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Sandstone

The girls and I left California, crossing Death Valley and drove through Las Vegas (worst part of the trip for me) to get to Valley of Fire State Park. It’s a beautiful park with just 72 campsites and some good hiking trails through various rock formations, some with interesting petroglyphs. Because it is close to Vegas, it has LOTS of day use. LOTS. I was fortunate to get a nice campsite and stayed two nights. It’s not a great place to take dogs with no surface water at all. The temperature was pleasant enough for me in the mid 70’s but the dogs were not very happy. I think it’s the only place we went over three weeks that did not have some water to entertain the dogs. The flowers were very pretty, particularly the evening primroses and beavertail cactus. And the sandstone layers were wonderful.

Granite in Black and White

A few more images from the eastern Sierras.

Alone, Under the Stars

There’s nothing like the feeling of being out looking up at the stars, especially in a dark sky place. The first photo is from the campground but for the rest I drove out away from most people. The yellow glow is most likely the bright lights of Las Vegas.

Evening and Morning Light

The light at the ends of the day is the very best. A person needs to walk at dusk and get up before the sun rises. We walked every evening amidst the rock formations and Mary and I got up at 4:30 am twice to capture sunrise on the snow-capped Sierras including Mt Whitney. It was magical. Except for that morning when the wind howled and we could not feel our fingers before the sun finally arrived! Still, the scenes before us were breathtaking.

Dogs on Granite

I was concerned that the rough rock and granite sand would be hard on the dogs’ feet but none of them had any trouble with it. And none of them had any run-ins with cactus needles! Willow and Juniper were fairly unseparable. Except when Willow found a ball and was not going to share it with anyone. She had great fun with it that evening and insisted on taking it in the car. We made one attempt at getting a four dog snapshot but it was not to be. Sky is the only that understands the concept of sitting for the camera. Willow will hold for a couple seconds but that’s it.