On Sunday, I packed up the bikini and beach towel and boarded a plane back to Las Vegas. With my base tan established, I was prepared for more desert sunshine!

My car had been relaxing at the airport for about six weeks, and I was starting to feel like that was my big Vegas gamble. As the parking lot shuttle rounded the corner, I saw her there smiling at me. What a relief! I assessed the exterior: no flat tires, no broken windows, and no new dings, dents, or scrapes. In the final test, I turned the ignition. Voila! I was on the road again.

Since my time in Vegas had been pretty brief (and I wasn't sure that my car would be ready to roll on down the road), I booked a few days at an Airbnb on the outskirts of town. My plan was to see some of the natural beauty surrounding this land of slot machines, roulette wheels, and poker tables.

Monday, I took a short drive west to Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area. The park was full of people enjoying a gorgeous, sunny, mid-70's spring day. I drove the scenic loop, stopping at most points of interest to take some short hikes, snap photos, and drink in the beautiful landscape. I was afraid I had missed spring in the desert, but there was still a pretty abundant sprinkling of flowers to be seen.

Following my tour of Red Rock, I spent some time on a more typical Vegas activity - shopping. My hiking shoes were ready for retirement, and probably had been for quite some time. After a few tries, I was happy to be able to locate the same type of shoe (Ahnu Sugarpine Air Mesh), which had worked really well for me for the better part of a year. I guess I'm not very "adventurous" in my wardrobe choices! :-)

Yesterday, my trek was a little more extensive. I drove about an hour through sparse desert terrain to the Valley of Fire, a Nevada State Park. I had seen a lot of photos of this park, especially its "Fire Wave," and it did not disappoint. It is home to some really unique formations, intensely red rocks, petroglyphs, canyons, and petrified logs. I drove most of the park roads and stopped at many of the scenic points. Hiking the Fire Wave trail, I saw more lovely desert flowers and made the acquaintance of a few chuckwalla lizards.

Leaving the park's east entrance, I wound my way through Lake Mead National Recreation Area. After about an hour of the area's varied desert vistas and distant glimpses of the lake, I caught up with the throngs of tourists who were headed with me to see Hoover Dam.

I can't say that visiting Hoover Dam was anywhere near the top of my list of places I want to see, but it was actually pretty interesting and picturesque. I am definitely a fan of Art Deco architecture, and it's a fantastic example of this style. The Lake Mead side of the dam was pretty surreal looking, with its blue water, art deco towers, and the waterline on the surrounding cliffs. I'm glad I stopped and braved the crowds!

Today, I am doing some work, catching up on things (like this blog!), and painting. I wanted to take it relatively easy since I have a long drive ahead of me tomorrow, when I head south to Phoenix, Arizona, my home for the next two weeks. Stay tuned for more reporting from the Valley of the Sun!

Desert globemallow and indigo bush blooming at Valley of Fire State Park

Following a night of enthusiastic storms, I headed east from Twentynine Palms, California. I decided to take the shortest route to my destination, which sent me through Mojave National Preserve and Mojave Trails National Monument. While this was a beautiful and intriguing landscape, it was also quite soggy from the rains of the previous hours. There were a few close calls, but I luckily made it to my destination of Las Vegas without encountering any roads that were completely washed out and impassable.

I'd never been to Las Vegas before, and wasn't entirely sure what to expect. My first thought was that it was actually a lot smaller than I had envisioned. Other than that, it pretty much lived up to my expectations... gambling, over-the-top glitz, shows, weird people, and lots of intoxicated partiers who could barely walk - including one who had literally passed out on the sidewalk. His friends were pretty concerned. I don't think I have a lot in common with the people for whom this is a dream destination, but it was fun to experience it for a day. I do love people watching.

The streets were pretty empty when I rolled out of town around 7 a.m., wild and crazy party animal that I am. The clouds were beginning to drift away, making for a dramatic and beautiful scene as my car passed through Red Rock Canyon and headed west again.

In about an hour, I was in Pahrump, Nevada, my home for the next week. I hadn't researched much about Pahrump ahead of time, only that it was the closest locale of any size at all to Death Valley National Park. I came to learn that Michael Jackson had once owned an estate here, it is home to the Chicken Ranch and some other (yes, legal) brothels, you can do some hardcore firearms training at Front Sight Training Institute, and famed madam Heidi Fleiss was once proprietor of a laundromat in the town called "Dirty Laundry." I can't say that any of that got me really excited. :-)

Salt in Badwater Basin, which was underwater during my visit

I was pretty pumped up about seeing Death Valley, though. After itching to visit this expansive national park for years, I was finally going to experience it. I had also achieved my goal of visiting during the wintertime, as a summer visit to the hottest, driest, and lowest place in North America can be worse than inhospitable. Back in July of 1913, the temperature reached a whopping 134 degrees there.

Death Valley has apparently been growing slightly wetter over the past few years, and they had received nearly half their total average yearly precipitation a couple days before my visit. This meant that the landscape was different than it would likely look in warm and toasty July. The lowest lying areas of the park were home to shallow bodies of water, not dry, cracked salt flats. Salt Creek, home to the rare desert pupfish, was flowing instead of being reduced to a few life-filled puddles. And there was certainly plenty of salty mud to adorn my hiking shoes as a souvenir of my visit.

One my surprises at Death Valley was the variety of scenery that exists there - flat, salty, lifeless expanses; beautiful multicolored striped mountains; surreal, wrinkly, colorful badlands; canyons; sand dunes; creeks teeming with fish; the well-preserved ghost town of Rhyolite just outside the park's borders; and so much more than I could ever properly describe. It literally takes hours to drive from one end of the park to another, and it seems nearly impossible that anyone could ever truly see and experience its diverse wonders.

I have found that the desert has a way of teaching you about the persistence and creativity of life. Some might think that Death Valley would be an exception to this observation, but despite everything it's up against, life creeps through even this harshest of landscapes. In addition to amazing desert fish, I spotted a brave and curious coyote, many birds, lots of darting lizards, and some very hopeful vegetation. While the guy passed out on the sidewalk in Las Vegas probably woke up the next morning wishing he wasn't living and the gold prospectors cleared out of Rhyolite long ago, these life forms slowly and quietly adapt, adjust, and amaze those who take a moment to stop and spot them. I'm glad I am among them.

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