry look the other way!
ASIDE RE SUPPLIES — If we enter the park from I-15, we stop by the highway at the Moapa Reservation truck stop. We find reasonable prices there for fresh-made sammys, ice, gatorades and trail mix.
Later, by the time we get our fill of exploring and snapping sunset glow on the rocks, it’s too dark to return on Lake Mead parkway. So, on the way back to Vegas we stop again at the truck stop and stock up on great priced beer from the excellent selection of crafties.
NOTE if you are one of those who couldn’t live without a slot for a day, you could drop in and try your luck at reservation style gambling.)
We drove all the roads to get the lay of the land on our first trip to Valley of Fire. One side trip offers the strange landscape of silica dunes.
River of Fire
Determined to finish the White Domes hike, we made a second trip to V of F. No can do, the ranger at the Visitor’s Center said. Road closed for upgrade. Instead he recommended we hike to the River of Fire.
River of Fire = excellent.
Which isn’t a river, but a layered rock floe that looks like a mile long thin smear of fudgy swirl ice cream.
Hey, this could have happened if my Aunt the baker would have iced between 50 layers of her top secret recipe Red Velvet Cake.
The trek to the river part took quite a while, and we found lots to photograph along the way out and back.
Desert tobacco 
Possibly a type of gecko 
Never thought I’d say, this poor rock needs a nose job. 
Barrel cactus. 
Barrel cactus 
Sometimes we see barrel tops referred to as pina 
I’m over here, Bill. 
We take our photos with a Hasselblad lens on our Motorola cell phones. 
Cholla 
Life finds a way despite harsh conditions 
Long way to go still 
Happy trails ahead 
River of fire, that rocky belt in the distance 
The hike continues this way… 
Must be some water near the rock river 
The Hasselblad cell phone lens in action 
Bill likes to look for fossils on rocks, and we wonder, how did this rock get here? 
This rock pic brought to you by Bill 
Approaching the river 
Oddities abound at V of F 
Not much blooming here in Mid June 
This couple passed us and continued beyond what we called river’s end 
Closer look at a layer 
Hey it’s a desert. You weren’t expecting this river to have water… 
‘River’ toward its ‘source’ 
Scale: deep drop off beyond but hikers find a way down and continue 
Domes toward the end of the ‘River’ 
Looking down into the drop off, where the waterfall would go if it wasn’t a river of rock 
Nearly every view in V of F seems different 
Change time of day, rock changes color 
Almost back to car park, sun much lower now.
We recommend a half day minimum for the River of Fire trail. Plus plenty of water and snacks. The day we hiked it, temps were merely high 80s when we began, but certainly crept into the low 90s by the time we returned. The young people who passed us (in the photos) continued beyond the domes at the end of the River, and they obviously had the gear to stay awhile.
If you deal with a lesser ability to withstand heat, plan your visit for cool seasons.
Although we hate most out and back trails, this one rates tops for just right length, decent altitudes and not too many overly sandy stretches.
Rainbow trail fail
Some desert trails present a challenge for people with a partial meniscus tear. AJ can’t hike in sand. So, we went out and returned too fast to tell you much about this hike.
trailhead 
desert trumpet 
For this post that contains a zillion pics, we experimented with some WordPress gallery tools. As you might imagine, a post of this magnitude occupies some huge chunks of time.
On some photos, if you click to blow them up, you may see them larger, but with the file name and description text (that’s text for search engines). The captions do not appear. We are working on fixing this flaw, soon.
There are some things that you can do as a website user to see our photos better if they do not do what you want.
On a standard desktop, right click and choose to open the image in its own window. We downsized these for speed of loading with a standard width of 1500. If what you see is not detailed enough, contact us for originals, which were shot at greater sizes and resolutions.
Another nifty trick for blowing up web pages, in general, is the keyboard shortcut command or control plus the plus symbol. CMD — (command minus) shrinks.
No mice but lots of petroglyphs are the pay off for the Mouse Tank hike
We love trying to crack the code for the messages left by native peoples long ago.
Photoshop works wonders to see these old worn glyphs.
Here are a few more that up the contrast and remove the color:
The mouse tank trail charms with or without petroglyphs.
We love to name the variety of rock formations, as if we were the discovers.
If you have some inspirational rock captions for these, let us know in the comments. If we like yours, we’ll replace ours.
And in case you wonder what happened to our citizens arrest of the modern rock carvers,
We took photos of the graffiti… and kept pace with the hikers. When we arrived to the parking area shortly after them, we inconspicuously snapped photos of their plate.
When we got cell reception closer to the park exit, we called a hotline and were told to visit the ranger in the residence area.
We told him what happened, and he asked us to send the photos of the license plate of the car and the marred rock.
Likely it was a tourist rental car.
The ranger did say if the perpetrators could be traced from the plate, they might have to pay a fine.
We hope the rocks got their day in court, but we never heard any more…
The end of the inner park road and our longest hike ever: White Domes
When Bill slipped during our first visit, he broke his fall on a razor sharp rock. The cut was so deep, he could have lost his thumb.
That ended our sunset hike, just as we began the descent into White Domes.
First time we arrived at White Domes trailhead near sunset 
Memory flips, but we think this is view from White Domes parking 
Breathtaking in many ways, so stop and catch the breath and snap the views 
We wondered when we might reach the bottom 
After Bill cut his hand, a nurse helped him bind the wound in the parking lot.
Fortunately a woman spotted the blood and our panic as we returned to the parking lot. She approached and said, “I am a nurse and I have lots of kids. I am prepared. Let me help.”
She had first aid kits in her SUV. She disinfected and bandaged him, and maybe he should have gone for stitches but somehow it healed.
We swore after that we would:
- keep at least one first aid kit in the vehicle at all times
- carry a lighter first aid kit in our hiking pack
- spare no expense on comfortable, waterproof hiking shoes with good treads
- purchase sturdy hiking poles
We think if you plan to hike around the desert, you should prepare, too.
The next year we returned with all the above gear to finish our White Domes trek, only to learn White Domes road was closed.
White Domes might be our record for longest hike, as it spanned about three years from start to finish. Here’s what we saw from end of the descent on around the loop back to the lot.
We called this shady conch. 
Danger lurks after heavy rains in a lot of desert slot canyons 
This time, Bill did not fall. Whew! 
Almost out 
Colors pop in late afternoon light. 
Some yin and yang along White Domes loop 
After emerging from the slot canyon. 
Human curiosity 
The loop will take a right soon and return to the lot.
You could also call Atlatl rock an atlatlas
You might enter the Valley and begin with the Atlatl loop drive or like us, wait til the golden hour.
Then we top off our trips to V of F with a climb up the 70 or 80 stairs up to the platform of Atlatl rock.
Over time the rock steps carved by native peoples’ feet wore away, so modern humans built a structure we could nickname, Valley of Fire Escape.
The petroglyphs here make a lot of sense. Native peoples launched spears or darts at prey with atlatls.
Follow this atlatlas. There’s a ladder. Climb the rock and follow the trail til you find a reserve of water. Use your atlatl to kill a goat. Build a fire, eat it.
Yay.
Catch the buzz by the beehives
Lots of activity here. These rocks climb so easy us grandparents can grab a panorama.
Is it just us, or do the beehives all seem a bit like like poop emojees plopped at random onto the desert? Blow up the top left image and tell us in the comments if you agree.
Saving the best for last? Stay for sunsets in Valley of Fire
Valley of Fire offers camping, too. Although we left RVoyager at the resort in Vegas in 2019, we might have to try V of F for some star gazing soon.
For our Day in the Life section we will write about what happened while visiting Valley of Fire with our poker buddy Dave in 2019. The tale begins something like, “On the most gorgeous of clear, blue-sky days, a dust devil leapt out of nowhere and attacked RVoyager…”
Valley of Fire State Park
Overton, Nevada
And if our photos aren’t enough to convince you to visit, you must look at the professional images at the official site:
RVoyager 
This is so much fun to explore; I almost feel like I am there with you, but alas, I’m home in Brooklyn with my A/C going. I want to know more of the temps and hours and season details. I know that deserts get mighty hot mighty early, so how do you handle those long walks in the powerful temps? Lots of water, I imagine (but that can be heavy), and I like your list of must-haves. So happy Bill got the help from the nurse, but yes, you need to be able to handle those emergencies yourselves! I know you can now! Great photos! Great commentary!
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Really enjoyed this post and all the great photos–looks like you’re definitely getting your money’s worth out of the lens attachment for the phone! One of these day (you know, when it’s cool in the desert…, I’ll hope to visit Valley of Fire.
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