St. George to ...

… Las Vegas.

Sadly our time with Sheryl, T and Bunker has to end.  But since there was no real big rush to get back to Vegas we enjoyed each other’s company just a little longer.  We left before 10:30 am so they could get on with their day.  But before we left I got a picture of my Elvis Squirrel with Sheryl’s squirrel sculpture … middle left photo.

On our way back to Vegas we stopped at Valley of Fire state park as it’s right on the way.  Of course, driving through the park did add to our travel time but like I said above there was no rush to get back.

Valley of Fire state park was gorgeous but I do remember some of it from a previous visit.  I’ve searched Blipfoto to see if I’ve posted anything from here in the past but it appears it’s been more than ten years since we have visited the area. 

We had stopped at a deli before entering the state park to pick up lunch so our first order of business was finding a picnic area.  We spotted one shortly after entering the park and pulled in to have lunch.  The picnic table was blessedly in the shadow of a huge rock so it was a cooler place to eat our lunch. As we were eating I noticed something that looked like graffiti on the rocks nearby.  That annoyed me to no end but as I went to investigate I could see it was actually some ancient petroglyphs … top left photo!  How cool!

We continued driving through the park stopping at several locations along the way … as any good blippers would do! We saw lots of neat things including some bighorn sheep (lower left) and several lizards (large lower right photo).  We took a side road off the main road to see the natural arch in the topo right photo.  When I saw it it reminded me of the Crazy Horse Monument being sculpted in South Dakota … which we saw back in 1984!! And that Sheryl and T recently visited - see extra!!

The time finally came that we said we should head back into Las Vegas so we waved farewell to Valley of Fire state park.  We got back to our condo around 3:30 pm and relaxed a bit before heading out to supper. 

After supper we drove out to Red Rock Canyon again in the hopes of being able to drive through the park this time … unlike last Saturday.  Luck was on our side and they let us in!  The Scenic Loop Drive is 12 miles and meanders through the park.  It was late in the day when we were there so some the places were in shadows but it was still very lovely. As you can imagine we stopped several times along the way. For that average person it would normally take about 30 minutes to drive but we were there for an hour!

We were back at the condo by 7:00 pm where we set about packing up all our stuff in anticipation of our flight home tomorrow.  I can rant about what United had us go through to secure seats together even though I originally booked them together but I’ll leave that alone for now.

Home tomorrow …